Lent 2, Year C
The Rev. Nigel Taber-Hamilton, Rector
All three of today’s readings ask the same questions of us: how do we respond as Christians when the world around us appears to be falling apart, and when violence and fear appear to be cultural values and markers?
In today’s Old Testament reading Abram (not yet Abraham) is caught up in what he rightly perceives as a very serious and deadly threat to the survival of the Israelites even before they even get to the Promised Land. In a sense, metaphorically, he’s all there is of Israel. The author of Genesis understands Abram to have heard God inviting him to look into the heavens and hear the promise that the future, if not the present, is bright. “Understand the present in the broader context of sacred time; look at the big picture,” God says. Hope deferred is not hope destroyed, it’s still hope, and not a cause for despair.
In the Epistle, Paul, in inviting his readers to imitate him, is really saying “imitate Christ, as I do”. The heavens are again invoked - our citizenship rests in the hope that the heavens convey, so be committed to the “Jesus path”, stay engaged in the struggle for authentic community, don’t get side-tracked by worldly seductions that will replace Christian values of compassion with worldly values of self-interest. Paul saw the hope for the fullness of Community in Philippi was being deferred. He, too, sees that in a positive light - hope not destroyed but still hope.
Which brings us to today’s Gospel.
On the first day Rachel and I were in Jerusalem - September 1st of last year - we decided to take a quick walking tour. It was hot! It must have been in the 90's! One shower a day doesn’t cut it!
There was one place in particular I wanted to see that day - the Cave of Gethsemane, just 50 yards from the garden of the same name, and most likely the actual site of Jesus’ last night of freedom, his “agony in the garden”, rather than what is now called “the Garden”. To get to the cave from St. George’s College, which is north of the Old City, you walk south until you hit the outer walls and then turn left, curving down into the bottom of the Kidron valley which separates Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives.
Our stop at the Cave is for another time, except to note that - probably because of its inaccessibility, the holy site it represented moved to what is now called the Garden of Gesthemane. This was a constant theme for us, incidently: we discovered that “Holy places move”!
After that - and after finding another eternal truth about Jerusalem – that most religious sites in Jerusalem seem to close from noon until 2 p.m.! – we decided to walk up the side of the Mount of Olives - it’s a hill, really, although a rather steep one - we decided to go up to the top so as to get a better view of Jerusalem - its where all the panoramic views are taken from.
To get to the top you wind up a narrow lane with high stone walls on either side. A quarter of the way up on the left we passed the closed gates of the Orthodox Convent of St. Mary Magdalene and then - about half way up - another gate, this one open and leading to a tear-shaped building - a chapel - named “Dominus Flevit” – “The Chapel of Our Lord’s Grief”. It’s named after the passage from today’s gospel reading, and the tradition is that the chapel’s located on the sight where Jesus wept for Jerusalem.
We’ll never know, of course, if that’s the site. Jesus weeps, according to the Gospel record, when he first sees Jerusalem, and this chapel is half way down the hill - he’d have been in view of the Temple for some considerable time. But then, for reasons of accessibility, “Holy places move”!
There are two striking things about the interior of Dominus Flevit - one is the spectacular view of the Jerusalem sky-line seen through the Georgian-style plain glass arched window behind the altar - through it you can see the golden dome of the Dome of the Rock Mosque and the grey domes of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
The other striking thing is the image on the front of the altar. It’s on the front cover of the bulletin, – please take a look. It’s a picture I took of the altar. I was able to get the picture because the chapel was empty. Almost no tourist or pilgrim was in Jerusalem when we were there - it was right after the Lebanon war. We had the place completely to ourselves. (Now, don’t tell the Altar Guild, but I was also able to get such a good picture because no one was around to stop me moving the green cover and “fair white linen” back from the front of the altar!)
You can see from the picture that this is a mosaic medallion of a white hen with a halo around her head. Her comb (which is blood-red) is done in such a way that it looks a lot like a crown, and her wings are spread out. In the shadow of her wings are seven yellow chicks. That gesture of love and protection is haunting.
Around the edge of the medallion are these words in Latin, quoted from Matthew’s Gospel: “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.”
Beneath her feet, in red, are more words: “But you were not willing.”
Jesus’ choice of these words is very revealing. He would have grown up around hens and chickens, and foxes. The metaphor conveys both the power and cunning of Herod – not “The Great” but his son, Herod Antipas – and the physical weakness of Jesus and his group of ‘chicklets’.
But this is not just about Jesus and his disciples – he’s clearly seeing every prophet of Israel as a “hen”, and those of God’s special concern – the lonely and the lost, the poor and the helpless, the suffering and the dying – as these defenseless little creatures.
The way that God’s concern is expressed, in other words, is not through the masculine beating of the chest, the throaty roar of violent battle, but the feminine concern and care for those unable to defend themselves, and the profound human response of enfolding them inside the protective cover of her wings – of shielding their small, helpless bodies with hers.
It is, of course, also a metaphor for what is to come. And a reminder – hope deferred is still hope: do not despair, continue the struggle.
As Rachel and I stood in that chapel the deep irony is inescapable: the irony of this image, juxtaposed, as it is, with the ancient city of Jerusalem that can be seen simply by raising one’s eyes from the altar frontal to the glass window.
No matter how much this metaphorical hen clucks, even today, no one across the valley appears to be listening to words of sadness, of peace, and of self-sacrifice.
And that is the story we approach at the end of this Lenten journey - to continue the metaphor, the story is about how the fox comes at night in the Garden when all the chicks are asleep, and how - only a day later - the hen’s wings are again spread, her breast exposed, and all of the chicks have fled from beneath the protection of her feathers, and there is a pool of blood on the ground.
Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor says of this reality: “This is what we experience when we discover we can’t protect the ones we love from suffering or prevent them from wandering off seduced into forgetting who they are, forgetting what it means to be in relationship, to be part of a community, forgetting what it means to love. All we can do - like the white hen with the halo - is open our arms in offered embrace and wait.”
All we can do - seeing our hopes fade - is to “keep the faith”, to hold on to the truth that hope deferred is not hope destroyed, it is still hope.
That’s the real invitation of this season - to lose ourselves in our care and compassion for others and so find ourselves and each other - to keep our eyes on the prize, keep the faith, hold on to the knowledge that in some profound way beyond words we know that this hope will not be in vain. That’s what taking up a cross daily really means. That’s the journey of Lent.
“If you have ever loved someone you could not protect,” Taylor concludes, “then you understand the depth of Jesus’ lament. All you can do is open your arms. You cannot make anyone walk into them. Meanwhile, this is the most vulnerable posture in the world - wings spread, breast exposed - but if you mean what you say, then this is how you stand.”
Amen.
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