The Hen is in the Fox-House!

Updated. Not all the Pharisees were bad guys, you know. You’ve heard me say that before. and today's Gospel even proves it. Many admired Jesus, so it comes as no surprise that some Pharisees went to warn Jesus. They told him that he’d better watch his back and keep a low profile for a while.

Why? Because Herod, the puppet king of Roman-occupied Palestine, has it in for you!  “You’d better leave town," they said, "before he has you killed!”

“Listen!” Jesus says to them. “You tell that old fox Herod that ‘the hen is in the fox-house! And the fur is going to fly!'”

Okay. That’s not exactly how Jesus put it, the Gospel tells us that Jesus said, “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings….”

By likening God to a mother hen who gathers her brood under her wings, Jesus is taking what must have been common knowledge—if not a common adage—and turned it on its’ head! Jesus is saying that he wants to gather and protect God’s people under his wings.

And he calls Herod a fox! We all know what typically happens when foxes meet chickens, right? Lunch!

But not this time! Jesus has come to Jerusalem and God’s kingdom is at hand, Jesus is establishing God’s reign, where will God gather and protect the brood just as a mother hen gathers her chicks.

Yes, it’s true. Jesus said it! The hen is truly in the fox-house! She is gathering her brood under wings… and she is not to be messed with! Look out, fox!

Once more Jesus reminds us that God’s power is found in places that are exactly the opposite of where we expect.

Herod may have the temple guards and can all in the local Roman garrison for back-up, but what is that compared to what God is doing—curing the sick, casting out evil, and gathering God’s people? That is Jesus’ standard of success! Not how many cities are conquered, nor how many votes are tallied, nor how many talking heads or angry folks can shout or how many bumper stickers they can muster, nor how many armies, how much force or violence one can bring to bear. Instead, Jesus’ standard is how many people are healed and how much tangible evil is demonstrably cast out, and how many people turn their eyes to God and welcome the Messiah into their midst, and how many people care for each other when times are rough.

Of course, in a way, those Religious Leaders were right. Another trip to Jerusalem will result in Jesus’ death!

But that death will result in Jesus going to the ultimate fox-house…death and the grave…where even there he will gather all God’s people to Godself and bring them home!  

And even though those religious and government leaders will kill Jesus on that cross, in his resurrection, we see that God’s power conquers and overcomes the worst the world can dish out.

Humanity sees fear and responds with big words, power, and even violence.

God names the fear and confronts evil with love.

Have you noticed the response to the war in Ukraine and the flood of refugees it caused? The most moving image that I saw last week-- that symbolizes precisely how love overcome evil--  was the line of strollers left at a Polish railway station so that Ukrainian mothers who fled with nothing except their children and the clothes on their backs could have a stroller for their babies.

I don’t know if you know this, but every day someone somewhere in Internet-land sends me an e-mail or a flyer or a URL telling me how to save the church. For just a small fee they will share with me--or us!-- their sure-fire, never-miss program for growing or saving the church. Other people every day tell me that the Church is dead, and about how irrelevant we’ve become. At the same time, I will hear a fellow Christian—even, alas clergy!—ask why are we always talking about “justice” or “social action” instead, they say, of the preaching the Gospel (as if...)!

To which I reply, with “WWJB?” Not “What would Jesus do?” (which is a good question by the way!) but “Where would Jesus be?”

Jesus walked among and alongside ordinary people, working people, poor people, women, children, men, the sick, and those outcast from their community by virtue of their illness, gender, or situation. He offered healing to women, religious outsiders, and even occupying Roman soldiers. Because God’s love doesn’t rest, and when we experience the transforming love of God we are driven by the Holy Spirit to share it, clearly, practically, usefully, every day.

Every now and then, someone tells us that we ought to “cool it.” Tone it down. Be careful what we say. 

Well, when people say that, you tell those foxes to look around at what is really going on! Look at the way God is at work in this community and many like it across our diocese, the state…and around the world! 

Tell them how the sick are being cared for, the hungry are being fed, the homeless housed, the outcast are welcomed, the addicted are finding recovery, prisoners are being visited, illiterate people are being taught to read, women and children who once knew violence and exploitation are given shelter and new lives, the grieving and the sorrowful are comforted. 

You tell those foxes that walls are being turned into bridges, and people who had no voice are finding their voice. 

You tell those foxes that "things which were cast down are being raised up, things that were old are being made new and all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made." (Book of Common Prayer, page 515.)

This is the work of God, when the cross becomes the gateway to resurrection. It is, as Presiding Bishop Michael Curry has said many times, the dream of God overcoming the nightmare of human sin.

So, look out! The hen is in the fox-house, my friends, and the fur is really flying!

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Here is a link to the bulletin for the Second Sunday in Lent, Year C, March 13, 2022.

Here is a link to a video of the liturgy at St. John's Episcopal Church, Clearwater

Here is a link to a video of the sermon.