The service included an extended time of open and private prayer for places of conflict and oppression. Below you will find the image and breath prayers that were on the screen to aid prayer.
Lord have mercy...Christ have mercy.
God of peace...teach us peace.
Your kingdom come...your will be done.
Luke 13:31-35
At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, “Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.” He replied, “Go tell that fox, ‘I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.’ In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem! “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”
As I explained last week, we are returning to the lectionary for Lent, so the readings are set for us and will be shared by many churches across different countries and different denominations. Again I have chosen two of the four readings for us to reflect on, beginning with the gospel passage. There are chunks of the lectionary where the passages follow on from week to week, but things tend to go a little wonky around the big festivals, so at the moment we are jumping around in Luke. Last week we heard the account of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness, and this week we leap forward nine chapters to Jesus lamenting over Jerusalem.
There are a couple of interesting things I want to pull out of this passage, beginning with the revelation that the Pharisees aren’t always the bad guys. I say revelation because that may come as a surprise to some of us. The gospels often see the Pharisees in conflict with Jesus or plotting against him, and so these religious teachers have become a lazy caricature for legalism and hypocrisy. And yet here we see a group of Pharisees warning Jesus of Herod’s murderous intent, seeking not to challenge or get rid of him but to protect him.
Sometimes the scriptures paint in broad strokes, but no group of people is ever made of identikit characters. The Pharisees emphasised the importance of observing the religious law, but they had different interpretations of what that meant. At the time of Jesus, they seem to have been divided into two main schools of thought, based on the teachings of the rabbis Shammai and Hillel. I suspect however that the old joke that if you have five Baptists you’ll have six opinions would also have applied to the Pharisees, as Judaism has always thrived on interpretation and debate.
It’s important to bear this nuance in mind as we read the gospels, because casting the Pharisees as the villains has supported centuries of anti-Semitism. There were Jewish teachers and leaders who opposed Jesus, but it is also true that Jesus’ first disciples were Jewish and the first Christians may well have included Pharisees, if Nicodemus’ involvement in Jesus’ burial is to be understood as a sign of his faith and commitment. Although of course anti-Semitism would not be justified even if all the Pharisees were the bad guys, because there is no place for any kind of hatred in Christian thought, no matter what differences or disagreements there may be. Bad theology kills, and prejudice is bad theology.
But now back to what’s happening in the passage. A group of Pharisees warns Jesus that Herod wants to kill him, to which he replies “Go tell that fox I’m healing people and casting out demons and I’m not going to stop until I’m done”. I can imagine the sense of cold dread that must have come over the Pharisees as they tried to work out how they were going to convey that message to Herod without putting their own lives at risk, because it would have been just as insulting then as it would be now. Aesop’s Fables predate Jesus by several hundred years, so we know that the Greco-Roman culture which surrounded and influenced his first century Palestinian world saw foxes as destructive pests associated with cunning and deceit.
Jesus knows that Herod has sneaky and dangerous plans for him, but he has no time to worry about them because he has plans of his own. There is an echo here of Luke 7:22, where some of the disciples of John the Baptist come to ask Jesus who he is, and he tells them “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.” On both occasions, he seems to be telling those who approach him to stop worrying or questioning and just pay attention to what he is doing.
I think there are some difficult questions for us here. How many of us act like the Pharisees in this passage, wanting to keep Jesus quiet and safe? How many of us act like the disciples of John the Baptist, wanting to have every question settled before we believe? I know I am guilty of both at times, but Jesus’ responses tell us that quiet and safe are not what he is about, and that we have to be willing to run with doubts. He wants us to look at the healing and the good news he brings and decide if we want to be a part of it with him.
Sometimes that will mean sticking our necks out and making ourselves unpopular, but I want to be okay with not being liked by the Herods of this world, those who abuse power to protect themselves, even if it is uncomfortable at times. And sometimes it will mean living with unanswered questions, but I want to be okay with holding onto them, keeping them in my back pocket until the right moment, trusting that one day I’ll have all the answers I need. Some days I am okay with all of it, and some days it is more an effort of will, but I do believe that God honours the endeavour.
So Jesus tells the Pharisees that he’s going to keep doing his thing, and he hints at his death in Jerusalem, and then he laments over the city. Having pictured Herod as a fox and then the people of Jerusalem as chicks, it’s easy to see this as an image of Jesus protecting the people from corrupt powers, and I think that is part of what he is trying to say. But these chicks are not wholly innocent themselves, because in this image they are the ones who stone the prophets. Jesus is lamenting over those who will kill him, not wanting to push them away or flee from them or destroy them before they can destroy him, but instead wanting to draw them near in loving kindness. That hit me quite powerfully this week, and it has had me asking questions about how we lament over those who seek to do harm, whether that is to us or to others. How do we lament over Putin and seek to draw him near in loving kindness, instead of seeking his destruction?
There is a principle of the early church which says ‘lex orandi, lex credendi’, which means the law of prayer is the law of belief. Essentially the idea is that what we pray becomes what we believe, and so I think we start by choosing our words carefully. We may want God to smite Putin but we pray that God will redeem him. We may feel like howling with despair but we sing with hope. We may wish to curse but we choose to bless. I believe it is good and right that we are honest in prayer, and so I’m not saying that smiting and howling and cursing shouldn’t appear at all, and indeed we have a model for all of those things in the psalms, but we need move beyond them to redemption and hope and blessing, because they are the prayers that will change us to change the world.
The final thing I want to pick up on is the feminine imagery in this passage, as Jesus pictures himself as a mother hen. The use of female language for God is not uncommon in scripture - there are a number of references we could pick up on here, from the ice emerging from God’s womb (Job 38:9) to God pictured as a mother bear robbed of her cubs (Hosea 13:8) to a cluster of images in Isaiah which see God as a labouring woman gasping and panting (Isaiah 42:14) and a midwife promising to bring delivery (Isaiah 66:9) and a mother offering comfort to her child (Isaiah 66:13) - and yet it still feels quietly radical. Perhaps picturing God as Mother rather than Father feels uncomfortable or unnecessary, but I believe it is vital that we see these images and allow them to expand our understanding of God and ourselves.
Masculine imagery for God has dominated for so long that for many people God simply is male, and if God is male then it follows that to be male is to be more like God. I said earlier that bad theology kills, and this is the sort of toxic theology that at its worst has strangled the life out of women both metaphorically and literally, denying them full expression of their calling and forcing them to remain in abusive relationships. And that is before we think about those who have been othered and oppressed by the binary understanding of gender that an exclusively male idea of God reinforces. God made male and female in God’s image, and so God contains every expression of gender identity. To deny that it is to limit God and ourselves, and why would seek to limit God in any way, when it is the very boundlessness of their nature expressing itself in love that seeks to gather us under their wings?
In a short while, we will have a chance to pray for our world, and I hope you will take some of these reflections into that time of prayer with you. Understand that prejudice is bad theology, so that you might seek the good of all without discrimination. Pay attention to the ministry of Jesus, so that you might be encouraged to join him in bringing healing and good news. And pray with lament and loving kindness towards those you might see as enemies, so that you may join with God in gathering them in.
Psalm 27
The Lord is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid? When the wicked advance against me to devour me, it is my enemies and my foes who will stumble and fall. Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear; though war break out against me, even then I will be confident. One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple. For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling; he will hide me in the shelter of his sacred tent and set me high upon a rock. Then my head will be exalted above the enemies who surround me; at his sacred tent I will sacrifice with shouts of joy; I will sing and make music to the Lord. Hear my voice when I call, Lord; be merciful to me and answer me. My heart says of you, “Seek his face!” Your face, Lord, I will seek. Do not hide your face from me, do not turn your servant away in anger; you have been my helper. Do not reject me or forsake me, God my Saviour. Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me. Teach me your way, Lord; lead me in a straight path because of my oppressors. Do not turn me over to the desire of my foes, for false witnesses rise up against me, spouting malicious accusations. I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.
When I read through the lectionary readings for this week I started with the gospel, and straightaway I was thinking about what I would say about it. And then I read the psalm, and by the third verse I was crying and the only thing I could think was that this was a text we really need to hear. I don’t want to weigh it down with too much commentary, so I will offer just a few brief thoughts and then some space for us to reflect on it individually.
It seems to me that the psalmist swings between two moods, from confidence (the Lord is the stronghold of my life) to anxiety (do not hide your face from me) and back to confidence (I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living). And so when he says he will not be afraid, I’m not sure he is claiming that he won’t ever feel fear, but rather that he will not choose fear, or perhaps that he will choose to resist fear. He knows that times of trouble will come, and his confidence will falter, but he also knows that God will hear him and comfort him and finally deliver him, and so he can restore that confidence again and again.
Several sections of this psalm are used as part of the canticle from the Northumbria Community’s evening prayer, and so they are words that I find resonate not only with deep meaning but also with poignant familiarity, as I have used that liturgy many times over the past decade. The lines about dwelling in the house of the Lord form one of those sections, which seems appropriate to me, because a retreat house or a monastery is the best picture I have of what that looks like. Not that I think living in a retreat house or a monastery is the only way to dwell in the house of the Lord, but that there is something about that feeling of sacred and shared space that I want to infuse all the days of my life with.
The psalmist says he will seek the face of God, and here there is perhaps some tension between the psalm and the last hymn we sang, as the psalm longs to look on God, while the hymn says that God is hid from our eyes. I do think however that reconciliation comes in the fourth verse, which says that it is only light that hides God from us. So perhaps we need to think of it like turning the bedroom light on in the morning. We can’t see much of anything at first because it’s too bright and our eyes need to adjust, but once they do everything becomes clear. In other words, the longer we spend gazing on God the more we will see.
The final verse of the psalm is also in the canticle from the Northumbria Community’s evening prayer, and it lifts my spirit every time I say it. “I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” It feels hard to talk about the goodness of the Lord against the background of all we have prayed for this morning, but this is when we need to talk about it most, because if we stop believing in goodness then we give in to despair. We have seen the goodness of the Lord and we will see it again, and so like the psalmist we can wait with confident hope.
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The Lord is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid?
What makes you feel afraid? Can you find in God the strength and assurance to resist that fear?
One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.
Do you seek the presence of God? What does it mean for you to dwell in the house of the Lord?
Hear my voice when I call, Lord; be merciful to me and answer me. My heart says of you, “Seek his face!” Your face, Lord, I will seek.
Will you call on the Lord this week? How might you consciously seek the face of God?
I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.
Where have you seen the goodness of the Lord? Do you wait for God with hope?
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