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This morning we'll follow our regular order of service for chapel, for the abbreviated
version of
our message in homily.
I invite you to stand with me
in order to invoke the name of our Lord and God.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.
Please be seated for the reading for this
second week in Lent.
Also, the basis for meditation today is a word taken from the evangelist Luke,
the thirteenth chapter beginning with verse
thirty-one.
"At that very hour some of the pharisees came and said to Jesus,
'Go away from here for Herod wants to kill you',
and he said to them, 'Go and tell that fox, behold, I cast out demons
and perform cures today and tomorrow
and on the third day i finish my course.
Never the less,
I must go on my way today, and tomorrow, and the day following
for it cannot be that a prophet should parish
away from Jerusalem.
Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem
the city
that kills the prophets
and stones those who are sent to it.
How often would I have gathered your children together
as a hen gathers her brood under her wings
and you would not.
Behold, your house is forsaken
and I tell you,
you will not see me until you say,
'Blessed is He
who comes in the name of the Lord."
So far text.
Grace, mercy, and peace
be unto you from God our Father and from Christ Jesus,
our Lord, amen.
The text for appointed
lesson today is
the Gospel of the week,
but in order that we ensure its applicability
to us today hear a portion of it again as we substitute
Concordia
for Jerusalem.
"Oh, Concordia,
Concordia,
the city
that kills the prophets and stone's those who were sent to it.
How often I would have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her
brood under her wings, and you would not.
Behold, your house is forsaken
and I tell you, you will not see me until you say,
'Blessed is He
who comes in the name of the Lord".
I feel a little bit like Urkel.
*mimic sounds*
Substituting the name for Concordia
for Jerusalem in the text?
The fact is I think we misread, or misunderstand the text if we simply
believe that it belongs to someone else's problem.
I do not think that we can
read and understand the appointed Gospel for today
and treated safely for ourselves by blaming someone else for Jesus' tears
and his weeping over Jerusalem.
Jerusalem's problem
is our problem,
and her salvation
our salvation.
So listen carefully to what the Gospel
teaches us-
each and every one of us- today.
There is in Jerusalem,
across the Kidron Valley,
not far from where Jesus was crucified,
a chapel called Dominance
Flevit which in Latin means
Jesus wept.
The name of the chapel comes from the account, this particular account of Luke,
chapter thirteen,
where Jesus demonstrates his grief over an entire city
that rejected him and the prophets before him.
Some of you may very well have visited the chapel,
and there in front of the altar piece
is the following Mosaic
where we see the hen gathering its chicks
and we see that the chapel is in the shape of a teardrop,
and in front of the alter you see
a golden halo
around the hen.
Her red comb
that forces her crown, and her wings spread white, and the pale
of her heart exposed,
and the hen looks ready to spit fire
for anyone who'd come near, and her babies
look safe at her feet,
and around on the madallion are these words inscribed
for all to read: Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and
stones those who are sent to it
how often I would have gathered you together as your children...
as my children... as a hen gathers her brood
under her wings, and you would not.
Do you know
Luke mentions Jerusalem 90 times in his
Gospel.
All other Gospel writers
in their totality only. mention Jerusalem forty nine times.
Obviously the city was important for Luke as it was for Jesus,
and to be sure nothing happens
in Jerusalem
to this day that
is insignificant,
when Jerusalem is faithful to God, God smiles upon the world and it's in
good shape.
When Jerusalem ignores God, the whole world
begins to shake.
Of course the same could be a said for other cities, universities,
and other places
where spirituality seems strong
and then the darts of the evil ones start to penetrate and make
such a place weaker.
For when the chicks hear, and recognize, and follow the voice
of the mother hen,
all is well.
But when they forget who they are and turn chicken,
the whole world go to pieces.
Now we could speak at length
of the chicks in Jerusalem and how they deserted their mother hen.
There are those centuries of rejection of prophet after prophet.
Do you remember that wonderful shepherd and teacher, Amos,
who was charged with treason
though he only wanted to speak God's worded about the day of the Lord?
How he spoke of the fallen
tent of David and how it would be risen up in the final chapter of his book,
and his words were rejected this treasonous?
Can you remember Jeremiah who's thrown in prison
for telling Jerusalem about their false confidence in the temple of
the Lord, the temple of the Lord,
the temple of the Lord.
Can you just imagine
the rejection
that the Father in heaven must have experienced over those he sent to bring
God's goodness?
And then there's the compromise of working with the Herodians.
You can hear it in Jesus' voice "Go tell that
fox,
Herod, today, tomorrow,
and then I finish.
It will finished - that's what he's telling them.
