“A Sacred Menagerie”
Luke 13:31-35
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
2/28/16
Herod Antipas is the son of Herod the Great. And he is
something of a fox. Cold-hearted. Predatory. He binges on political executions.
It is his way of feasting on the herd. Remember, Herod Antipas has John the
Baptist for an afternoon snack
The image of a fox also reaches back into the collective
memory of the Jewish people. In the book of Judges, Samson uses a huge skulk of
foxes to exact a very creative and destructive revenge.
Samson marries a Philistine woman, but not for love. He uses
her to infiltrate the enemy. During the week of his wedding, Samson
deliberately creates such a ruckus that he and his blushing bride separate
before they even consummate their marriage.
Eventually, Samson returns and asks to have his wife back.
His father-in-law, in a revealing display of biblical marriage and family
values, says, and I quote, “I was sure that you had rejected her; so I gave her
to your companion. Is not her younger sister prettier than she? Why not take
her instead?” (Judges 15:2)
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Having manipulated the desired offense, Samson says, “‘This
time, when I do mischief to the Philistines, I will be without blame.’
“So
Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took some torches; and he
turned the foxes tail to tail, and put a torch between each pair of tails. When he had set
fire to the torches, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the
Philistines, and burned up the shocks and the standing grain, as well as the
vineyards and olive groves.”
When the Philistines learn who is responsible for the
attack, they round up Samson’s ex-wife and her father and burn them alive. (Judges 15:4-6)
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
As a fitting metaphor for Herod, a fox represents the status
quo of political, social, economic, and religious structures who kill to
maintain control of a herd.
“You must leave immediately,” warn the Pharisees. “Herod has
a torch tied to his tail and he’s coming to burn you out!”
And the Good Shepherd says, ‘Bless his heart, but I must
keep doing what I’m doing.’
Then Jesus, his face already set toward Jerusalem, turns his
heart toward the holy city and rips it open in passionate lament.
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and
stones those who are sent to it!”
Jesus grieves the blindness and the deafness of the people
with whom he is so helplessly in love. And then, mixing metaphors, he says, in
effect, ‘The fox is in the hen house! And how I wish I could gather you beneath
my wings like a mother hen. But you have fallen for the charms of the fox. You
have become his willing food, and some of you are even turning into foxes
yourselves!’
Prophetic words and actions often feel like the work of a
skulk of foxes. They threaten to disrupt our safety and comfort. The Hebrews
learned this long ago. When feeling outfoxed by Moses, they cry out, Why did
you lead us into this desert death trap? We would rather have died with
full bellies around the fleshpots in Egypt!
I have to stop and confront a painful reality at this point.
When carefully considering my own fears and imperfections, I have to admit to
having a lot more fox in me than I want to acknowledge. I am much quicker to
find fault, to judge, and even condemn than I am to listen, understand, and
forgive. And sometimes I feel that most acutely when I zip myself into this
robe and climb into this pulpit.
So, when I get all turned around and sound like a fox,
please forgive me. I really do want to live into, and I want to live out of a
much more grateful and generous place. I want that for all of us. And Jesus
calls us to this holiness.
“I tell you,” he says, “you will not see me until the time
comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’”
Is Jesus talking about his entry into Jerusalem? Does he
refer to Easter? Maybe. Someone in our Sunday School class suggested that to
see Christ in one another is to experience the blessed arrival of “the
one who comes in the name of the Lord.”
Matthew’s Jesus says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for
they shall see God.”
Can there be any purer, any more prophetic work than learning
to see God, to recognize the Eternal Sacred in self, neighbor, stranger, enemy,
and earth?
Like all prophetic texts, the Gospel is not offered to
create anxiety about “sins.” No, it invites us to see what can only be seen through
repentant and open hearts: The ever-present beauty and the ever-available grace
of the Kingdom of God.
God’s
kingdom is a kind of menagerie – a menagerie of redemption where Gentile and
Jew, rich and poor, male and female, fox and hen are being reconciled. And in
the midst of that fragile menagerie, holding it together, the Holy Spirit, the
Mother Bird, spreads her wings. She opens our eyes and hearts to the Lord’s
Coming One who lives within all things.
The 19th century English priest and poet Gerard
Manley Hopkins penned one of my favorite poems, God’s Grandeur. To me,
these prophetic, mystical words reveal God’s ongoing work of reconciliation and
healing in the Creation. They reveal the peaceable kingdom of God living at the
heart of the world’s brokenness.
In
closing, and in new beginning, “God’s Grandeur,” by Gerard Manley Hopkins:
God’s
Grandeur
Gerard Manley Hopkins
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.1
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.1
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