A Sermon for Lent 2, Year C
Over the past 15 years, I have known three
mothers who have each had to deal with significant emotional and mental health
problems in at least one of their children.
Doing so has frequently been an agonizing experience for these
women. They care for their children
deeply, and have expended great amounts of time, energy, money, and love in
doing the best they can to help them get better. Yet the very nature of the problems these
kids struggle with means that the mothers’ attempts to lead them towards
healing have often been met with resistance or outright opposition from the
kids themselves. As I’ve listened to my
friends, I’ve heard frustration, and under the frustration, anguish, the
anguish of mothers who desire to do what is good for their children, only to
find that their best efforts and, at times, their own selves, are rejected by
the very children they love and are trying so hard to help.
In today’s Gospel we hear that same
frustration and anguish from our mother God, as she laments her children’s
repeated rejection of the love that desires only their good. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills
the prophets and stone those who are sent to it, cries Jesus.
How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers
her brood under
her wings,
and you would not!
Picturing himself as a mother hen who wants
to gather her chicks under the safety of her wings, Jesus gives voices to God’s
motherly anguish that God’s children again and again reject her acts of
love. “How often,” says Jesus, “have I,
whom am your heavenly mother, longed to gather you to me and give you care and
shelter; how often have I, who am God’s
Word, sent you prophets and messengers to teach you the things that make for
peace; how often have I, who am divine
Wisdom, desired to guide you with my words and protect you from your own folly
-- and you would not!” As a loving
mother, God yearns to give her children everything that is good and to lead
them in ways that will keep them safe and whole -- and again and
again the
children choose a different path.
How frustrating, how agonizing this is for
God -- and, by now, how
predictable! So consistent is the tragic
pattern of God’s people rejecting God’s love and guidance that Jesus declares
it impossible that he should die anywhere other than Jerusalem -- the city God
chose as a dwelling place in the midst of God’s people, yet the city that kills
the prophets and
stones the
messengers God sends, of whom Jesus is the last and greatest.
This repeated rejection of God’s motherly
love is blind even to the terrible price at which it comes Soon, Jesus will stand on the brow of the
Mount of Olives overlooking Jerusalem before he enters it in seeming in
triumph, and he will weep over the city’s coming fate, saying: If you, even you, had only recognized on
this day the things that make for peace!
But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when
your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in
on every side. They will crush you to
the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within
you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your
visitation from
God. [2]
With a prophet’s eye, Jesus sees
Is
So we might each do well to ask ourselves
where in our own lives we are refusing the embrace of safety and love God wants
to wrap us in; where we are failing to recognize and live in the ways that make
for peace. If we each made those questions
part of our Lenten self-examination it would not be effort wasted. God’s love might find a greater
responsiveness in us and we might find greater wholeness in our lives.
But -- we might do even better
to ask this question of ourselves as a people, as a nation. After all, it is to the city
The most obvious division in
national life these days may be the
ideological and partisan lines that make accomplishing anything for the
common good near impossible in our political system. Take health care. Almost everyone in
Lamenting the costs of our
partisan divisions is almost too easy.
Hidden behind them, too often, are the yet more damaging divisions of
wealth, class and race that continue to bedevil American society. A
house divided against itself cannot stand, said Jesus. [3]
Almost 150 years ago, on the eve of the greatest threat to this nation’s unity,
Abraham Lincoln quoted these words of Jesus and added, “I believe this government cannot endure
permanently, half slave and half free.” [4]
And though the days of slavery are, thankfully, long gone, inequality and
division among us are not.
On this last day of Black History Month, we would do well to recall the Kerner Commission Report written now over 40 years ago in the wake of
the racial unrest of the 60’s. The report noted that our nation was being
divided into two societies, “one black, one white, separate and unequal.” “The rich are getting richer and the poor are
getting poorer,” the report said “and
minorities are suffering disproportionately” [5]
-- and in the current recession that remains
true. To be sure, much has changed for
the better in 40 years. Lines of racial
division are breaking down in some parts of our national life. To the wonder of many, our nation elected an
African-American as President. We at St.
Francis have the blessing of worshipping God in a racially diverse congregation
– a blessing, especially, for those of us who are white and who need to learn
of the persistent power of racism from our sisters and brothers of color. Yet in much of
This is not what God’s love wants for
us. These are not the things that make
for peace. Jesus our mother wants to
draw all of her people under her
wings in one community where there is liberty and justice for all, and where
the dignity of every human being is respected.
Jesus wants this for us not only because it is the right thing, but
because it will give all of us life and safety and goodness. A house -- a nation -- a church -- divided
against itself cannot stand. This is simple, prophetic truth that Jesus speaks
to us, truth that comes from a mother’s desire to give her children what will
make their lives whole.
We need not reject that loving truth. We can respond to it in what we do. We can get to know people who live on the
other side of the lines of ideology, race, class, and wealth from where we
ourselves live. The church is a
wonderful place to do that when it is what God calls it to be: a community that
in its very make-up witnesses that in Christ all people are called into a
common life of worship, fellowship, and
service.
We can get involved in community organizations
that work to overcome the divisions in our society. We can communicate with our elected leaders
on these issues and communicate with
God by joining our desire for peace and justice for all with God’s in our daily
prayer.
The stakes are high, as the fate of
that our
mother God longs to give us can lead to life.
And the choice is ours, as this morning’s offertory
hymn reveals. After recalling the fate
of
hymn puts
before us with utmost clarity the question what choice we will make:
New Advent of the love of
Christ
Shall we again refuse thee,
Till in the night of hate
and war
We perish as we lose
thee?
From old unfaith our souls
release
To seek the Kingdom of thy
peace
By which alone we choose
thee.
Challenging as is the question of whether or
not we will come under the wings of God’s motherly love and guidance,
especially given humanity’s poor track-record, we need not despair. The prayer which makes up the final verse of
the hymn recalls that we can still hope.
For though we so often reject God’s love, that love keeps coming. Jesus goes to
O wounded hands of Jesus
Build in us thy new creation.
Our pride is dust, our vaunt
is stilled,
We wait they revelation.
O love that triumphs over
loss
We bring our hearts before
thy cross
To finish thy
salvation. [6]
The Rev. Jack Zamboni