But regardless of their various reasons, the final diagnosis for Jerusalem is
always the same;
God leaves the city alone with its occupant, alone in their sin.
This city and its foxy leader
and any who are rejecting the voice and the cause of God,
find that the
chicken coop is lost
to the one who judges.
They simply are left walled up
in their small space
and left to waste away
and to fear the oncoming on-slaughter
in their own indulgence.
Inspite of Jesus' weeping over Jerusalem, the image he provides,
provides us a way out today.
If you've ever loved someone you
could not protect then you'll understand
the depth of Jesus lament
over Jerusalem.
I don't know if you remember earlier in the year but
we prayed for a family, where one of
their daughters was overseas in in hospital and ill,
and at the same time there was a young
daughter gone missing from
the family,
apparently had special needs.
We prayed not only once, but twice, and
I couldn't help
but feel that way... perhaps you did too...
of how exposed it is when you must trust the Lord alone.
You must bear open your arms and exposure your heart and your vital organs in prayer,
and trust alone
only in God.
All you can do is open your arms and wait for the return.
You can't force
God's hand or bring anyone to walk alongside of them except perhaps the
Paraclete.
The one we call to our aid in the very present time of trouble,
says Psalm 46.
And in the meantime, you leave yourself and your breast totally exposed, your heart
unprotected, merely waiting for the return of your loved one.
The picture that Jesus makes for the choice of the hen, therefore,
is so amazing.
He did not use the image of the Roman eagle, the American eagle, the German
eagle from the vulture family.
He did not choose the leopard, with its speed and its spots,
nor a lion king, he chose a hen
knowing full well that fox's love to get into the hen house
as easy prey.
The hen is most exposed as you see,
when its wings are spread wide, making it easy
absolutely easy for the fox to attack.
Vital organs are exposed when the wings are open.
All she can do is place her body
between that of the old fox and her chicks,
making the attacker
kill her in order to get her chicks free.
Are you beginning
to get the picture?
This is precisely what Jesus will do. Perhaps not today or tomorrow, but when it
is finished he will.
In Jerusalem as he arrives
in the final week of his life,
he will stretch out his own arms and wings
on the cross and spit
fire at the evil one,
and save and protect his chicks
even if the sacrifice itself
is necessary.
It's Jerusalem's chicken coop and cross
where salvation
is to be found.
So God saves
Concordia
and that of every other city, and village, and community in the world- in the
universities of the world.
Jesus does not abandon the house to any fox nor does he leave his chicks abandoned,
and
he enters the city as the crowds shout,
"Blessed is He who comes
in the name of the Lord!" as they wave their palm branches
in holy celebration in the liturgy of the church, Revelations chapter seven.
And had white robes and held palm branches in their hands
as they said, "Hosanna!
Today salvation
has come and peace in Heaven
is found" says Luke.
So he mounts his throne,
the throne of a cross, in order to establish
his reign.
And beneath the wings of our Lord Jesus,
the homeless and obstinate
chicks are given shelter
as they receive no other.
Gathered into one flock,
they are no longer chicken.
I like that line from the
movie Back to the Future. "Chicken!"
They're no longer that,
but they find security in their mothering Lord,
and then they're ready to go out into the world, neither conforming to the world,
nor afraid even to venture in the world for the purpose of
reaching out
to other chicks:
confident that
they are in God's house,
they aggressively reach out to all other of the Lord's chicks
so that they can fine security.
Sadly,
the foxes of this world will always be with us.
Prophet killing goes on to this very day as much as it did
in the time of Jesus.
But for the chicks in God's henhouse there is hope.
There is hope because the Lord Jesus has
accomplished all this for chicks, and you may not like that word, but I'm gonna say it a
few more times.
The chicks who have come to depend upon our Lord, the chicks who trust in him and
live in a new way, the chicks who are destined not to be controlled by fear
but the chicks who are able to go out into the world with the ultimate gift
and gather
and
to tell about Jesus who is able to gather us
under his wings and Fathers arms.
And so, as
rescued chicks,
you go about your business
today,
and tomorrow,
and the next day.
I don't know if you thought about what you're doing in the days to come, but I
know by friday
I'm gonna be at my daughter's state tournament for hockey in Madison
and there I might find chicks with sticks.
Whoever comes to our Lord and trusts in him
are those who become safer and welcome
under the shadow of the wings of our Lord.
We've been given the strength to
live new lives in this world,
to live in a newness
with everyone we meet.
So that's the way it is this day,
in this season of Lent, in the second week of Lent, the year two thousand
and thirteen.
In the name of a Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,
and the peace of God
which passes all understanding
keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus, our Lord, amen.