Defiance has many faces
Sermon on Luke 13:31-35
Defiance has many faces. Like calling a king a fox. Not a lion like he pictures himself. Which Herod of course did. As a king in the Roman Empire. A lion is the noble animal. The king of the animals one wants to be associated with. But a fox? Well, that’s an insult. And Jesus knows it. Which is why he calls Herod a fox. A sneaky, mean, insidious man. Trying to steal away the chicken while nobody is watching. Or while everyone is watching but nobody seems to care. Just that he miscalculated. And people care, Jesus cares, God cares. The world is watching.
Defiance has many faces. Like not letting others call you a chicken. Even if they mean well. Even if they want to save your life from the fox. Want to get you out of the country. Defiance means staying true to one’s nature. And being a hen not a chicken. Spreading out one’s wings over others. Protecting them in the face of deadly danger. Knowing that it won’t spare them death eventually. But maybe death in that moment. And if the fox does eat them all, the chicken will have been loved till the end. They will have felt cared for. By Jesus, our mother hen. Who will sacrifice herself for us. Out of love and deep care.
Defiance has many faces. Like calling out evil for what it is. Calling a war a war. Not a special military operation, not liberation. But a war. Words have power. Calling a fox a fox. Not a lion. Calling Jerusalem the city that kills prophets when it would like to be seen as the Holy City. It doesn’t matter what empires want to be as long as they aren’t what they say they are. It doesn’t matter how holy you think you are if you detain people simply for telling the truth. If you kill people for wanting to live where they were born, speaking the language their mothers taught them.
You can say you want to bring peace to people. You can say you want to de-nazify a country and liberate people. You can. But your lies will be brought to light. Because they are lies. And God hates lies.
Defiance has many faces. Like saying what needs to be done. No matter what. Demons need to be cast out. People need to be cured today. And tomorrow. And once that work is finished, emperors may take ahold of those doing good. But not before. There is too much to do. There are too many people suffering. Too many to heal and to lift up on the road to Jerusalem. On the road to freedom that for a while might look like destruction and death. Like killing the hope of the world. Like killing prophets and doctors, moms and dads, sons and daughters, grandmas and grandparents of the city. It’s hard for foxes to resist the chicken. But in their hunger for power they forget about the hens, determined to fight the foxes.
Defiance has many faces. Like naming the sins committed by a city or country or people. “Your house is left to you!” You are alone. You are more and more isolated in your many lies that you wrap around your people, pretending to save them while choking them to death. You are on your own and you know it. You, the city that kills its prophets. The emperor who doesn’t care about anyone but himself. And who loves to publicly align himself with the priests. The highest priests who will kiss his forehead and preach his truths and call his lies the word of God. Foxes have their ways and other wanna-be foxes just love following along. Hoping for a little bit of fame, for the breadcrumbs, enough to satisfy their own hunger for power. Defiance looks like renouncing that power. And the powerful can’t stand it. And there is little they can do about it. Which drives them nuts.
Defiance has many faces. Like not giving up hope against all hope. Like dreaming of gathering the brood that doesn’t want to be gathered it seems. The chicken that see the fox and run into his arms nevertheless. Because they believe the stories of foxes that will only kill for food. And that will only kill others to satisfy their thirst for blood and hunger for bodies. When, actually, foxes usually cannot stop killing in a hen house before every hen is dead. It’s their nature, they cannot help it. Defiance is knowing this and hoping that the mother hen will be stronger. That her beak will scare away the fox. And, if not, that the little chickens will at least know, till the end, that someone was there to defend them to their very breath. Jesus, the mother hen, standing between evil and us. Jesus, giving his own body like a hen. Not to save us from suffering and death. But to save us from the agony that no one cares. That God doesn’t care. That we are alone in our suffering. Defiance means to not be alone in the face of death. And to know it.
Defiance has many faces. Like lamenting. Lamenting what is and lamenting what could have been. Lamenting the killers and the killed. Lamenting the pain and the horror of a world that we knew ending. A world where the body was declared cancer-free for a short time. A world where walking or sleeping or sitting wasn’t painful. A world where peace was the norm and wars existed mainly in textbooks. And in other continents. A world where we thought we were better than our ancestors, better than Kain. Lamenting that we aren’t any better and at least admitting it. Lamenting that pain is real, that illness is real, that death is real. And knowing that God hears us, laments with us, cries with us.
Defiance has many faces. Like opening one’s home to refugees, like sharing food and shelter even when there is little in the first place. Defiance is sharing the joy and the pain. And not forgetting. Even if the horror doesn’t seem to stop. Even if our brains want to get used to the news, just to move on, to survive, to deny the reality because it’s almost unbearable. Remembering all the chicken that need protection, all the chicken that have nobody, turning into hens when we can and finding hens when we need them. So that we, together, may resist the foxes.
Defiance has many faces. Like hoping that there will be a time when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’ And means it. And understands who the Lord is. Believing that one day the hen will rule over the fox and the chicken will live in freedom. One day. One hopeful day. Because Jesus said so. And that’s our best hope. Amen.
