Medieval Map of the World with Jerusalem at its center, c.1250
Eternal God, your kingdom has broken into our troubled world through the life, death, and resurrection of your Son. Help us to hear your word and obey it, and bring your saving love to fruition in our lives, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!
Behold, your house is left unto you desolate: and verily I say unto you, Ye shall not see me, until the time come when ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. (Luke 13:34-35)
Once while she was at a table in a restaurant nestled among the vineyards of the Sonoma Valley, a winemaker looked out a window and saw kids running desperately through the rows of vines. Why were they running?
She found out. These were kids escaping a dangerous situation. They had been incarcerated in the juvenile hall down the road and it was so decrepit, she discovered, that the cell doors would not even lock, and so the kids felt unsafe and afraid. And they ran.
Her response was to work to get the situation changed. Eventually, a new more secure facility was built.
And among those who brought some comfort and humanity to those children, for children they were, was a woman from a local church who would visit the detention center and read to the kids. They called her Grandma.
And so those children were gathered under a mother’s, and a grandmother’s, wings.
The motherly impulse to embrace and cover those exposed to violence or insecurity led these women to take steps to care for and protect people otherwise left on the edge of society, inmates of “juvie” - but now they were seen as people, children, even children of God.
“Luke saw a persistent intent on the part of Jesus to bring in those cast out, to raise up those beaten down, to bring those on the extremities of the social order close to the heart of God.” (Michael B. Curry, Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 2. Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press, 2009. 71)
And so we realize that “... the infinite reach and eternal embrace of God’s reign was at the core of the gospel message of Jesus.” (Ibid., 73)
In the years 82 and 83 of our era - that is, early in the days of the church, a Roman governor - not Pilate, Agricola - led his troops north through Britannia to Caledonia, what we now call Scotland, and attacked the local forces arrayed against him. The account of their actions, written by the son-in-law of that Roman general, put these words in the mouth of the leader of the last resistance to Roman imperial rule in those parts.
“Brigands of the world, after exhausting the land by their wholesale plunder they now ransack the sea. The wealth of an enemy excites their greed, his poverty their lust for power. Neither East or West has served to glut their maw. Only they, of all on earth, long for the poor with as keen a desire as they do the rich. Robbery, butchery, rapine, these the liars call 'empire': they create desolation and call it peace." Tacitus, Agricola, 30. (Mattingly trans., Penguin, 1948/2009, p. 20).
And so it was in Roman Palestine, during the time of the Jewish revolt, that had taken place only a few years before Agricola’s advance - that is, from 66 to 70 of our era. And there too the Romans, led by Vespasian and then Titus, laid waste to the countryside - and imposed the famous Pax Romana. They created desolation and called it peace.
These events would have been fresh in the minds of Luke’s first hearers, especially Titus’ destruction of the Temple - the house of God - in 70 CE.
“Your house is left to you” - that is, “your house is forsaken” - would not only remind them of the work of the Romans but of the destruction of the first Temple, when the house of God was first destroyed.
Indeed the prophets from Isaiah to Jeremiah first prophesied the judgment of God.
But later there was both exhortation and consolation.
After the people returned from 70 years’ exile in Babylon they began to rebuild their city, and build themselves some nice houses. But the prophet Haggai exhorted them: ``How can you live in your comfortable houses when the house of God lies desolate?” And so they began the work of rebuilding the Temple.
They were called to begin the work, a work that would last beyond their lives, of rebuilding not merely the physical temple building but the moral temple: the kingdom of God that lay within their hearts.
It was in 70 CE the Roman general Titus – cf. Josephus, the Jewish War, 6.5.1 – sacked the city. And in 70 CE, Rabbi Tarfon commented on Micah 6:8, saying:
“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.” (Talmud)
We are called into the work of building and rebuilding the house of God.
As in the time of the return from Exile so many centuries before, so again after the destruction of the temple in the first century of our era, the people of God -both Jew and Gentile - were called into the shelter of the God who not only judges but redeems.
Indeed his mercy always prevails over his wrath.
And the message is ultimately of hope.
Hope outlasts fear. Hope lives beyond desolation.
The house will be rebuilt. And there is room for all God’s children.
God’s promise is renewed. Remember the promise to Abraham.
‘“Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them. Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”’ (Genesis 15:5)
As we have learned from the Apostle Paul those descendants are all the children of faith, not only the people of Israel but the people of all nations on whom God’s loving embrace has fallen - and that happens to mean everybody: there is room, there is room, for all the children of God in God’s house; everyone can find shelter in the Temple not built with hands, but with the love of God.
“His steadfast love endures forever.” Ps 118: 1, 29.
God ultimately is a god of compassion not anger, of redemption not rage. And of a promise fulfilled, not broken.
As often as the people of God strayed and have strayed, God has called them back under his protection, the shelter of his wings.
In talking about the goodness of the God of creation, an archbishop of Canterbury writing about the year 1100 reminded his readers of this passage in the gospel of Luke.
‘Anselm describes the consoling, nurturing Jesus as a hen gathering her chicks under her wing (Matt. 23:37) and suggests that mother Jesus revives the soul at her breast. . . .
‘“But you, Jesus, good lord, are you not also a mother? Are you not that mother who, like a hen, collects her chickens under her wings? Truly, master, you are a mother. For what others have conceived and given birth to, they have received from you. . . . You are the author, others are the ministers. It is then you, above all, Lord God, who are mother. . . .
‘“And you also, soul, dead by yourself, run under the wings of your mother Jesus and bewail your sorrows under his wings.
‘“Christ, mother, who gathers under your wings your little ones, your dead chick seeks refuge under your wings. For by your gentleness, those who are hurt are comforted; by your perfume, the despairing are reformed. Your warmth resuscitates the dead; your touch justifies sinners. . . . Console your chicken, resuscitate your dead one, justify your sinner. May your injured one be consoled by you; may he who of himself despairs be comforted by you and reformed through you in your complete and unceasing grace. For the consolation of the wretched flows from you, blessed, world without end. Amen.”’
His love endures forever - or shall we say, her love endures forever. Amen.
(Anselm of Canterbury, Opera omnia 3: 33 and 39-41. Quoted by Carol Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother, University of California Press, 1982, p. 114-115.)
Sermon for the second Sunday of Lent 2022, for people of the Episcopal church of Saint Matthew, Tucson. JRL+
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