In the shelter of those wings

Sermon by Jamie Howison on Psalm 27 and Luke 13:31-35.

Here we are on the second Sunday in Lent and the lectionary has given us this psalm, which begins by setting out two alternatives for life. In the words of Brueggemann and Bellinger in their commentary on the Psalms, the alternatives are “faith or fear… Fear, and not doubt, is cast as the alternative to faith.” The psalmist holds to faith as the key, even “when evildoers assail me to devour my flesh,” and when “an army encamp against me.” The whole psalm is shot through with the tension between a tenacious faith and the reality of adversaries, which is why the psalm is so connected to King David. The politics of being the leader of a people who will face that kind of foe is very real.

Yet it is more than just political enemies that are under consideration here, for even “If my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up.” That, of course, is a sort of extreme image for being rejected or persecuted, but the writer really wants even the extreme to be taken under consideration. And it is clear that this psalmist knows tough trials—be they political and military, or more personal and relational—such that the closing verses all but sing with the writer’s passionate hope and commitment:

I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living.

Wait for the Lord;
be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the Lord!

You might, of course, know those final lines about waiting for the Lord, because we often sing that Taize chant,

Wait for the Lord
Whose day is near
Wait for the Lord
Be strong, take heart

There are certainly days when that steadfast waiting is extremely important, and maybe particularly in our own time. We’ve now had two years of COVID-19, and there have been stretches of time in which almost everything around us was closed down. We now watch as prices begin to soar—whether on gasoline for our cars or food for our tables—and our singing of that chant becomes more urgent. “Be strong, take heart,” we sing, and maybe you wonder where the strength comes from.

The psalm, comments Brueggemann and Bellinger,

The psalm urges an alternative to the fear and anxiety so present in our age. It is not an alternative to denial, for the presence of trouble and woe are front and center in the psalm. Rather, the alternative is trust in the face of trouble and opposition. Such trust is nurtured in worshipping communities.

“Such trust is nurtured in worshipping communities,” they claim, because,

In worship, the community of faith is shaped and molded. In worship, the encounter with the life-giving presence brings renewal that makes it possible to face opposition. That is the kind of trust commended in the Hebrew covenant traditions.

Now I hardly have to remind you that there is a war raging in our own world, with Ukraine under a sustained attack by the Russian army. We know that one of our own people from this community has been evacuated from her work with the Mennonite Central Committee in Ukraine. We see the news clips and we hear of all those who have fled Ukraine, desperate for safety in other countries. And you might think, “trust”? How do you trust—how do you “wait for the Lord—in the midst of such violence?

And then I read a piece this past week in the American Catholic periodical Crux, that told the story of how a group of Russian Orthodox clergy had stepped forward with an open petition calling for the immediate ceasefire to this war on Ukraine and criticizing the suppression of non-violent Russian protests calling for peace. The article was published on March 6, and at that point the petition had been signed by three hundred clergy. That Crux article contained these very powerful words:

“We mourn the trial that our brothers and sisters in Ukraine were undeservedly subjected to,” they said, calling life a “priceless and unique gift” and calling for the safe return of all soldiers, Russian and Ukrainian, to their homes and families.

The priests lamented “the abyss that our children and grandchildren in Russia and Ukraine will have to overcome in order to once again begin to be friends with each other, respect and love each other.”
(https://cruxnow.com/church-in-europe/2022/03/russian-orthodox-priests-call-for-immediate-end-to-war-in-ukraine)

There is a power in that truth-telling; a power willing to lament the cost of this war. There is also a deep hopefulness, in the willingness of these clergy to dare to speak out so clearly and passionately to their own government; a government that would rather have them remain cloistered in their churches, performing rituals that are rendered benign by being prayed without any reference to what is being done to their neighbours.

Yet this group of clergy, along with all the people in those churches who have heard their voices, is not benign, because they dare to speak what they see—what they know—and to do so as followers of the Jesus who lamented for Jerusalem. And according to a March 10 report, some of those priests are feeling government pressure, with at least one verified arrest having been made.

It is important to see that in today’s reading from the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus is anything but naïve. He is not cloistered away in some religious ghetto, thinking and teaching only safe “religious” ideas. Instead he is standing openly and publicly, speaking to the tragedy of the great city of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem, 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.

That image of the hen gathering her brood is compelling. As N.T. Wright works with the image, he observes that when there is a farmyard fire it is not unusual for the mother hen to sweep up her chicks under her wings, and to lay as flat as she can to protect them from the fire. It is not uncommon for such a fire to kill the mother hen yet leave the chicks alive under her wings. And so he writes,

It is a vivid and violent image of what Jesus declared he longed to do for Jerusalem and, by implication, for all Israel. But, at that moment, all he could see was chicks scurrying off in the opposite direction, taking no notice of the smoke and flames indicating the approach of danger, not of the urgent warnings of the one who alone could give them safety.

Yet we know that Jesus did spread out his wings to die on the day of his crucifixion, and under his teaching and that of St Paul and the other writers of the New Testament, we have come to believe that this was the ultimate saving action for all of us. We are the brood sheltered under his wings, and those wings were broken for us.

Those three hundred clergy in Russia are also part of this brood, and because they believe to passionately that they have been sheltered under those wings, they have summoned the courage to speak out, and to be shelter for others.

Peace in this world can be such a tenuous thing. Leaders strive for power, citizens get wrapped up in hostility and even hatred, old hostilities are kindled into blazing fires of open conflict, and the media can spin stories that just ramp up the tensions and anger. And then steadfastly people like those priests speak out, and ordinary citizens mount peaceful protests, and you are reminded that the future to which we are all called is not one of war and oppression. In the petition of those three hundred Russian clergy, we are given a glimmer of how things should be. And so we join our voices to theirs, and pray again with the psalmist, “wait… be strong, and let your heart take courage.”

Such are the times, and such must be our prayers.