Lenten Meditations & Reflections 2007

 

March 4-10

Luke 13:22-35 • The Rev. Canon Sue Sommer

It’s easy to miss the chapel as you make you way down the Mount of Olives toward Gethsemane. The road is steep and winding, and if the sun is shining brilliantly, the view of the old city of Jerusalem is breathtaking, and commands most of your attention. But if you see the chapel, and if you can persuade the tour guide to stop at it and not at any of the others that are more historically significant, you’ll find two interesting things. The first is that the window over the altar is clear glass and faces the old city of Jerusalem. The second is a mosaic that you’ll find on the floor near the altar, depicting a hen gathering her chicks under her wings. It’s all there in glass and tile — the lament that Jesus utters in today’s gospel passage: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

In a gospel filled with amazing and surprising parables and images, the image of Jesus as a mother hen is one of the most arresting. In our era of mass-produced poultry, many of us (including me) have never spent time in an old-fashioned hen house. My mom did. Like many Midwestern farm families during the Depression, they raised a small flock of chickens for eggs and for meat. One of Mom’s girlhood chores was to gather the eggs each day. Most eggs were sold, but every hen house back then had at least one brooder hen, whose job it was to brood some of the eggs until they hatched, and then to keep the chicks safe until they could manage on their own. Mom would tell of one old brooder they had who took her job so seriously that she would not even leave the nest to eat until the eggs hatched. Whenever anyone entered the henhouse, she would sound the alarm and her chicks – foster chicks all of them – would come running.

I don’t know that a fox ever got into the henhouse of my mother’s childhood. We do know that a fox will ultimately get Jesus. It’s no coincidence that Jesus refers to Herod as a fox before he likens himself to a brooding hen. In the Hebrew Bible, the image of fox is an image of destruction. Herod, of course, colluded with the hated Roman Empire, choosing expediency over righteousness. In Luke’s passion narrative, Herod and Pilate join forces. And in the contest that ultimately will come between the hen and the fox in Jerusalem, in the contest between the power of political hegemony and destruction and the power of hesed – stubborn, brooder hen, lay-down-your-life kind of love – it will be hesed that will ultimately win.

And it will be a costly victory.

Luke 6:36-38 • Gene and Deborah Wattenberg

We all know of moments when we are critical of someone ... a national leader, community activist, a friend, or someone in our immediate family. Our motivation for criticism is often because we desire that they meet OUR ideals. Sadly, assigning blame for failure rarely contributes to improved relations. Does it change the behavior of the other person? Instead of helping, it ends up hurting them and denying the peace we could have through prayer. It has been said “We are at our best when we reach out and serve others.” As children of a merciful God, should we not act in the same merciful way? God continually reaches out to each of us with forgiveness and love. Our right standing and relationship as heirs of God is because of the sacrifice Christ made on the cross to save us. All the glory goes to God for this generous act of love. Give to others ‘a good measure’ and an overflowing of love is what you will receive. 

Isaiah 1:10, 16-20 • Dianne Hofner Saphiere

 Here we are compared to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, told that we have blood on our hands, and banished in our evil from God’s sight. Yet, in all our sinfulness, we are infinitely beloved children of God, lavished with grace beyond anything we deserve. This passage speaks to me one of the great dialectics of life as a Christian: our Lord’s infinite love both comforts and provokes. We know we are loved no matter what, and yet we must remain motivated to act out our Covenant 24/7.

Matthew 20:17-28

Most of what I see is a mother’s loss of her son. I don’t think Mary understood what was going on. If she had, her pain would have overshadowed her knowledge. She must have wanted to change places with her son, to hide him to destroy those who wanted to destroy him, to keep him with her. Surely she felt great fear for him. Fear of the people who hated him, fear of the suffering he would endure, fear of her own pain and the thoughts of what it would do to her. Her pain at watching him suffer and her desolation when he was gone must have been unimaginable. The pain and fear I understand all too well. He chose to die for all of us, a decision which took tremendous love.

Luke 16:19-31 • Mike and Toni Bennett

In the Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens writes, “… Marley was as dead as a door-nail.”

Later in the story Marley’s ghost returns and tries to warn Scrooge to change his selfish attitude and his lack of love and caring for the people around him. Dickens connects Scrooge and Marley as being one and the same. Marley was physically dead, and Scrooge emotionally and spiritually dead, as Marley had also been in life. Both were “dead as door-nails.”

In this passage from Luke, the rich man and the poor man both die, and the rich man asks the spirit of Abraham if he would send a messenger back to the living to warn his five rich brothers to change their selfish attitudes and lack of love and caring for the people around them.

Abraham’s answer to the dead rich-man was that Moses and the Prophets had told the people time and time again. He reasons that all their lives men and women have been told through scriptures and the prophets, and if in their selfishness they are not paying attention to the needs of others around them, when they have, and others have not, then nothing else can be done. It is not enough just to know. People must do.

Scrooge’s nephew says it best in the Christmas Carol:

“…. Christmas-time …. a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”

Maybe we should stop being “dead door-nails” with our knowing that others are in need, and should start looking and doing for others. Christmas is over, and we should have the selfless spirit every day of the year.

Matthew 21:33-46 • Dave and Diane Barker

Talk about a shot across the bow: “the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce the proper fruits.” We don’t identify with the tenants who beat the slaves and kill the owner’s son, but we take the point that the proper fruits include a wide array of “things done and left undone,” including the people we love badly or not at all. Mercifully, we have a forgiving father and his grace to keep us upright where we stumble.

Luke 15:1-3, 11-31

God’s economy considers every last sinner to be important. No one is too insignificant to be left behind to flounder and die. That is an interesting concept when compared to today’s corporate world that too often looks only at this quarter’s bottom line. Anyone can be expendable if those guidelines or projections aren’t met. Fortunately for us sinners, Jesus Christ doesn’t follow a business model.