Readings: Genesis
15:1-7, Luke 13:31-35
We pray:
O God in your wisdom and in your hope for
us, open our hearts and minds to the possibilities you hold for us today. Where
we discover new ways to know you, encourage us, where we re-cover that which we
have always held true, renew us, when we step out into Lenten uncertainty, hold
us. Amen
One hot summer day a deer came to a pool to
quench his thirst. As he stood there
drinking, he saw his reflection in the water.
“What beauty and strength are in these horns,” he said, “but how weak
and fragile are my feet.” While the deer
stood observing himself, a lion appeared nearby and crouched to spring upon
him. The deer immediately took to
flight. As long as the road was smooth,
the deer easily out-distanced the lion.
But upon entering the woods, the deer became entangled by his horns and
the lion quickly caught him. Facing the
lion, the deer thought to himself, “What a fool I have been. The feet which almost saved me, I despised,
while the antlers which I loved proved to be my destruction. An
Aesop fable
Today I want to talk about strength and
false weakness, in us, in our world and what Jesus might say about it.
Let’s begin with our world. A few weeks ago I read a blog about an
emerging power church in the US – fire and brimstone for the 21st
century speaking into urban injustice and need.
Very popular might I say. There
were a few things I agreed with and quite a few more I didn’t – but what struck
me about the article was that, throughout,
anything that was considered weak or waffly, such as tolerating other
faiths or watering down hell was inevitably painted as a feminine trait.
Actually I do believe the suggestion was that letting women into leadership was
the cause of all this wiffly waffly love stuff and the downfall of the modern
church. They obviously haven’t met some of the women I know!
At the same time, in the Lenten study on
the Beatitudes we are doing at Opoho this week[1],
the section on Blessed are the meek has a fairly tongue in cheek poke at the
world’s perception of masculinity – suggesting that a successful male is
expected to have sexual pull, be a winner in whatever venture they undertake,
be dominant and have a healthy level of disregard for others ie exploitation
denotes strength. Alex, the person whose
beatitudes story is around meekness, says that he chooses to reject the world’s
overwhelming perception that traditional masculinity and meekness are at
opposite ends of the scale, he chooses to associate his maleness with
compassion, kindness, thoughtfulness – as non-violence in the sense of not
violating – people, planet, relationships.
He built his identity on that of his father, who was, he said, forever
kind and thoughtful with all.
Now if I have any ability to read minds
whatsoever I would think most of you, too, would find those sweeping
definitions for male, female, strong, weak, abhorrent. I certainly do. But for all that there is an element of truth
in this – it is still is a popular perception that strength is known in power
& aggression and weakness is found around love & empathy. It is a belief that informs and justifies
bullying, family violence, economic violence, discrimination and social
inequalities.
Christ came to redefine the way we are to
live – and, in doing so, he challenged this common perception of what strength
looked like – he said that we needed to be strong, but that strength was shown
in our loving, compassionate, caring for each other and ourselves rather than
in our exploiting and dominating of others.
He rejected the definitions of the day and lived out a new type of
strength, one that saw him, in the end, helpless and mocked on a cross of wood,
nails and thorns piercing his flesh, betrayal and insults and laughter piercing
his soul.
If we look to our Gospel reading for today
we see this intriguing combination of strength shown alongside what the world
might call weakness. For Luke tells a
story of Jesus standing strong before the veiled threats of the Pharisees,
naming Herod as instigator with few qualms, and sending them off with a flea in
their ear – this will happen, he said, as God wills and in that assurance Jesus
will not be forced from his path. Jesus could never be called politically naive
– he knew well enough what was going on, all the manipulation and pressure, and
he was having none of it. Bold, strong
in the face of worldly power. And, he
said, he would take his message all the way to the top – to Jerusalem even
knowing that he will be rejected, that he will be subjected to scorn and
violence. But here is the message for
today– he does not respond to their rage and violence with like action, instead
he turns around and offers that which the world calls weakness, he weeps and
laments over Jerusalem, using the very feminine imagery of a hen brooding over
her chicks, soft and sad of heart over the coming rejection of her prophet. Compassion and embrace is his response to an
angry world, love for all is become his strength.
Here in this place we are well aware that
these generalisations of male and female traits are inherently flawed, but I
would suggest we none of us, men or women, are completely innocent of using our
strengths inappropriately and seeing as weakness that which is simply
different. How often do we not allow
ourselves to lament, to weep over that which is heartbreaking, that which we cannot
help or change because, in the end we see it as showing weakness? Do we ever use our superior skills to, even
inadvertently, put others down? Do we,
deep down, think that if we hold a political, economic, social, religious power
over others that they are somehow less or that we have a right to manipulate
them?
Are these some of the obstacles that we
might want to dismantle this Lenten time as we walk this journey with
Christ? As Isaiah’s prophetic vision was
for a just and righteous kingdom, so Jesus came to bring a ‘new thing’ to the people,
one where all were treated equally, with love and justice and mercy, where none
were subject to helplessness, or bullying, or violence against their body or
their soul.
Surely this is the dream, this is what the
Jesus walked the path to Jerusalem for, this is what his compassionate tears
for those who rejected him were shed for, this is why we walk alongside, each
in our own way, for – to gather God’s people, like a mother hen gathers her
chicks, in warm, inclusive, welcoming embrace as God intended from the very
beginning, as Christ exemplified and as we are called to be as we walk the path
to the Easter experience. Thanks be to
God. Amen.
[1] Claiming the Beatitudes: Nine Stories from a New Generation by Anne
Sutherland Howard[1]. (Herndon, Virg: The Alban Institute, 2009)
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