2nd Sunday of Lent Theme “Blessed Hunger, Holy Feast”
Of Violence and Intimacy
March 4th, 2007
Gary Harder
Text:
Psalm 27:1-5
Genesis 15:12-15
Luke 13:31-35
The Hornbill
I always enjoy reading the stories which pastor and author Walter Wangerin writes. He provided some of my Lenten inspiration this week with his story of “The Hornbill” (Manger, p.21)
In the rain forests of Africa there lives a common, awkward, ugly bird. But I will honour her as exquisite, because she is the cursive script of the Creator. When she flies, her flight is the handwriting of God. When she nests, God is imparting parables.
This bird inhabits the cathedral dark beneath high canopies of leaves. The vaulted space is green. Her world is loud with the shrieks of animals and dangerous with predators; jackals on the ground, the egg-eating bush-babies in the branches, monkeys and serpents and, wheeling over all, the eagle. Carnivores. She lives in a perilous place. But the lives. She flies. Swift on her wing, she eludes her enemies and feeds on the fruit of the climbing vines, the high and flowering trees. She flies. At all times is her nature and her freedom to fly – except when she mothers her children.
She’s called the hornbill because she’s got a beak a big as a hollow log, and on top of that beak, a horn. Megaphone beak. Her cries would echo just because of that beak. It covers the whole of her face, and it sticks out in front of her like a spade – two spades clapped together, a cannon, a crag, a peninsula. This isn’t a pretty bird. And affixed to the crest of her beak is a gross lump, a sort of a helmet, a casque, a gratuitous horn. The rhinoceros has a reason for his horn. Who knows why the hornbill carries hers?
The hornbill is a large and ugly bird.
No! But the hornbill is beautiful.
Watch her. Watch what she does. Watch what she does to herself for the sake of others.
When the time draws nigh that she should lay and love a clutch of eggs, this ugly bird transfigures herself by sweet degrees and sacrifice. She soars through the forest in search of the perfect tree, which has a hollow trunk to receive herself and her beak and her children. When she has found it, she enters, and then flies no more.
Immediately, with the help of her mate from the outside, she sets to work to wall the doorway shut. Mud and dung make a hard cement, a littler interior fortress; no predator will break in to terrorize her children or to eat them, no! They are protected by her love. Out of her bowels comes their wall against a treacherous world. She is their refuge while they are tiny. She is their space a while.
But the wall that protects her children has imprisoned her. There is no help for it. For the sake of her children she has exchanged the spacious air of the forest for a tight, dark cell and inactivity.
And what does this mean? It means that a mother has sacrificed her freedom, which is to fly.
But what does that mean? It means that she has sacrificed her independence too. She is reduced to trusting absolutely in her mate. Look: there is a slot in the wall she’s constructed, a vertical gap exactly the size of her beak. If the hornbill is to survive in her cell, she has to eat. If she’s going to eat, her mate must bring her food – and then she will feed with peculiar intimacy beak to beak through this slot almost as though she were a child herself: there was no kissing like this when she was free. If her mate forsakes her, she will die. But for the love of her children, a mother has chosen dependency.
Watch her. Watch that slot in the wall of dung. Food goes in, but things come flying out of it. The hornbill is fastidious. She twists around, and aims, and shoots her waste to the outside world with a stinging accuracy. In this way she keeps her nest immaculate. She can also burn the eye of a bush-baby peeping in. She can change the mind of a monkey who thought to snatch a meal.
But soon, when her children are hatched and very tender, something else comes flying out of the slot, something so terribly beautiful that every parent must gasp with understanding, and every Christian stand in awe.
Watch: it is feathers. One by one the hornbill’s feathers sail into the air and flutter down to earth. But these are not the down of her breast; they are the longest, strongest feathers of her wing. And this is an immediate act of mercy for her children, because the shafts of these feathers could wound them as she moves about in the tiny space. Therefore, she plucks her primary feathers with a monstrous beak.
And what does that mean? It means that this mother has torn flight from herself. It means that she has sacrificed her very nature for the sake and the saving of her children.!
She is a parable of love….
Who is the hornbill? Whom does she signify?
Read her, as once the ancient Christians read the whole book of nature – the mind of God made visible. And then tell me, Christian: who is she?
Who chose to leave the infinite sphere of heaven – willingly, willingly, compelled by his loving alone? Who denied himself celestial flight for the sake of a people and walled himself inside this world, in time and space and flesh, that he might be the refuge of the weary?
