Sermon for Sunday, March 16, 2025

 March 16, 2025

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott

Luke 13:31-35

Today’s Gospel shows shifting loyalties, shifting histories, our layer upon layer of relationship, as Jesus begins his journey to Jerusalem, as we continue in our Lenten pilgrimage.   Let’s begin with the Pharisees who come to warn Jesus about Herod.  I’ve thought about this turn of events all week, and the more I think, the stranger it seems.

Why would they warn Jesus?  If you’re like me, you’ve been taught since childhood that the Pharisees are the enemy of Jesus.  Here we see the danger of painting with too broad a brush – the type of generalization from which much hate is born.  Surely some (if not many) Pharisees opposed Jesus, but remember that not all of them were.  They may have come in secret, like Nicodemus, but we can’t assume that everyone hated him.

And even if they all despised his teachings, that doesn’t mean that they wanted to see him killed.  Even if they were opposed to Jesus, they likely were more opposed to Herod.  In fact, historically, they would have been much more likely to disdain Herod, who was a puppet of Rome, whom the Pharisees opposed—but opposed quietly for the most part, as was the safest route.

Unlike the way we saw the devil and Jesus in last week’s temptation story, we routinely see heated debates between Jesus and the Pharisees across the Gospels.  But Jesus and the Pharisees interact in a way we selcome see today:  they have respectful debates, and they debate because they do have some significant differences.  For Jesus and the Pharisees, the clash was over whether Law or Love was most important when it came to following God.  It is reasonable to believe that the Pharisees passionately disagreed with Jesus but still had a great deal of respect for him.  It’s not a bad model for us.  If you come across people, whether in your face to face life or on social media, who are more invested in being right than in having an honest dialogue, there’s no point in trying to have a conversation.  As with the Pharisees and Jesus, only engage with those who have integrity of spirit and of mind.

The Pharisees respected and cared for Jesus enough to warn Him about Herod, but they probably didn’t need to do that.  Everyone saw what happened to John the Baptist.  Herod was not one to be respected, not one to debate in honest disagreement.  Jesus knows he’s on a collision course with the authorities.  He’s been trying to teach the disciples how to non-violently resist an oppressive regime (the turn the other cheek Gospel of three weeks ago), while not letting that resistance become the sole focus of their lives. He’s been training them to continue the work when he’s gone.  

Here, too, Jesus models how to survive and thrive in hard times.  When there’s no way to avoid the coming clash, keep doing the work that needs to be done:  the healing of the culture, the casting out of whatever demons have been unleashed.

Jesus weeps over Jerusalem, and here, too, he might find common cause with the Pharisees, who were also distressed over the behavior of the people who lived in Jerusalem, the center of the culture.  Jesus looks back in history to all the prophets killed by the larger culture.  The writer of the Gospel of Luke is looking back too.  By the time he writes, Jerusalem has been destroyed by Rome.

There is solace in this Gospel.  It ends with Jesus yearning to be our maternal hen sheltering her brood. We don’t often get images of Jesus as mother, so lets take a look at this analogy. Those of you who have raised chickens may be better able to speak to  how a mother hen interacts with her chicks than I am.  From my research, the chicks are allowed to run free and explore as they peck in the dirt, they are allowed to make mistakes, they are allowed to get into petty arguments with their siblings, and when they get too far from safety, the mother hen steps in.   Baby chicks are allowed certain freedoms unless the mother hen senses a clear and present danger. 

When the fox appears, the mother hen is less patient with the chicks and more protective. Despite all of her efforts, however, some of the vulnerable chicks wish to keep playing at trivial games and ignore the often aggressive attempts of the hen to return them to safety.   As the fox approaches, the brood gathers under the mother’s wings and in captivity, all the mother hens may form a collectively defensive posture. The mother hen doesn’t say: yeah, take the kids so long as you leave me alone. She puts her own life on the line to better ensure protection and salvation. Her posture says: you might kill the vulnerable, but you will have to fight your way through me first. Despite the hens that may have been losses, the number of prophets that have been killed, Christ wants to be allowed to do that for us.   Jesus longs to give us freedom within a comfort zone but when true danger appears, Jesus wants to protect us all, particularly  the weak and vulnerable, from the deadly fox.

Our human loyalties may shift, the way that the Pharisees appear to shift loyalties regarding Jesus, moving from trickery to protection.  They may shift like the appearance of disinterest by the hen and when she will sacrifice her life for her children. But the loyalty and respect from Jesus doesn’t shift.  When we face a fox like Herod, Jesus won’t run away.  Jesus is there to protect us if we will allow it. 

How can we help stay close enough to the one who yearns to be our mother hen?  We know all the ways that Jesus taught u, all the spiritual disciplines that we might use.  Daily prayer is chief among them, and if we don’t have words, we can pray as Jesus taught us, the Lord’s prayer, or we can let the Holy Spirit pray the words.  We can read for spiritual nourishment instead of doomscrolling our way across our phones.  We can remember what creative work brings us joy—and we can do it often.  We can look out for those who are so at risk inan empire ruled by evil and manipulative foxes like Herod.

Jesus yearns to gather us under the shelter of his protective wings.  Let’s agree to meet there, in the feathered softness, such a sanctuary from the sharp and hard edges of the world.  Let us gather close to the one who will sacrifice himself to protect us.  We do not need to fear the foxes of this world.  We shelter under the wings of the Triune God.