Sermon - The Fox and the Hen

Preached on February 28, 2010, the second Sunday in Lent, at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, UCC

Luke 13:13-35

The fox and the hen are both fierce animals. The fox is fierce in its pursuit of power and gain, and the mother hen is fierce in her love and protection of her children. But when the fox meets the hen, it’s not much of a contest, is it? We all know that the hen isn’t getting out of there alive. You and I know it. Those concerned Pharisees knew it, when they warned Jesus that he had better knock off his ministry and get out of town or Herod would kill him. Even Jesus knew it. He knew that even when he left town and went to Jerusalem, they would kill him there anyway. In a struggle that positions the strength of violence against the strength of love, the fox against the mother hen, we know the outcome. It’s just common sense. It’s the conventional wisdom, the kind of thing that everyone knows. And when Jesus died, that conventional wisdom looked really good for about two days. And then came Easter, when God overturned our conventional thinking about where true power lies. The Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor put it this way: It was the “cosmic battle of all time, in which the power of tooth and fang was put up against the power of a mother's love for her chicks. And God bet the farm on the hen” (“Chickens and Foxes” in Bread of Angels).

Let’s back up a bit to that warning about Herod. ‘You better get out of Galilee, Jesus. Herod killed John the Baptist, and it looks like you’re next.’ That’s when Jesus called Herod a fox. In the past century, and especially in recent decades, we have rediscovered a lot about the history of first century Israel that helps us to understand what’s happening in the gospels. Herod was not the ruler of Galilee by popular vote or the anointing of a prophet. He had been appointed ruler by the Roman emperor, because Israel was one of the eastern most holdings in the empire. And maybe you remember how Roman emperors ruled from history class, or from Shakespeare, perhaps. These guys plotted and killed to be emperor, and that kind of power struggle went all the way down the chain of command. Herod’s father, Herod the Great, had killed people in his own family who were threats to his power. He ruled at the time when Jesus was born, and he was the one who killed all the infants in Bethlehem because the wise men told him about a newborn king of the Jews, which was another obvious threat. Thirty years later, his son Herod rules Galilee in the north, and Rome has installed Pontius Pilate in the south over Jerusalem. They’re both foxes, and Jesus knows he’s in for it in either place.

To get an idea of the power of the Roman empire, the best example would be the colonial powers of places like England, Spain, France, and Belgium. Those were distant rulers with superior military might who expanded their wealth on the backs Africans, and the natives of the Americas, and the Africans who were brought to the Americas. That’s what the Roman empire was like, and places like Nazareth, and Capernaum, and all those little towns where Jesus went to teach and to heal, were bled dry by tributes paid to Rome. That’s why tax collectors are always the sinners in the world of the gospels. They weren’t collecting taxes for the welfare of Israel; they were extorting money for the emperor. And the priests of Israel, who should have demanded justice and spoken for their people, were put out of business. The High Priest at the temple in Jerusalem was supposed to be a lifelong position, but Herod and Pilate went through dozens of priests. If they didn’t tow the line, they were fired.

It is into this history that Jesus comes, proclaiming the kingdom of God here among us, instead of the kingdom of Rome. Jesus feeds the hungry, heals the sick, and proclaims forgiveness from God, which were all things that a good ruler and a good high priest should have been doing. His very ministry was a confrontation with those foxes, and that’s why they wanted to kill him.

Did you know that people used to call the Roman Emperor the prince of peace, the son of God, and even Lord? Those were all names for Caesar. So when those names turn up in the early church and in the writings of the New Testament, it means that they are choosing the power of a mother hen over the power of the fox.

Now, here’s the amazing thing about this confrontation between the fox and the mother hen. From the mother hen’s point of view, even the foxes are misguided chicks who need to be swept up in the love and grace of God. Jesus laments over Jerusalem, sheds tears over the very city that will betray him. That is the depth of a mother’s love. Even when the soldiers carry out orders to crucify him, he forgives them, saying that they don’t know what they’re doing. Even when it seems the darkest, even when he doubts in the garden of Gethsemane, he trusts that the power of the mother hen’s love is stronger than the power of the fox.

We were reminded of this by Martin Luther King, Jr., who always taught that the violence of discrimination could not be overcome by violence, but only by love. And they stood firm, even when it looked like is wasn’t working, when they were met with dogs and firehoses, beatings and arrests, even murders. They saw the struggle through the eyes of Easter, and trusted that power of love would overcome. We were reminded of this again when South Africa finally threw off the burden of apartheid without violence and without retribution for the criminal acts of the people who had enforced apartheid for so many years. And we were reminded by the Amish community in Pennsylvania, after a man murdered their children in a schoolhouse and took his own life, when they chose to see him not as a predator, but as a misguided chick who needed the shelter of God. They attended his funeral, and cared for his family, even as they mourned the death of their own children.

It often seems that this is a world in which the fox succeeds, but only if you take the short view. God bet the farm on the hen. “O Jerusalem” Jesus cried, “how often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.” He said it of Jerusalem, but he may as well have said it about any of our cities, yours and mine, or any place around the world. God’s love for you is as fierce and passionate as that of a mother for her children. God’s love for us shows us a different kind of power.

I need to tell you about Robi Damelin and Ali Abu Awwad. Robi is a Jewish woman who lives in Israel. Her son, David, was killed by a Palestinian sniper. Ali is a Palestinian Muslim who lives in the West Bank. One day, his brother Yousef was shot and killed by an Israeli soldier. Usually, these are the kinds of losses that increase each side’s anger and desire for vengeance. But Robi and Ali took a different path. They are a part of an organization that brings together Israelis and Palestinians to meet, often for the first time, someone on the other side of the conflict. They understand that they share the same pain. Ali, who is about the same age age as Robi’s son, now tries to care for her as a son in David’s place. Their message to us, and to the rest of the world, is to stop taking sides in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. It will not end by one side winning and the other losing. It will only end when people look across the divide and see in the faces of stranger the faces of their own children, their own parents. (From an interview on the radio program Speaking of Faith, 2/18/2010 ).

When Jesus calls us to take up our own cross and follow him, he is asking us to follow his way, which is different from the way of the empire, the way of the fox. He asks us to take on the kind of love that a mother has for her children. There’s a wonderful example of this in the novel Plainsong, by Kent Haruf. Plainsong tells the story of a small town in rural Colorado and the lives of its people, including two brothers, who lived together as bachelors on their cattle farm. Never married and happy about it, they used their dining room table as a work station for tractor parts in need of repair. Then, one day, a thoughtful teacher at the town’s high school asks them to take in girl from the school who is pregnant and without a home or caring family. When they ask the teacher why she chose them, she says “I know it sounds crazy. I suppose it is crazy. But that girl needs somebody and I’m ready to take drastic measures. She needs a home for these months. And…you need somebody too.” “You’re going to die someday without ever having had enough trouble in your life. Not of the right kind, anyway. This is your chance” (Plainsong, page 109).

The right kind of trouble: that sounds about right. Jesus said to tell that fox that he was going to keep healing and teaching, because it was the right kind of trouble. Parents keep being there for their children because it’s the right kind of trouble. We keep showing up when someone is sick, we keep giving a little bit more when tragedy strikes, we keep volunteering to try something new for the sake of others because those are all the right kinds of trouble. Maybe it won’t make us more comfortable, maybe it will cost us something, but those are not the concerns of a mother hen. The fox and the hen meet all the time. And the hen always prevails.