Date: March 10th & 13th
Preacher: Pastor Ashley Rosa-Ruggieri
First Reading: Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
Psalmody: Psalm27
Second Reading: Philippians 3:17--4:1
Gospel: Luke 13:31-35
The summer after I finished college, I worked at a Lutheran Bible camp. I was the Coordinator of the Pioneer program, and part of being the coordinator of that program was also being a Co-Coordinator for the farm. We had many animals that summer, including calves, horses, goats, pigs, kittens, and chickens. Today I would like to tell a story about the chickens. There were five of them, very young chickens. My fellow coordinator and I had the privilege of giving all the animals names, and we decided to name these chickens after states. So, we had Georgia, Carolina, Virginia, Jersey, and Dakota. We took great care of these chickens, and were teaching them how to return to the coop at night, and then they could roam the farm freely during the day. We loved these chickens!
Now, one weekend, our camp director had his nephews in town visiting his house on the farm, and he was showing them the chickens. Since it was the weekend, I was away Saturday, but I would come to let the chickens out the next morning to find that the nephews had let the chickens out the evening before and told no one. This may not have been a problem, except there was a storm the night before. And the chickens ran away, trying to escape the storm, but ran too far so that they no longer knew their way back to the coop. They did not return, and it is likely they were eaten by one of the many animals on the camp’s extensive land, though we found some feathers from them at various points on the grounds.
You may be sitting there asking yourself, “why is Pastor Ashley telling us this chicken story today? And my answer is that I am telling you this story because today we are talking about the kingdom of God and about the call of Jesus, and so I am saying to us today, don’t be like my camp chickens. But, we will get there. First, let’s start with the kingdom of God. So, we are continuing in our theme of the Lord’s Prayer, and this week our focus is the petition: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven.” This petition helps us to acknowledge both God’s vision for the kingdom, and our own part in establishing that kingdom here on Earth. We are not praying that the kingdom of God be able to manifest itself among us, no, we are praying that the kingdom of God might come and be here through us. In our passage from Philippians today, Paul writes that our citizenship is in heaven, and that it is from there we are expecting our savior. What I want us to note is that Paul does not say, our citizenship is in heaven and so our lives here on Earth do not matter. Paul is writing this letter to explain that Jesus is forever our example of how we live into the kingdom of God we have been promised in heaven through Jesus. He asks those he writes to “to stand firm in the Lord in this way.” “This way” being the way of following Jesus. And so yes, we claim a citizenship in heaven as the people of God who await the promise of life everlasting in the kingdom of God, but we also enact what we envision that kingdom of God to look like here on Earth. We do this by following in the example of Jesus.
And so, in our Gospel today the pharisees come to Jesus and warn him about the Herod and the kingdom around them that wants Jesus’s demise. They are worried for the trouble that is like a looming storm cloud in their city. The response that they get from Jesus is somewhere along the lines of, “well, you can tell Herod that I am busy right now, helping my neighbors and healing this community, and then I am leaving in a few days.” Jesus is more intent on casting out demons and healing the sick than on answering to Herod, who is an authority put into place by the Roman empire. The next part of what Jesus says is why we are talking about chickens today. Jesus describes himself as a mother hen. He says that he wants to gather up all the children, like a hen under her wings, presumably protecting them from the city and society that will harm them when they speak the word of God as Jesus has taught. But Jesus says they were unwilling. Instead of speaking to the kingdom of God as Jesus constantly teaches about, they chose to be silent, or to side with the city and the empire instead. Jesus wanted nothing more than to guide, protect, and lead them like chicks under their mother’s wings, but instead people flee from the truths that need to be proclaimed. The same is true for us today, Jesus wants to guide us, protect us like our mother hen, but we cannot let fear of looming distress push us away.
Now, we have arrived at where my chicken story meets Jesus meets the kingdom of God. Don’t be like my chickens who ran away when there was a storm. Do not run from the Gospel out of anxiety or worry that what God asks of you is too big. Instead, stick around for the messy business of praying for God’s kingdom to come on Earth and then doing something about it. “Stand firm in the Lord in this way,” like Paul says. Stand firm in ways that remind us that it is God’s will and God’s kingdom that we are praying for. Stand firm in the Lord when Jesus says he wants to guide and protect us like a mother hen. Trust in these promises just as we must trust in ourselves to actually do something about what we pray for. To actively walk toward the kingdom of God, so that it shows up around us as we envision it will in heaven.
Do not be chickens who were let into the world but ran away from difficulties and never returned because their fear made them lost. Because we can get lost, and it will get difficult, when praying for and being the kingdom of God. The stakes are high when we pray the prayer that Jesus taught us. We pray God’s kingdom come even when it is scary, hard, or new. Still, when we live into our call to be the kingdom of God here and now, may we learn to be chicks guided and protected by the wings of our mother hen Jesus, rather than my camp chickens who ran out of fear and never returned. Thanks be to God.