A sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent
March 16, 2025, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR
Readings: Luke 13:31-35
I should have checked the door. I knew I should have. I was a graduate student in Fayetteville, and I was house sitting for a friend of mine. She had a small farm with about 25 chickens. Every morning I opened the chicken house so they could run free. Every evening I shut the door to the chicken house to keep them safe through the night. I should have checked the door. I had agreed to house sit, but I had to go out of town the night before they returned. No problem; the neighbor would watch everything when I left. When I returned, my friend gave me a gift for watching the house. I asked about the chickens. She got a look on her face. “They’re gone, Mark.” The door hadn’t been shut that night I left. A family of foxes had come in. All 25 chickens were gone. I felt terrible. I knew I should have checked that door before leaving town that night. I just had this feeling. I wanted to help–let me contribute to help you all get more chickens. “Put it on my tab,” I said. “Put it on my tab.”
Today we have a strange reading from Luke with foxes and chickens. Herod, the Jewish ruler and collaborator with Rome, is a brutal man. He is named as the fox, and he’s after Jesus according to the Pharisees. We should note that the Pharisees are not all the enemies of Jesus. We often see them in an adversarial posture against Jesus, but they, like Jesus, think Herod is a fox. They, like Jesus, are against the collaborationist politics of the Herodians and the Sadducees that have brought the big fox, the Emperor himself, into the chicken coop. They, too, have been the target of those foxes. So they tell Jesus: Watch out! Herod wants to kill you.
Jesus makes a joke of it. He laughs it off. He calls him a fox. “Tell that fox,” he says to the Pharisees, “tell him, the next time you see him, that I’m still at work, but don’t worry, he will see me soon enough.” The fox won’t have to raid the hen house; the fox won’t have to hunt Jesus down. Jesus, the mother hen, is going straight into the fox’s lair: Jerusalem.
The mood then changes, and Jesus prays this prayer for Jerusalem. Jesus, like the Pharisees, loves Jerusalem. Jesus, like the Pharisees, wants the people to offer pure praises to God. And in a little while, Jesus will purge the Temple with a whip, driving out money changers and overturning tables, to accomplish exactly that. But today, Jesus mourns for Jerusalem. Like David crying for his dead son (Absolam, Absolam), Jesus cries for Jerusalem, Jerusalem. And Jesus goes on to self-identify, not as the killer of the foxes like Herod, but as the mother hen, the target of the foxes, who spreads out her wings and gathers the chicks under her to protect them, no matter the cost.
Are you a chicken or a fox? Are you a sufferer, or one who causes suffering? Will you flock to Jesus for shelter, or hunt him down? “Put it on my tab,” I had said. I didn’t kill those chickens, but I could have made sure the door was closed. I didn’t help the foxes do the deed, but I made it possible. “Put it on my tab.” I’m more of a fox.
In our baptisms, we renounce “the evil powers in this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.” We renounce those foxes like Herod. But sometimes I have helped them. “Put it on my tab.” One of the authorized liturgies of the church has an alternative confession of sin. It originally comes from the New Zealand Book of Common Prayer. It says, “We repent of the evil that enslaves us, the evil we have done, and the evil done on our behalf.” Sometimes we don’t commit the evil, but we enable it, or maybe we benefit from it, or at the very least, we ignore it. “Put it on my tab.”
Men, women, and children die of starvation and lack of clean water across the globe. And I sit here in the richest nation the world has ever seen, with more food than I need. “Put it on my tab.”
Disease ravages the globe, and it’s really easy for me not to care. Are they my neighbor? They’re too far away! And my family and I are healthy. “Put it on my tab.”
Bombs fall. They’re American bombs. We might not be the ones dropping them, but they’re falling anyway. And masses of people–some guilty, most innocent–masses of people die. And in the end, I might benefit. I might sleep more soundly at night. “Put it on my tab.”
In our own community, people die on the streets. They are there because of impossible circumstances, or mental illness, or a drug problem–usually all three combined. They are there because there’s no place for them to go except the gutter, and it is easier for them to get drugs than help. “Put it on my tab.”
Am I a chicken, or am I a fox? I feel like a chicken. I feel like I do as much good as I can. I think I do. But I look down at my tab, and on paper, maybe I look like a fox. I repent of the evil that enslaves me, the evil I have done, and the evil done on my behalf.
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem.” Hot Springs, Hot Springs. Mark, Mark. Jesus prays my name. And he prays yours, too. “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” He’s talking about me.
In a few weeks, Jesus, the mother hen, will go to the fox’s lair. He will be brought into Herod’s domain, and he will be judged by Herod and Pilate. The crowds will cry, “Crucify him,” and the religious leaders will urge them on. Jesus will be nailed to the cross, his arms spread wide, like a mother hen spreading out her wings over the world from the perch of Calvary–and that’s exactly what’s happening. Blood and water will flow mingled down. The wings are spread on that cross for the chicks. For those yearning for safety. For those on the street with no helper. For those hiding in bunkers and basements with explosions all around. For those without food or water. The wings are spread for them, and they gather, at the equal plane at the foot of the cross on a hill far away.
But the wings are spread for the foxes, too. The Roman soldiers who nail Jesus to the cross are there. The religious leaders that mock are there. The crowds that deride him cruelly are there. My enemies are there. I’m there, too, and I’ve brought my tab, there to the foot of the cross under his wings. I’ve brought my score, those things that haunt me; all my second guessing; all the times I’ve told myself, I should have checked the door. The evil that enslaves me, the evil I have done, and the evil done on my behalf. I’ve brought my tab. And I’ve found that under the wings of Christ, stretched out on the cross, there at Calvary, there is enough room for all the chickens, and all the foxes, and everyone in between. And there’s healing and forgiveness for all of them. For Christ dies for all. For all. Even for Herod. Even for me. And my blood-soaked tab is paid in full.
Storied Grace 