Who diminished himself to dependency – a perfect, prayerful, infant dependency upon another – for the sake of a people who had thought themselves so independent?
Who plucked himself of power? Who sheared himself of his deific might and radiant glory lest it harm us when we came near to him? Who emptied himself and became a baby, swaddled in humility, cradled in wood, flightless, bound to die?
…Of course, we are reading Christmas (and Lent), in an awkward bird.
Introduction
Throughout this Lenten season, the Scriptures chosen will help us focus on the self-emptying of Jesus, his rejection of physical or military or political power; his seeming powerlessness. Or to put it another way, his reliance only on the power of love. One immediate connection between today’s main text and the story of the hornbill is the image of a nest.
But these Lenten texts will also focus on the theme of our human emptiness. Human emptiness in the face of the safe, warm, loving nest God wants to invite us into. Human emptiness in the face of the satisfaction and fulfilment God longs to provide for us. Throughout the Lent readings God’s people are portrayed enduring difficult times – hungry, thirsty, often lost, often homeless.
Sometimes the stories take place in the wilderness – like the story of Jesus facing his temptations in the wilderness. Sometimes the stories take place in the city – like today’s story of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem. Whether in the wilderness, or in the city, the dryness, the hunger, the emptiness is within.
Abraham
We look very briefly at the story of Abraham in Genesis 15. God’s call has taken him away from the great Babylonian city of Ur, and taken him literally to making his home in a mostly wilderness kind of environment. But the real wilderness in this story is within. His wife Sarah is barren. They can’t have children, and they are beyond child bearing age.
The word of the Lord came to Abraham there and said, “Do not be afraid, Abraham, I am your shield.” Do not be afraid. But then comes this description. “As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abraham, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him.” A nightmare, and this one comes from the inside.
A deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him. Have you ever experienced a deep and terrifying darkness, whether in reality or in a dream?
The wilderness
The wilderness is a very important symbol throughout the Bible. It is a symbol of a time of struggle – mostly an inner struggle. It’s a time of trying to sort out one’s identity, or direction, or vision, or faith. It is a time to come to terms with our humanness, our sinfulness, our inability to be the person we want to be.
The struggle is not so much with the outside world – though the pressures of that outside world might drive us to that lonely place where we need to take stock of our own life. The struggle is with ourselves, with who we really are or want to be, with our own sense of direction for the future, with what our core values and core commitments and core faith are.
It is a time to acknowledge our own weakness, our own lack of inner peace, our own fracturedness, our own sinfulness, our own stumbling about and not finding our true home.
A story of wilderness healing
Just over a year ago a middle aged couple from outside of our congregation came to me to ask if I would officiate their wedding. The first thing they told me when they walked in my door was that they were both alcoholics. The had both been, they said, in a long wilderness. My emotional red flags went on high alert. Was it responsible to officiate the wedding of two alcoholics, especially since it was alcohol which had destroyed both of their earlier marriages.
We met together six or seven times – met intensely in no holds barred conversation and story telling. They had both been in treatment for seven years, and still faithfully attended alcoholics anonymous meetings. They had both looked deeply inside themselves at the barren wilderness within. They hid nothing of that from me. They had been on a healing journey that had dealt not only with the physical, chemical addiction, but with the root causes that drove them to drown their problems in alcohol in the first place.
One of their huge issues, they both said, was trying to deal with the gap between image and reality. They had both projected an outer image of professional success – these were not skid row alcoholics, but very professional, high income, publically successful alcoholics. And that was the problem. The image didn’t come close to the reality of their lives. There was too huge a gap. And only alcohol, it seemed, could bridge that gap. But now they had come to terms with that gap, and spoke easily of their addiction and of the enormous pain they had caused. They had no need anymore to project a false image of who they were. They had no need anymore to hide who they were.
In the end I gladly officiated their wedding. It was a particularly enjoyable celebration, celebrating not only their vows to each other, but their long journey of healing. And the wedding reception too was filled with intense and wonderful conversations with family members who where almost overwhelmed with the joy of these new beginnings, and who asked intensely about the place of faith and of God in such healing.
The season of Lent is a time to acknowledge our wilderness struggles, and a time to come to God in a new way for inner healing, inner renewal, inner forgiveness, inner strength. It is a time to acknowledge again that only God can set the table for our hungry, thirsty lives. But it is also a time to claim again that God is at the centre of our healing journeys, of our forgiveness, of our finding our true home again.
