NewCreation

RCL Homily for Second Sunday in Lent, Year C

The Homily for the Second Sunday in Lent Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this, the homily for the Second Sunday in Lent. This is a special reading for those who follow the Common Lectionary rather than the Catholic Lectionary, because the Catholics have the Transfiguration reading today and the Reformed or Revised Common Lectionary has this passage from Saint Luke as the Gospel. What I'd like to start by saying is that of course today is all about prophecies of the Passion, because our first reading, curiously, is the very first covenant ever, the covenant with Abraham, God's first covenant. And it takes the form of God making a promise to Abraham despite Abraham being a little bit disgruntled with God for not having treated him as well as other people, or so he thinks. At this stage he's still called Abram, but God makes him a promise and then shows him how he means to keep his promise by means of a sacrifice. He has Abraham sacrifice some birds and beasts, and then puts Abraham into a deep sleep of just the sort, incidentally, that the disciples will be put into on the Mount of Transfiguration. And then while Abraham is in a deep sleep, he passes through — the Lord passes through between the pieces in the form of a burnished flame. Let's say a fiery presence goes through the pieces. Now, effectively, what that is saying is: "I make this promise to you, and if I do not do it, may it be done to me as it is to these beasts." In other words, may I be sacrificed. God is making an oath to Abram. And of course, one of the things that is going on in the Passion is God fulfilling the promise: "I haven't managed to bring you all together, I haven't managed to do it, so I'm offering myself in sacrifice between the pieces." This is the first hint, the first promise of the covenant — the covenant that is going to be given in the cross. It's shown here in this Abraham story. So by the time we get to Luke, we have, curiously, not one of the standard three announcements of the Passion which Jesus does to his disciples. Each one of those is a story in itself, because each one is slightly different and brings out something slightly different. But rather than that, today's reading gives us a more general picture of Jesus prophesying his going to his death. So let's look at that. "At that very hour, some Pharisees came and said to him…" — the "very hour" is: he's just been telling people about the coming of the kingdom and how many of those who think of themselves as insiders into the life of God are going to find themselves outside when a whole lot of outsiders come in and understand what it's That very hour some Pharisees come and say to him, "Get away from here" – as it were, "Be on your way from here, for Herod wants to kill you." Because we normally have bad associations with the word Pharisees, let me point out that here the Pharisees are trying to be friendly. They're not trying to trap him; they are giving him a friendly warning: "You know, we're aware of what's going on with these guys." The Pharisees would not have been particularly friendly to Herod, so they're being his friends. And it's interesting that in some senses what we're getting here is the Lucan version of Saint Peter recognizing Jesus and immediately questioning Jesus when Jesus then prophesies that he's going to Jerusalem to die. Here we have, rather than Peter saying to Jesus, "Far be it from me," we have the Pharisees saying, "Get away, get away, get out of the way of this nasty person who's going to kill you." So the Pharisees here are at least as good as Saint Peter was when Jesus said to him, "Yes, then get behind me, Satan." But that was talking to the disciples. Now here it's a more general remark for Jesus. So he says to the Pharisees, "Go and tell that fox for me" – or that jackal. Why is this important? We'll see in a second. Let's just stop at this beast. There are two animals in today's story, and they suggest that what Jesus was talking about is well understood as a parable around Lamentations 5, where Jesus is understanding what he has got to do in Jerusalem. "Go and tell that fox for me." And then later he refers to himself as a hen. So remember that foxes by and large eat hens. And the mother hen wanting to protect the chicks is how someone gathers something. A fox coming into a collection of hens and chickens – they will scatter, for good reasons. So scattering is what hens do with foxes, and what Jesus describes himself as is a hen who wants to gather the chicks. But the fox is not only that; the fox is the jackal, because it's the same word in Greek. And the very last chapter of the book of Lamentations – which is a short book – chapter five is about what's going to happen at the end in Jerusalem and how the city is desolate. "The crown has fallen from our head; woe to us, for we have sinned. Because of these our hearts are sick; because of these things our eyes have grown dim. Because of Mount Zion which lies desolate, jackals prowl over it." So here we have one of the jackals who's prowling over Mount Zion, and it's about to lie desolate. Because one of the things that