Are You Willing? - Second Sunday in Lent
Author: Pastor Carolyn Hetrick
March 16, 2025
If you ever
had an encounter with a bully you know the expression, “What are you,
chicken?!” It’s because chickens scatter when they are scared. The religious
leaders are encouraging Jesus to be chicken. They’re counting on people being
paralyzed by fear, convinced that they are not worthy of the things the leaders
have. Get out of here while you still can!”
Chickens
scatter when they are scared, except when they are a hen protecting chicks. Then
they gather the chicks and hunker down to protect at all costs. If you’ve ever
tried to enter a henhouse when a hen is protecting chicks you know you can be
pecked within inches of your life.
Jesus faces
two temptations. One, is the temptation of self-preservation at all costs
placed before Jesus, the kind of temptation he was well-primed for in the
wilderness. The second is the temptation of isolationism, going off with his
disciples back to Galilee and the heck with Jerusalem.
We face these
temptations too in our own places. Choosing paths that we know may not be good
for others, but “I gotta take care of me.” Or “I’m gonna go my own way. I’m
gonna do my own thing. I’m so much better off if I don’t have to put up with
other people and their ideas or needs. I don’t need them.”
And yet we do
need each other. We are wired for community. Jesus in all compassion looks at
the folks in the gospel and says, “How I longed to draw you close to me, to
gather you like a hen sheltering chicks under her wings, but you were not
willing.”
Then I
imagine Jesus speaking those words to us today in a time where statistics show
that one of the greatest long-term casualties of the COVID-19 pandemic is it
has shifted our perspective about whether we want or need to socialize with
other people or just go it alone. Before March 2020, we all averaged at close
to 40 minutes a day socializing in real time with others, in all forms
including church activities. Even now this far since 2020, we have not bounced
back to our “old selves.” [1] We are barely back by half. Just 20 minutes. That’s astounding.
Technology
tries to convince us that we don’t need real people and the messiness of that.
We can live in our own curated worlds of virtual existence. And while we are in
these spaces we don’t have to be challenged or bothered if we don’t want to be.
And yeah, it has a cost, but isn’t worth it? Aren’t you so much better off when
you don’t have to put up with sheltering with and trying to share space with
people you don’t really want to get to know, much less care about?
Jesus doesn’t
choose either of the paths of temptation I mentioned, but instead in the face
of it all, says, “I’m not going anywhere. I am staying right with you here to
do what I am called to do.” And people will be capable of far worse than just
being rude to Jesus. The story of Holy Week tells us this.
But what
about us? Are we willing to stay and embrace who we are called to be in this
world? What can Jesus show us who have moved so far beyond a a quaint image of
foxes and hens?
In the face
of these temptations the first thing we see in the gospel to guide us is the
lengths to which God will go to love us and to try continually to re-frame our
perspective, to shelter us and to make us be an “US” gathered in God’s love.
The second
thing we learn is that God’s heart gets angry and breaks just like ours. We see
both in this gospel and how Jesus responds.
Last we asked
you consider how you might choose to grow closer to God this Lent. And the
number one answer was to try to love people we do not understand. And I bet
that also means people we think are just wrong.
We can see
and long for something for ourselves and others that we feel is so desperately
needed and yet those we are trying to convince of the path of love and
worthiness will at times reject this. They are not willing. And it is so very
hard to keep loving when your heart is breaking in the face of rejection and
unwillingness. When we feel this way, God knows. God’s felt that way too. And
God calls us to the sacrifice of continuing to love.
Jesus is not
a pushover, at least not as we might think.
Just because
someone is willing to continually sacrifice for the sake of love is not
weakness, in fact it takes great strength. And Jesus calls a thing a thing.
“You go tell that fox I’m not going anywhere.”
Jesus chooses
to call the ruler of the day a “fox” is a way of talking about both Herod’s
deception and calling him a predator. He knows that this man is preying upon
the fears of people. Fears of the religious leaders who worry that change will
be impossible to broker- they are telling Jesus to scram more for their own
sake than his. Fears of political leaders that those who have been bullied into
submission might realize their worth, leading to chaos. Jesus names what is
happening and then stays put for the sake of those who need his love anyway.
We have been
and continue to live in a chaotic and fearful time. I won’t say that this
gospel tells us what to do if the world makes you fearful. It does help us see
where to turn WHEN it does. Hold fast to God.
It is fear
that leads us to believe no one will take care of us. And although Jesus never
says the word “fear” there is no mistake that fear is everywhere in this
gospel.
Today though,
instead of just using the words “do not fear,” Jesus is speaking from the depth
of God’s heart in a different way to break the cycle of fear, the way I want us
to imagine our parent or the most loving human we have known would do.
One of the
other losses in the pandemic was human touch. Some go all day with no physical
contact. Imagine now though that in the face of all that is churning in you,
Jesus says to you, “How I long to gather you close.” Can you sense the warmth
and tenderness and protection of being drawn up in a loving embrace that is
also a fortress against whatever struggles are threatening you? Allowing God
into the pain of our life is powerful. God longs to gather and shelter all of
us. Are you willing?
Fear and
anger are relatives. It can be challenging to manage our emotions in a world
where so much of what we watch or listen to is not based in facts, but in
opinion and where many companies make money by convincing us to stay tuned and
stay aggravated. It can be easy to believe we are under attack. Sometimes we
cut ourselves off from others. I love that Jesus’ anger is in the gospel to in
the feistiness of a hen loving and protecting us all the way to the cross.
With this
image of Jesus before us, ask yourself whether any talking head on media, or
any AI solution will do that for us? Of course not.
None of us
wants to have only ourselves in this world. Nor do we have to when our Savior
is here. While I don’t have all the answers, I do know the best thing we can do
is draw close to Jesus and to each other and let’s do that now in prayer:
Jesus, our
shelter, thank you for your love and for gathering us to you. Give us a willing
heart, free us from serving our fears so we can submit ourselves to your care
and gather when you call. Amen.
[1] American Time Use Survey presented in the New York Times, “30 Charts That Show How COVID Changed Everything” by Aatish Bhatia and Irineo Cabreros, March 9, 2025
Copyright
Rev. Carolyn K. Hetrick, 2025 All rights reserved. May not be reproduced
in whole or in part without written permission.
Sermon
Text: Luke 13:31-35
31 At
that very hour some Pharisees came and said to [Jesus,] “Get away
from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” 32 He
said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons
and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my
work. 33 Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day
I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed
outside of Jerusalem.’ 34 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that
kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I
desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her
wings, and you were not willing! 35 See,
your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time
comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’ ”
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