Ash Wednesday felt early this year. Lent has felt early. It seems like we just finished Advent and Christmas, that most hope-filled season where we celebrate a nice little baby born in a manger. It’s a bit disorienting to find myself in the midst of Lent when I still have a gaudy Santa Clause night light on my kitchen counter and my neighbor still hasn’t taken down her Christmas lights. It feels like just yesterday we were celebrating the birth of Christ and now we find ourselves, in the midst of Lent, on the way to the Cross of Christ.

Maybe you are ready, but truth be told it’s hard for me to trade in my idealized images of shepherds and wise men, mangers, and angels, the promise and power of a new born child to change the world, for an image of repentance and death on the way to Easter morning. But thank God, I don’t get to choose. Good Friday is coming and like it or not we all might as well get ready for it. For we can’t get to Easter without going through the cross. We can’t experience the power of the resurrection on Easter without experiencing the powerlessness of Good Friday.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is deeply concerned with issues of power. The book has been called, “the gospel of the poor.” It contains story after story that condemn the rich and reach out to those on the margins of society. In the beginning of Luke the angel of the Lord appears, not to the high and mighty, but to the shepherds, to those who were considered the lowest of the low. From beginning to end Jesus chooses to be with those whom the religious class shuns.

Luke’s Jesus is the one who ‘welcomed sinners and ate with them’. It is this Jesus who condemns those who ignored the poor and oppressed around them. In today’s scripture passage we’re told that Jesus was casting out demons and performing cures.” In Luke, more often than not he is doing these things with those no one else cared about. Luke’s Jesus is a Jesus who got dirty, who loved the unlovable, and who spoke truth to those in power. This is the Jesus we meet in today’s passage. This is the Jesus we join on the way to Jerusalem.

Earlier in Luke, Jesus says, “Indeed, some who are first will be last, and some who are last will be first.” It’s no wonder King Herod wanted to kill Jesus. Those in power seldom react kindly to those who call them out. After all, this is the same Herod who beheaded John the Baptist because he criticized Herod’s choice of a bride. This is the Herod who’s father killed all the infants in Bethlehem because someone told him a new king had been born. No, those who are first never willingly become last.

“At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” Jesus responds, “Go and tell that fox for me, “Listen, I’m doing what I was sent to do, I’ll go in my own time.”

Jesus sounds rude. And really the translation, “Go and tell that fox” doesn’t quite do it justice. For what Jesus didn’t say was just as insulting as what he says. Herod would most likely have desired to be considered a Lion, Bear, or even an Eagle. The Eagle was the supreme symbol of empire, glory, and power. It was the symbol of Rome itself.

But, no Jesus assigns the lowly title of Fox to Herod. This man who killed his friend, who ruled over all of Galillee was just a fox, a sneaky, glorified Jackal.

The world is overrun with foxes. There is no shortage of people who oppress. Those who maintain their power and their profits on the backs of the poor. Each time any of us use power to subdue someone, or we have a mindset that says there’s simply not enough in the world to care for all of God’s children. Foxes have an attitude of scarcity.

Jesus says, “Go and tell that fox that I’ll leave when I’m supposed to leave. Go and tell that fox that he can’t kill me.” Truth spoken to power.

Then He turns to Jerusalem. In one of the most shocking and powerful laments in the Bible he cries out, “How I have desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.” If it was demeaning to call Herod a fox, it was absolutely horrific to compare God to a female farm bird. What could be more vulnerable than a hen confronted by a fox in the henhouse? The fox wins every time. Yet this is the powerless image Jesus uses to talk about God.

We might be more comfortable with the image of God as an Eagle. The bible certainly makes this comparison in other places, and Eagles have a special place in our national consciousness. Eagles soar, they are majestic, they have few, if any, natural predators. They are quintessentially American. They exude power, they have the ability to strike with powerful beaks and fearsome claws. What could be a more un-American symbol than a hen. I want, I imagine we all want, a God who can crush the fox. We want a God who stomps out oppression, a God who thwarts those who would make war. A hen? What could be more powerless?

Imagine a hen for a few moments. She has no real defenses. No talons, a pathetic beak. She can not soar, she can barely fly About all she can do is lay eggs, and love and protect her children. My how she loves her children. She will gladly sacrifice herself in the hope that her chicks might survive the onslaught of the fox. In all of nature, try to picture a more vulnerable image than that of a mother hen, wings spread wide, breast open to the world. There’s something Christ-like about it. There’s something Cross-like about it.

Thank God we don’t get to choose the kind of God we worship. Because if we could choose what kind of God we wanted, she would most often look like us. As is always the case, Jesus speaks truth to power and turns the world on its head. He asks us the question: Are we going to be a fox, or are we going to rest under the wings a God whose understanding of power is opposite that of the world.

In our text today Jesus paints us a picture of two versions of the world. An image of power, death, and oppression, and an image of love, sacrifice, and community. This passage lives at the intersection of power and powerlessness. We too sit at the intersection of power and powerlessness. I mean it. This church literally sits at an intersection of power and powerlessness. We are three blocks from one of the most powerful state capitols in the country, and three blocks from the epicenter of homelessness, mental illness, and drug addiction in Central Texas. When you leave this place no matter which way you walk or drive away you will be confronted with a picture of power contrasted with powerlessness.

At this point in the text Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. He’s on his way to the cross, and so are we. He longs to gather us like a hen gathers her chicks. We’re not on the way to the cross by ourselves. Lent is best observed, really the entire Christian life is best lived together. Ours is a communal faith. Jesus provides us with a powerful image of the church as the hen that gathers up God’s scattered children underneath its wings. A place of safety, of wholeness, a place of community.

On his way to Jerusalem he chooses the way of powerlessness. But he also unleashes a power of love unlike anything the world had ever seen, it is a power that calls the last first, that cares for the least of these, it is a power that led this congregation to embrace all people, not in spite of how God made them, but because of how God made them. Good Friday reminds us that sometimes foxes win. But Easter damns Good Friday, and reminds the whole world that one day, one day, the Hen will gather all of us. Love ultimately wins.

On his way to Jerusalem Jesus changed the world by choosing to side with those ignored by the powerful. On the way to the cross he told a fox that he still had work to do. I wonder…will we do the same?

Now let us rise and affirm our faith together: