"Still Not Willing?"   San Williams

Luke 13:31-35

From my church office, I have a good view of the activity along San Antonio Street.  Recently I looked up to see a mother trying to gather her four pre-schoolers into her van that was parked in front of the church.  She wasn’t having an easy time.  She’d almost get one secured when she’d have to reach for another who was crawling over the back seat.  She just about had them all in when one of the toddlers jumped from the van and made a dash down the sidewalk.  She yelled, scooped up the runaway kid, and sat him back in the van. Only when all her children were in the van and safely buckled up did she get in herself and drive off.  Well, in our reading today, Jesus likens God to a mother, a mother hen to be precise.  “How often have I desired to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.” 

Isn’t that a compelling image for God?  According to Jesus, God’s passionate dream, compassionate desire, and bold determination is to gather God’s human children closer and closer in God’s embrace and love.  God will never rest, Jesus implies, until all creation is safely gathered within God’s loving embrace. Some of Jesus’ best known parables picture God’s fierce yearning to gather the lost:  the woman who frantically searches for a lost coin, a shepherd who risks everything to search for the lost sheep, the father who races to welcome the prodigal home.  God, Jesus teaches us, yearns to gather all creation into the fold of God’s shalom—God’s peace, in which all creation will dwell secure. 

So the question is, why aren’t we willing?  Why do we resist God’s offer to be safely at peace within the fold of God’s love?  Jesus laments, “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!”  Friends, why is this?

Perhaps we resist God’s gracious invitation because we are addicted to violence.  That’s the contention of James Gilligan in his book Violence:  A Rising National Epidemic. Gilligan quotes former U.S. Surgeon General Everett Koop, who asserted that the number one health problem in America is the rising epidemic of violence. 

A week ago last Thursday morning, a deeply disgruntled pilot intentionally crashed his plane into the Echelon building here in Austin. His suicide mission left behind a badly damaged building of twisted metal, broken glass, smoke charred windows, and, tragically, the loss of innocent life. Shortly before carrying out his plan, the pilot posted a lengthy rant on the internet, one in which he spewed anger and frustration against the IRS, corporate greed, unfair taxes, unresponsive government and more.  “Violence is the answer,” he wrote.  “Violence is the only answer.” 

Well, in our scripture today we learned that Herod came the same conclusion.  Herod, the tetrarch of Galilee, had a Jesus problem on his hands.  Jesus was going around Galilee spouting dangerous words like "the first shall be last, and the last first," "the powerful shall be cast down from their thrones and the poor lifted out of their misery." He talked of loving enemies and turning the other cheek. He declared all people should forgive one another, and should bring in the outcasts and the despised, so that all people will live together as God’s beloved children. But that’s not the acceptable way.  According to Herod—meaning most of humanity—the way to deal with our enemies is to dispose of them. That’s what Herod did to John the Baptist and what he proposed to do to Jesus.  One reason we resist God is that we’re addicted to violence.  We’d rather kill our enemies than forgive them.

And another reason we’re not willing to gather under God’s wing because God’s wing is because then we won’t be able to choose the company we’d keep.  God’s wing span is huge,  undiscriminating, inclusive. God gathers in all sorts of folks with whom we might not want to rub shoulders.  As Martin Luther King said, “We have this tendency to push some people down, so that we can rise up.”  

February is Black History month.  It’s a time to remember how our society tried to exclude a whole population from equal rights, equal access, equal dignity, equal pay.   One of the footnotes of the Civil Rights movement—and there were many—involved a white Presbyterian pastor named Dunbar H. Ogden.  Rev. Ogden was pastor of Central Presbyterian Church in Little Rock at the time nine African-American students walked through a seething mob to the front of Central High School in Little Rock to enroll in school. On the night before the nine students were to enroll, Ogden received a call from Daisy Bates, the president of the Arkansas chapter of the NAACP.  Mrs. Bates called to ask the pastor's help in escorting the students, because he was president of the local ministerial association. Ogden hesitated, knowing that if he did as she asked he’d surely split apart his congregation and destroy his effectiveness.  Ogden prayed and perspired throughout the long night, caught in the throes of indecision. Even when he met Bates and the nine students the next morning, he was still wavering.  Then a black man approached him and said, ‘Reverend Ogden, isn’t it about time you made up your mind?”  In that moment, he made a choice that would change his life and help change the course of history.  And as is so often the case, he paid a high price.  Worship attendance in Ogden’s congregation declined from 200 worshippers to fewer than 80.  Influential church members called fellow members and asked them to abstain from attending church, and to cancel their pledges.  Secret meetings were held to circumvent Presbyterian polity and squeeze Ogden out.  It’s a sad fact that many people just aren’t willing to rub shoulders and share tables with people who are of a different class, a different color, or a different sexual orientation.

Still another reason we may not be willing to be gathered into God’s fold is that we just don’t have the patience.  We’re in too big a hurry to wait for God to make good on God’s gathering-in promise. Have you ever noticed that one of the chief attributes of Jesus is that he’s never in a hurry?  “Quick! Get out of town,” the Pharisees scream at Jesus. “Herod wants to kill you. Run for your life.” But Jesus never runs. He never hurries. “Go tell that fox that that I’m going to do what God sent me to do…today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.”  Jesus can’t be rushed.  Jesus isn’t worried about Herod, or the Pharisees, the Romans  or anyone else, because he knows that in God’s way, and in God’s time, God’s will will be done. Granted God’s vision of a gathered-in humanity is slow in coming.  In a world that is increasingly based on speed, we have to be willing to slow down, to be patient and to wait.

In their wonderful book called Living Gently in a Violent World, Stanley Hauerwas and Jean Vanier write about how living in community with people who have disabilities teaches us a lot about God’s timing and God’s love.  Hauerwas tells about an elderly woman named Mrs. Camp and her son Gary, who were members of the Methodist church he attended in South Bend, Indiana. Gary was mentally disabled.  Since he was also hard of hearing, he and Mrs. Camp sat in the front pew during services.  Hauerwas writes, “When it came time for the Eucharistic celebration, Gary would slowly help Mrs. Camp up and move to the rail. The ten-foot trip took two or three minutes, and the whole church waited with bated breath for Gary and Mrs. Camp to make it. Once they did, we all would follow.  But we were led by Gary and Mrs. Camp.  If they weren’t present, you could feel the congregation worry whether we should even celebrate the Eucharist that day. It wasn’t clear to us that we were all gathered.”   

At UPC, we too have an ever-expanding gathering-in mission, in which all people—the able and the disabled, the advantaged and the disadvantaged, the up-and-coming and the down-and-out can gather as one people who are equally valued and equally loved.

There’s already more gathering-in going on at UPC than you may realize.  Just to name a few, on Monday morning international wives of graduate students gather in our fellowship hall.  Monday evening college students assemble for Bible Study and fellowship.  On Tuesday, people struggling to make ends meet, ex-offenders needing a new ID’s, job seekers needing a pair of work boots, and others are gathered and welcomed. Tuesday afternoon sees a group of rag-tag young people, street kids, meeting upstairs to “chill”—as they say—and for Bible study. On Thursdays and Saturdays, hundreds of people come through our Micah 6 food pantry.  A special Girl Scout troop, made up of girls whose mothers are in prison, meet here weekly.  A gospel choir rehearses every Thursday.  

So friends,  with loving patience but fierce persistence let us today, tomorrow and for as long as it takes be about God’s gathering-in work until that great coming-home day when all the coins have been found, the lost sheep recovered and every prodigal welcomed home.  On that day, all creation will rise up and shout with joy:  “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”