March 7, 2004 (Jimmie Johnson)

New Testament Lesson                                                   Philippians 3:17-4:1

Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us. For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself, therefore, my brothers and sisters, who I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.

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Gospel Lesson                                                                       Luke 13:31-35

At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, "Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you." He said to them, "Go and tell that fox for me, 'Listen, I am 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.' Jersalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. 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.'"

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I think all of Christian hope rides on the idea that God can practice what God preaches, especially the part where Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” Surely God must practice what God preaches, or else there is no greater sinner than God. Do you believe God joyfully practices what God preaches? Do you believe God joyfully practices all of it, including the “love your enemies” bit?

When Jesus speaks of himself as a Mother Hen fluffing out her chest and signaling for her little ones to come to her so that they may be gathered safely under her wings, we are being given a powerful picture of God’s will and love. In the face of threat and danger to his own life, Jesus reveals that God’s will, being expressed through him, is to call God’s children and to protect and provide shelter for God’s children. How different this image is from an angry God intent on punishing someone even if it must be this God’s only Son.

A little boy heard a sermon about the cross of Jesus. On the way home he blurted out to his family, “I love Jesus. But I hate God.” For many of us, this little boy has articulated a central problem in Christian faith. Unless we are very careful in our thinking and thoughtfully informed, we can easily make a wrong turn in our believing and turn the image of God into a drama about a grim, unyielding character called “the Father,” glowering unappeased until the quite distinct hero, a character called Jesus Christ, wins the day by sacrificing himself and satisfying “the Father’s anger” (Wm. Placher, Many Voices One God, p.158). This is the way the little boy heard the story of the cross of Jesus. It caused him to say, “I love Jesus. But I hate God.”

First, I want to take a quick detour with a word to all of us men. Fellows, we all need to do an anger check. Is your anger button stuck on the “ON” switch? If your anger is always seething below the surface and inappropriately blowing up out of proportion to whatever sets it off, you need to figure out quickly what is going on. Your life and soul are in danger. Your physical health and all your relationships, which deep down you really value and love, all are being put at great risk. Anger in men is a sign of a clear and present danger. Anger directed toward feminists, toward the far left or the far right, toward gays, toward liberals or conservatives, toward those on either side of an issue is probably NOT the righteous indignation we believe it to be. More than likely, it is depression if we are constantly angry. And if unchecked and untreated with medication, counseling and prayer, it will kill us and our souls.

Okay, now we can go back to God, the cross, Jesus, and the lovely picture of the Mother Hen God.

All of us need one working core belief. I am always working on one, looking for one great summary statement that really switches the light bulb on when it comes to God. Right now for the season of Lent, I have gone back to one I worked with a few years ago. Julian of Norwich, a Christian, a woman, a thinker of the first order, a citizen of the fourteenth century, once wrote and preached: “God never began to love us.”

“God never began to love us.” When I first heard that idea, I thought it must be wrong. “God never began to love us,” that can’t be possible, can it? But then, when I took a deep breath and thought about the idea, I immediately heard the good news of what the woman thinker was saying. “God never began to love us.” God has always loved us. God’s love has no beginning.
Indeed, the fact we even exist is an expression of God’s joyous love for us and the whole of creation.

Too many of us think there was some action that caused God to begin loving us. Usually we think it is something we do or come to believe. No, nothing we’ve done nor nothing we believe is the origin of God’s love. And certainly Jesus’ death on the cross is not the origin of God’s love. Jesus’ death on the cross did not cause God to love us. Jesus’ death is but one more expression of God’s love for us. The intention of God as revealed in the life of Jesus is fellowship with us. In the text the Mother Hen speaks of a desire to gather and to shelter.

I believe God would have sent God’s only Son even if we had not sinned. I believe God simply desires to be with us, to share life with us in a personal relationship. Jesus is the expression of God’s love, not the cause of God’s love. The Mother Hen God revealed in Jesus over and over wants only to gather us into her warmth and shelter and presence simply because God loves us and is fundamentally determined toward making sure that nothing separates us from that love.

There has never been one official correct orthodox theory of the Cross of Jesus. There have always been several different understandings. You wouldn’t know this in Bible Belt religion, but Bible Belt religion is basically a nineteenth-and-twentieth-century religion brought about I believe by certain social phenomena in the United States. If you grow up in the Southwest or the South, you are dominated by a religious perspective that presents one idea about Jesus and God and the Cross.

Unfortunately those of us who grow up in the Bible Belt assume the only interpretation of the Cross is that Jesus is the payment for my sins against God. But from the beginning of Christian thinking, this has never been the one idea. It has never really dominated Presbyterian thinking. Presbyterians, taking their cue from John Calvin, certainly understand that one angle by which to
view the Passion of Jesus, his suffering and death, is the idea of Jesus enduring God’s judgment for our sins, but there are other angles as well.

As a matter of fact, Calvin’s gift to us Presbyterians is the notion that we are saved by the whole of Christ’s obedience: his humble birth, his earthly life, his baptism, his teachings, his sermons, his death, his resurrection, and his ascension into heaven. Presbyterians believe we are saved by the whole of Christ’s experience in our humanity, not just his suffering and death.

Right now my theory of the atonement, how the suffering and death of Jesus help me, is that Jesus suffers and dies to be in solidarity with me as a fellow human being since none of us gets out of this life without the harsh experiences of suffering and dying. Jesus suffers and dies to bring the full presence of God into what to us feels like abandonment by God. In Jesus Christ, God is our Compassionate Fellow Sufferer. The unique Son of God wasn’t given an exemption from suffering and death.

Elizabeth Johnson writes, “Jesus’ death included all that makes death terrifying: state torture, physical anguish, brutal injustice, hatred by enemies, the mockery of their victorious voices, collapse of his life’s work into ruins, betrayal by some close friends, the experience of abandonment by God.” Jesus experienced all these elements in his terrible death.

The cheapest words to say to someone in pain can sometimes be, “Gee, I know what you must be feeling.” And you want to reply, “No, you don’t know what I am feeling. How could you if you have not experienced it yourself?” In light of the Cross, we cannot say that to God. In Alfred North Whitehead’s phrase, God is “the fellow sufferer who understands.” And then in the cross not only is God in Jesus establishing unbreakable solidarity with us, but I believe God is also absorbing our sins into God’s self.

There are forces of evil abroad in the world and in our human hearts, and they were gathered that afternoon outside of Jerusalem: the brutality of an occupying army, the cowardice of a corrupt politician, the hypocrisy of religious leaders. There are deeper forces too: forces of evil so great the Bible can only tell us of them through metaphorical language telling us the earth shook, the rocks split, and darkness covered the whole earth. Powers and principalities of evil were focused on one bleeding, broken body.

Our faith in the redemptive power of the cross is that God in Jesus defeated them, I believe, by absorbing all this into God’s self and then by God practicing what God preaches “love your enemies.” Love that eschews the use of force pays a price. In Christ, God is the warrior bearing no weapon but love. This is the strange victorious lamb so hauntingly described in the Book of Revelation.

I love God, to the extent that I can and do, because God first loved me. This is the heart of the Bible. This is the Mother Hen God revealed in Jesus who has only one desire: to gather us under her wings.

 

 


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