The city
Our story from Luke 13 takes place, not in a wilderness this time, but on the outskirts of the city. Jesus and his followers are ready to enter Jerusalem. Holy Jerusalem, symbol of the climax of Jewish aspirations and faith and power. The great temple was there. The high priest was there. All the best of their hopes and dreams and aspirations and faith culminated in Jerusalem. Jerusalem was God’s headquarters. It radiated the most powerful presence of God to the Jewish people. But Jesus enters this great, holy city, not in joy, or in awe, or in enthralled admiration, but in tears.
Jesus weeps over Jerusalem. Something has gone very wrong. In a second story later in Luke, Jesus again weeps over this city. Luke 19 reads, “As Jesus came near and saw the city, he wept over it saying, ‘If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes…because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.’”
“You don’t recognize the things that make for peace. You d
on’t recognize the time of your visitation from God.” I think almost the whole world weeps over Jerusalem today – weeps over the almost interminable fighting and killing that goes on in that holy land. They don’t recognize the things that make for peace. Jerusalem could be such a significant symbol of peace and of religious cooperation. For Muslims and Jews and Christians Jerusalem is such an important symbol of God’s presence and activity – such a holy site. But instead it is becoming more and more a symbol of intolerance and hatred – of everything that is unholy.
Jerusalem is where the final scene of the drama of Jesus’ life and death will be acted out. But that will be a bit later. Jesus and his followers know how dangerous that city will be for them all. The old religious establishment does not take kindly to new Messiahs – especially peace Messiahs. The old religious forces are inherently conservative and are inherently suspicious of any new word from God. Old power resists any signs of new power and any new messengers they can’t control. Old power doesn’t want new understandings or new manifestations of God.
And so it is that here in Jerusalem, in the centre of old religious power, the drama of God’s salvation through Jesus will unfold. But not quite yet. Now Jesus laments over this great city.
The lament over Jerusalem
Our text from Luke 13 begins this way. “At that hour some Pharisees came and said to him, ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.’”
So often the pharisees are pictured negatively. Especially in Matthew. But here it is some pharisees who warn Jesus about the danger he is facing. They want to protect him. It is good to know that some pharisees, some people of the religious establishment, have become friends with Jesus and want to warn him about the danger he is facing.
“Jesus 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, and tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside Jerusalem.’”
No mincing words here. Jesus calls Herod a fox. Herod Antipas, Jewish King of Galilee. Jesus calls him a fox, sly, destructive, crafty. Herod wants to kill Jesus. But Jesus won’t go into hiding. He will continue his work of healing. Political power, however sly and destructive, can’t stop God’s work. Though it may nail God’s Son on a cross. Even then it won’t stop God’s healing work. “On the third day I finish my work”. Does that speak of Resurrection on the third day?
Instead of fleeing, Jesus laments all that has gone wrong with Jerusalem. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it.” God has sent messengers to this holy city, but these voices are silenced. How hard it is to hear God speak through voices that come from outside the power base, voices from the fringe, voices from outside our secure networks, voices that challenge us and make us uncomfortable.
Jesus continues, “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing.”
Images from the farm swarm through my mind. I see clearly a robust mother hen and her brood of 7 or 8 chicks. As the chicks grow older and bolder they will stray further and further away in search of food and adventure. But always, at the first sign of danger, or at the fall of night, they return to the protective warmth and shelter of the wings and body of the mother, secure and at peace. The mother hen will guard her brood fiercely and protectively from any danger. She will take on any enemy, even a fox. Even a fox like Herod.
Says Jesus, “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing.”
“You, my people, the people of Israel, to not recognize the danger you are in. You do not heed the warning clucks. You do not acknowledge your own broken-ness, your own lack of spiritual power to meet the crisis of the day. You don’t even notice how badly you need healing. You refuse to come at the call of God, the mother hen.
If you could only see how powerful God’s love and God’s healing really is. If you could only see the new Kingdom which is breaking in all over the place. If you would only come to the warm, safe nest of God, your mother. But you kill God’s prophets and have no idea what makes for peace; peace in your lives and peace in this holy city.
Conclusion
The hornbill has, at great cost, created a safe nest for her chicks. She has done so at great personal danger. She has suffered dependence and flight-less-ness for them.
The mother hen spreads out her wings in invitation. Come, gather where it is safe and warm. Jesus has suffered for us out of a most precious love.
Perhaps Lent is a time to be vulnerable again, to acknowledge our broken-ness, our fragile strength, our spiritual emptiness. Perhaps Lent is a time to find safety, and strength, and healing and renewed love under the sheltering wings of an outstretched God.