Sermon for Year C, The Second Sunday
of Lent
By The Rev. Torey Lightcap
February 24, 2013
St. Thomas Episcopal Church
“Henhouse”
Herod is like a fox – Rome is
like a fox –
The empire and its powers are like foxes –
and Jesus is like a mother hen.
Fox and chicken are pitted
adversaries,
Both of whom offer protection for their
subjects, in their own way:
And the question is asked, Whose generous protection would you rather
be under –
The hungry fox’s, or the mama
chicken’s?
The fox is the greatest natural
predator of the chicken.
A fox knows how to push against
every foot of fencing to find any weak spot
So he can burrow under,
Just after sundown or just before sunrise,
And find something to eat.
When the fox does get in the henhouse,
Baby chicks make easy pickin’s.
If you ever lived on a farm,
this is a familiar and disquieting truth:
That no amount of wire and nails and boards
can seem to keep a fox away.
It’s one reason why my grandma
kept her old shotgun in the closet by the front door.
A farm is an economy in itself,
and foxes that steal chickens
Greatly disrupt that economy:
Goodbye meat, goodbye eggs, goodbye money for
marketing.
Would you let a thief into your
house to rob you blind?
This scene gets even more
complicated when you think about it,
Because Jesus isn’t a shotgun-toting grandma:
He’s the mother hen in this little
scenario.
And what can a mother hen do,
really, in the moment,
Except to shield her younglings
And confirm their desire to run!, scatter when the fox shows her
face;
But we all know that when it comes down to
it,
It is the
mama hen who will place herself between the teeth of the fox and her
chicks.
I doubt this is how it happens
in the moment in the actual henhouse –
I imagine quite a cacophanous scene in which
the fox is dodging rooster spurs
And aiming for the biggest catch, the most
meat, to feed her own family –
But the result is the same.
A mother hen is an all too easy
victim.
And so we walk the Lenten road
with Jesus again this year,
Knowing where the story of God is eventually
meant to take us:
To a hill of crucifixion, a henhouse called
Golgotha.
Yesterday I walked the
Seasonals aisle at Bomgaars with my children.
There were a number of high
aluminum water troughs
Brimming with various breeds of baby chicks.
They clustered together under
hot lights and cheep-cheep-cheeped.
I looked down into these troughs
And could not summon up the energy to say how
cute I thought the chicks were;
It was just Jesus’ words from Luke ringing in
my ears;
So I could only remark that there was among
them not one mother hen.
In the absence of anyone to
protect them,
They were as good as the chocolates in the bulk
candy boxes at Palmer’s,
And all a fox had to do was scoop them up and
pay by the pound.
I collected my brood, and we
left.
I recently had the experience
of watching chickens in a sustained way, in Africa.
I went to the southwest section
of South Sudan, in the east-central part of the continent.
There I found a diocese of
Anglicans – a diocese called Nzara,
And I found their bishop, Samuel Peni, and
his wife, Mama Santina.
(We’ll have them here in
October and you’ll be able to meet them for yourself.)
Bishop Samuel and Mama Santina
know a few things about having baby chicks,
Having half a dozen of their own, and being
partly responsible for several others.
But they also have a modest
colony of real live chickens running around.
These chickens – a rooster and
a hen – were a gift from some visitors last year,
And when I visited, there were maybe eight
chicks trailing in the mother hen’s wake
Everywhere she went.
The rooster was given to
talking to us all the time (especially around 3:45 a.m.),
And he spent quite a bit of time gossipping
with a neighboring rooster
Just over the fence, about 50 feet away.
My sleeping space was in
between them.
Cock-a-doodle-do! said the one.
RR-rr-RR-r-Rrrr! said the other.
There must have been a lot of
good gossip.
They tell us that in the story
of humanity,
Where hominids began their long evolutionary
trek to becoming homo sapiens,
Africa is the place where it really began.
In a fundamental way, it’s the
birthplace of human beings.
Yet it receives no pride of
place for such a major accomplishment.
Nzara is a little town in a
little diocese to whom history generally has not been kind,
And life in the area of Bishop Samuel’s
territory is difficult.
To begin with, Bishop Samuel is
42 years old – a few years older than me.
But this makes him almost an
elder.
Average life expectancy, he
told me, is mid-forties.
Take that in ...
Reasons why are entirely
predictable:
HIV/AIDS … bad drinking water … little access
to women’s health care …
Little in the way of public health education
… sustained war with the north …
Almost no infrastructure in the way we’ve
come to know it (roads, utilities, bridges)
… It goes on.
In particular, there is
something called the Lord’s Resistance Army,
A band of guerilla militants that emerged to
the south, in Uganda,
That has systematically terrorized the region
where Nzara is found.
The LRA conscripts children
into its ranks –
Ten-year-olds, baby chicks, with machine guns
and sabers –
And it forces them to participate in the cruelest
and most vile of human rights abuses,
Including mutilation, abduction, murder,
and various sex crimes.
This is an almost cultlike
movement that swept across Nzara
Like an infestation of army ants, leaving
fear and terror.
Armies from the US and Uganda
and other places came in and pushed the LRA west,
Deep into the bush, into hiding more or less,
into Congo,
But the damage was done.
As if rank poverty and disease
and deprivation weren’t enough already.
If any of this happened in our henhouse there’d be an uproar –
A rush to provide aid and comfort –
But there in Africa, it largely goes
unnoticed by the rest of the world.
Bishop Samuel will tell you
without batting an eye
That 9/11 happens in his country every day.
With God’s grace there hasn’t
been an attack on their soil in almost two years,
And it’s giving them time to think about
things like farming and health care.
The soil is rich; there are oil
reserves; possibilities abound.
But it’s a long way up.
In other words, Nzara is one of
the worst-fenced henhouses in the world,
And it’s full of hungry foxes.
The weaker your defenses, the
easier the pickin’s.
And this is what I’m left to
ponder and pray over in the wake of my return:
My return to the privileged and may I say chilly
USA.
Not, Oh, those poor beautiful simple people –
There’s nothing romantic about suffering –
But just the image and the experience of
watching a bishop and a mama hen
Doing their best to try and shelter many
thousands of Anglicans,
And wondering what we might all do together
to make life better.
In the end, I guess, in God’s
wild farming economy,
The job of mother hen falls
To whichever Chrstians have the power and
the motivation
To protect the other chickens.
That may mean money. That may
mean expertise. That certainly means prayer.
That may even mean changing
planes for 36 hours
And immersing yourself in it, firsthand –
Going and seeing something for yourself
Because some things you just have to see for yourself;
Some things are simply beyond the capacity
to have described,
And you just have to know on your own.
It is good, sisters and
brothers, to witness something completely Other Than.
It’s good for the blood, even
if it’s a wreck on your tummy.
It’s good to see a henhouse of
eager, prayerful Christians that is unlike any other.
Who pray as though their lives
depended on it, because in fact they actually do.
Just like us, if we were bold
enough to admit it.
Theirs is a henhouse ravaged by
time and circumstance
Where Jesus Christ himself nevertheless is
the great high priest and mother hen
Just as we say he is here, with us, just as
we equally proclaim.
A place where Christ and the
Holy Spirit are palably real,
And where God’s life is lived out by people
taking up their crosses each day,
Just as we say is true here, with us, just
as we equally proclaim.
A henhouse like any other. Unlike any other.
A place where God is praised,
just as he is here,
Amidst the muck and the cut-and-thrust of
everyday life.
A henhouse, secure in its own
way,
And showing us how to shore up our own and
keep our foxes at bay.
In this way we are already one.
Now we begin the long process
to simply understand how very true this is.
God be praised. Amen.
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