An Open Table where Love knows no borders

Of Foxes and Fowls and Tae Kwondo

A sermon on Luke 13:31-35 by Nathan Nettleton

I need to confess to what some of you may have already secretly thought is a rather glaring contradiction between my preaching and my behaviour. And of course, some of you have probably got such a long list of my hypocrisies that you’re wondering why I’m only going to confess to one. But one it is for tonight. On Sundays I come here and preach a gospel of peace, and I urge you to see that the God made known to us in Jesus is completely non-violent and non-vengeful and non-retaliatory, and I call you to follow Jesus on a path that renounces violence and seeks always to make peace. And then on Tuesday nights, I go to a Tae Kwondo class and receive training in the effective use of physical violence. And I encourage my daughter in her participation in the same classes, and since she outranks me in the class, if you want to pick a fight with one of us, you will be in greater danger if you choose her. So here I am, as a preacher of peace, feeling quite proud of my daughter’s fighting skills with her fists and feet, and doing my best to match her. It doesn’t really seem to add up, does it?

Well, I’m not going to defend myself against the charge of hypocrisy in any detail here, because firstly I’m not sure that I can, and secondly, that’s not really the point I’m trying to make. Suffice it to say that I joined the class for the purposes of physical fitness rather than the fighting skills, and that I sincerely hope that I will never use the fighting skills to hurt another human being in any real life situation. But developing the skills while simultaneously preaching against their use has caused me to reflect on something of what it meant for Jesus to be who he was and do what he did. And the points which it has helped illuminate for me are apparent in tonight’s gospel reading. But before I get to tonight’s reading, I want to bring in another thing that Jesus said elsewhere which might help bridge this jump I am trying to make from Tae Kwondo to this particular story of Jesus.

In Matthew’s account of the arrest of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemene (Matthew 26:47-56), one of his disciples pulls out a sword and starts slashing out wildly, and Jesus says, “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” Ian told me recently that one local right-wing Christian commentator and wannabe ethicist has argued in support of gun ownership on the grounds that Jesus said “put your sword back in its place” rather than “get rid of your sword” and that therefore he acknowledges a rightful place for weapons. Well, to treat that argument with more respect than it deserves, any rightful place that Jesus accords the weapon has clearly got nothing to do with using it, even when being attacked by an armed mob. But anyway, what really interests me for our purposes here is Jesus’s next line. He says, “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” Can you see the connection I am making to my Tae Kwondo here? Jesus is implying that he has the capacity to fight force with force if he wished. The capability is there. He’s telling his sword wielding friend, “If I wanted to meet fire with fire, I wouldn’t need your little knife. One word from me and the angel cavalry comes charging over the hill and its all over. But I’m choosing not to exercise that power. And I want you to follow me in that choice, so put away your sword.”

Now, what I really want to focus on is that choice not to use the power, but first two slightly tangential comments about actually having it. I think it is quite probable that my increased capacity to use physical violence does actually make it more likely that I never will. Partly because it makes me less likely to panic in a threatening situation, and I say that as someone who has had his nose broken three times in acts of violence. I know, I know, I shouldn’t keep sticking it in where it’s not wanted, but two out of three of those incidents were ones where someone else was being threatened and I chose to get in the way, and I think the fact that I would now have a much better chance of deflecting the blow instead of wearing it on the snout makes me more likely to be willing to do that again if needed. And when I think about my daughter, or anybody else’s sons and daughters, I have become convinced over the years that teaching a child to turn the other cheek can be a form of abuse in itself unless they have first learned to fight. I hope my daughter learns to turn the other cheek, but I know that she has a side kick technique that is the envy of some black belts, so it will be a real choice, not her only choice. Unless you could choose to retaliate effectively, turning the other cheek and getting hit repeatedly is not usually something you have a choice about. The ethics of choosing between violence or non-violence don’t come into it until both are available options. But for one who could, in an instant, call on more than twelve legions of angels, turning the other cheek is clearly a decision that involves his ethics.

So in tonight’s reading we see and hear Jesus dealing with the growing threat of deadly violence. Some Pharisees, not usually known for their care and concern for Jesus, come and warn him to go into hiding because King Herod wants to kill him. This is certainly not the first threat of violence against Jesus. In fact Herod’s father, also called Herod, had apparently tried to have Jesus killed when he was a baby, and killed a whole bunch of innocent babies in the attempt. And as we heard just a few weeks ago, Jesus very nearly got himself killed the first time he preached in his home town of Nazareth. And there have been various reports of the religious and political power-brokers conspiring against him, so this warning does not lack any credibility. And Jesus clearly takes it seriously, because he pretty much says, “I know they are going to get me sooner or later, but I’m betting it won’t happen until I get to Jerusalem.” He could see the writing on the wall. He knew that what he was doing would continue to enrage those who wielded power, and he knew how they would respond if he didn’t back down. And right here in this story he is warned to back down, and what does he do? He shrugs his shoulders and says, “You go tell that fox from me that I’m going right on doing what I’m doing, casting out demons and healing the sick, and I’ll still be doing the same tomorrow, and the next until I finish my work, by which time we’ll be in Jerusalem.” So straight up front we can say that whatever the choice for non-violence means for Jesus, it does not mean submissive compliance with the wishes of those who wield power and violence. His stand is bold, defiant, and perhaps even antagonistic, although clearly not just for the sake of it. Jesus is going to do what he’s come to do, and he’s not going to be bullied out of it, no matter how big and real the threat.

There is a freedom that comes with the willingness to accept suffering if it should come. As long as we are determined to avoid suffering at all costs, or we are determined to be the winners in any clash of force, our capacity to hold the line in doing what is right will be severely limited by the needs for self-protection or strategic advantage. When we have surrendered the need to either avoid it or inflict it, the threat of suffering loses its power to dictate our behaviour. As Thomas Merton said in one of our Lenten readings during the week, suffering has no value in itself. It is not to be sought, or even merely accepted. It is of value only as we surrender it and ourselves to God, so that God might work redemptively in it and through it, reshaping us in the image of Christ and exposing and challenging the demonic nature of those who inflict suffering on others.

This especially we can see in the example of Jesus in this story. Jesus knows what is coming to him if he keeps pushing ahead on the path he’s on. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!” And then comes a very famous image that is probably a whole lot richer than we normally notice. “Jerusalem, how often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” We too often hear this line on its own out of context to get the full force of it. What has Jesus just called Herod? A fox. And what does he now call himself? A chook looking after a brood of chicks. We are supposed to hear those two images together. In the paraphrase we heard read earlier, it was a mother swan and a vicious dog because, if I remember rightly, the week it was written there had been a well publicised series of attacks by feral dogs on nesting swans down at Albert Park Lake.

So here we have Jesus staring down the fox, knowing himself capable of calling down more than twelve legions of angels, but instead offering himself as the one who will absorb the full force of the violence without reciprocating it. He goes clucking into the city that stones prophets with his little brood under his wings while the foxes circle ever closer and the firestorm of hatred and hostility comes raging across the barnyard. Actually, a firestorm may be a helpful image in understanding what Jesus is describing here. No doubt there were plenty of chickens killed by that big grassfire on the northern outskirts on Tuesday, and there are often stories after fires of farmers finding live chicks huddled under the dead burnt bodies of their mothers. That’s what Jesus is saying to you. When the fires of hostility and violence come your way, he longs to be able to throw himself over you and take it all on himself to protect you. “But you were not willing,” he says. We make it impossible for him to shelter us when we are always running away to avoid being too close to the one who doesn’t run away.

But if Jesus wants to protect us so badly, why doesn’t he call down that twelve legions of angels and do just that? After all, usually when a mother chook throws herself protectively over her chicks, the fox or the fire simply take the mother first and the chicks next. The success rate as a protection strategy is very low. Why not the twelve legions of angels, or at least a couple of Acacia’s flying side kicks? A thorough response to that question can’t be jammed into a sermon that has already pretty much done its time, so let me just give one little bit for now. Jesus’ desire to liberate us from violence is not just in the immediate, but always also in the big picture, and Jesus knows that violence can never be defeated by violence. When violence is applied to violence, it always begets more violence. Sometimes it leads to immediate escalation, and sometimes when one side is vastly more powerful, it leads instead to festering resentment that eventually explodes in further violence. Jesus knows that if he calls on the twelve legions of angels to bring more violence into the system, it simply means that there is now more violence in the system and therefore everybody is even more in danger than before. Retaliation and retribution only ever increase the sum total of violence spiralling around in the closed system. There are only two ways that the total volume of violence is ever reduced, and they usually go hand in hand. One is by soaking it up, by absorbing it without returning it. “Jerusalem, how often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings in the face of the violence of the foxes.” And the other is by injecting the only known antidote to violence into the system, and that is mercy. And those two so often go hand in hand because mercy is at its most potent when it is offered by the immediate victim of the violence.

We heard the Apostle Paul in another of our readings talking, as he often does, about imitating role models as a pathway to discipleship, and the imagery of following Jesus on the road is clear in the gospel story too. This road of courageously continuing to do what is right in the face of oppositions and threats, and being ready if need be to cop the consequences without contributing to the violence ourselves, is a road we are called to follow Jesus on, imitating him for the life of the world. Our friends at the Holy Transfiguration monastery have a line in their mission statement that says “Let our only experience of violence be in suffering it.” That does pose something of a challenge to my participation in next week’s Tae Kwondo class, but it is an excellent succinct summary of what it means to follow Jesus on this road. And as we continue this Lenten journey, following Jesus is what it is all about. Anyway, if Jesus had twelve legions of angels at his command, he may well have had a pretty potent spinning back kick too, but he was strong enough and wise enough and courageous enough to make his only experience of violence be in suffering it. So let’s commit ourselves to following him further down the same Lenten road, all the way to the cross.

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