Christ Church Riverdale

2 Lent March7, 2004 Gen. 15:1-12,17-18; Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13;22-35

It is an article of faith that “Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” It is equally true that our ways of understanding Jesus change. Depending on our personality, our individual needs, and the culture in which we live, Jesus is kindly, fiery, merciful, loving, the strict prophet of the narrow door, or any combination. He is white, black, red, or somewhere in between. He wears a beard or is clean-shaven. Renaissance artists dressed Jesus and the saints in clothes of their day, and placed them in architecture and gardens of their own era. It didn’t matter, for God is ultimately unknowable to the human mind, except through revelation, and that revelation continues. We are a religion not of wisdom or of philosophy but of revelation. God reveals God’s essence in nature, in scripture, and in direct experience of the sort St. Paul knew on the road to Damascus, and the sort the artist knows in a transcendent musical performance or a work of fine art. You may have read the review in Friday’s “Times” of the new production of King Lear and, in particular, of Christopher Plummer’s performance. The review ends with these words: “The overall vision of this ‘Lear’ may be of a godless world. But divinity is definitely in the details of Mr. Plummer’s performance.” God is in everything while at the same time not being anything in particular. God is everywhere while not being limited to a particular place.

By necessity, we humans are limited by words. To dig deep, we use metaphors. Those of you who love language will enjoy the preface to the Book of Common Prayer. This preface has been included in all American prayer books since 1789, when it was promulgated at Philadelphia at the time the Constitution of the United States was being written by many of the same authors. Some of its language may date to the 16th century prayer books of Edward VI. In 1789, as in subsequent prayer books, the language of the services was altered to fit the circumstances of the day. Listen to the first paragraph:

“It is a most invaluable part of that blessed ‘liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free’ that in his worship different forms and usages may without offence be allowed, provided the substance of the Faith be kept entire; and that, in every Church, what cannot be clearly determined to belong to Doctrine must be referred to Discipline; and therefore, by common consent and authority, may be altered, abridged, enlarged, amended, or otherwise disposed of, as may seem most convenient for the edification of the people, ‘according to the various exigency of times and occasions.’”

This is the justification for the various changes we have experienced and some have deplored. Certain metaphors and idioms no longer work. Language changes. A few years ago, there was a movement to amend our current book. As the debate over patriarchy raged, a new look was taken at the language in our services. It was noted that the writers of the book, generally men, had avoided feminine scriptural images of Jesus. I hadn’t realized there were any such images. But there are.

The metaphor of the hen in today’s gospel is an example. It’s used in one of the new eucharistic prayers, describing Jesus as a mother hen. In our gospel today, Jesus laments, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!” Had you ever noticed that Jesus compares himself to a mother of chicks? Like a mother I would gather you to me. It passed me by for years.

In the image of the hen, Jesus is not the mighty king. As a hen, he contrasts himself in an obvious way to King Herod, whom he refers to as “that fox.” Herod is the fox in the henhouse, who is a threat to the chicks.

There’s a movie now in the theatres titled “The Passion of the Christ.” I haven’t seen it. But I know from the newspapers that it follows the scripture closely, while at the same time exaggerating, some say, the anger and evil of the Jews, the sisters and brothers of Jesus. Herod and Herod’s wife, I’m told, are more sympathetically treated than the already sympathetic accounts in the Bible.

This would astonish Jesus, who called Herod “that fox,” and who knew of the extraordinary cruelty Herod visited on the people, a cruelty documented by the historians of the period. Herod was a cruel, unhinged tyrant, the appointed agent of Rome. Herod was responsible for the crucifixion, not the Jews. The Jews had no power. The Bible account of the trial and crucifixion was written long after the events happened. At the time of the writing, the writers were interested in converting the gentiles and growing the church, not in historical accuracy. The church feared Rome after the destruction of Jerusalem. The Jews were resistant to conversion. Those who wrote the gospels had no way of knowing how what they wrote would be the basis for anti-Semitism and genocide. All they were concerned about was, first, to convert the gentiles and, second, not to offend the Romans. So Herod becomes somewhat of a good guy, not the fox he really was.

Do we listen to the fox or the hen? In our world, the fox has the advantage. The people wanted Jesus to be a fox, to lead a rebellion against Rome, one that would succeed, restore power, and create a new Davidic, therefore Messianic, monarchy. God, in Christ, was a different kind of Messiah, one who wept openly over Jerusalem, and one who, astonishingly, compared himself to a mother hen. What good would another king have done? In Jesus, we have the hope of new life and transformation, not the same old cycles of violent history.

Have we turned Jesus, and Christianity, into an environment of foxes? How much do we adhere to his teaching of turning the other cheek? In the language of “new age” religion, how “truly evolved” are we. Do we listen to the clear meaning of Jesus, or prefer the world where might is right? Is our culture veering in the wrong direction? Is might right, or do we value more the nurture of Christ.

The Jesus of scripture was profoundly counter-cultural. His death was a scandal and a stumbling block. The Son of God suffer? Die? Love your enemies? Pray for those who persecute you? Read the scriptures with an open heart. And read it with the knowledge that what is not of love is not of God.

“Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” Who is this essential Jesus for you?

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