is going to happen again – same chapter of Lamentations – "Princes are hung up by their hands." That's something which Jesus is about to do. "No respect is shown to the elders" – something which is about to happen to Jesus. "Young men are compelled to grind, and boys stagger under loads of wood." Boys, young men are compelled to grind – that means they're treated like women, emasculated – and white staggering under loads of wood. Well, Jesus is about to carry his cross. In other words, Jesus is using this section of Lamentations to refer to what is going to happen to him. So he says, "Go and tell that jackal for me" – the sort of jackal who spreads and casts out chickens – "listen, I'm casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem." Now think of this, because the verbs are the same: with relation to the Pharisees saying "get away from here," meaning "be you gone from here," "go you on your way from here." And Jesus is saying, "Listen, I'm casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow – I'm taking my time – but a little while, and on the third day I finish my work." With something deliberate: "Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I will be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem." So they say to him, "Be on your way," and he's saying, "I will be on my way, but I'll be on my way on my own terms." He's talking about something deliberate here, something which I've referred to in some places as the intelligence of the victim. He knows what's going to happen, he knows how victimization works, and he is determined – in order that people should understand exactly what is going on in the death he is going to suffer – that it should take place in Jerusalem. Why Jerusalem? "Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it." Now particularly the stoning of prophets, the stoning of those who are sent to it, refers to people who are treated as blasphemers or false prophets, those who try to lead people astray. Those are the kind of people who can be stoned, with the suggestion that Jesus is saying the same thing. That's what's got to happen, because Jerusalem will always resist those who come and tell it the truth, and they will do so under clever religious guises. It will be for the good – because they're good guys – that they're doing this. And yet he, wisdom personified, is coming in using wisdom language, the language of the book of Lamentations, which is part of the wisdom body in the Bible. He's coming in to occupy exactly the space that was occupied by the cast-out ones, by those who were considered like heretics, liars. Jeremiah talked about this, Ezekiel talked about this, Micah talked about this. And then again, using the language of wisdom: "How often have I desired to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings." So this is the gathering, as opposed to the scattering, which is why Herod and his likes are only good for scattering. And then he says, "See, your house is left to you." And it's interesting that the translations — the older translations — say "left desolate," because they understand that that's the meaning of this phrase, which is "abandoned to you." That's the sense it's bringing out: the sense which is in Lamentations, "your house will be left abandoned," prophesying in very, very strong terms the destruction of Jerusalem, which was also prophesied by Micah and Jeremiah as well. So after this very, very strong woe, this very strong lament over Jerusalem, Wisdom personified says, "And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, 'Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.'" Now, of course, you and I know that that happens on Palm Sunday. On Palm Sunday, the crowd follows Jesus as he reenacts the entry of the Davidic king, the anointed one, the Messiah, the great priestly figure who was to come to perform the ultimate sacrifice at the end of the time of the Temple. And of course the authorities are very confused by it. In other words, exactly the relationship is described. Those who are sent to Jerusalem are rejected by it. They're stoned by it as heretics and idolaters and people who've got it all wrong. But Jesus is saying it strongly in the second sense as well. You will not see me until the time comes when you say "Blessed is the one," because when you say "Blessed is the one who comes," you will be recognizing that it was I — the priest-king Messiah, the Son of David, the one who is the great high priest — coming into the world to perform the sacrifice in the midst of Jerusalem, in a way that Jerusalem could never perhaps have understood, but just as it is foretold by the prophets, just as it was described in the book of Lamentations. So this is the strong prophetic understanding of Jesus going to his death intelligently, freely, at his own time, and doing so in such a way as to bring together all the resources of meaning necessary for people eventually to be able to understand what had happened in their midst — and which is what enables us to be sitting through this second Sunday of Lent, to allow ourselves a taste of participating in that undergoing. In the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen.