Sermon for the Second Sunday of Lent

Sermon for St Mary's Hendon on 4th March 2007

Genesis 15.1-12, 17-18
Philippians 3.17-4.1
Luke 13.31-end

In nomine…

“How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.” (Lk 13.34)

So, we’re eleven days into Lent, eleven whole days of abstinence. How does it feel so far? Pining for a pint? Sickening for a cigarette? Craving some coffee?

Our experience of Lent can be quite an angular thing. We treat it is as if the only way to closer communion with God is through awkward and jarring disciplines. We try almost to recreate our own mini-version of Crucifixion. Of course, there is a hallowed place in the tradition for this self-denial, and it is indeed often useful and fruitful in our Lenten journey to the Cross and Resurrection of Our Lord.

There is another perspective though, which often gets overlooked, but which our readings remind us of today.

For Jesus, lamenting that Jerusalem is the place where prophets are killed, tells us his desire is to gather us together. What contrast between the violence of the city that stones people and kills the prophets, and the analogy of a hen gathering her brood under her wings. For a hen gathers together her brood gently, here no jarring actions or awkward movements will help, indeed, they would only further disperse the birds.

Jesus instead presents us with an image of a way of gentleness, of meekness and humility. His desire is to coax us peacefully into the protection which, in the image the psalmist uses, is found under the shadow of the wings of the Lord (Ps 17.8). He contrasts the way of violence with his way of gentleness.

But this is no simple contrast of one way with another. Rather than demeaning it as “not his way of doing things”, Christ actually does something with violence. Jesus cuts through cycles of violence, of the killing and stoning of prophets, of myriad forms of destruction, abuse, aggression, he even cuts through the violence of Crucifixion. For in submitting himself to the shame and violence of the Cross, Jesus steps into violence and presents the alternative of anti-violence. God himself, in Christ, redeems the violence of suffering and death to inaugurate a kingdom built on peace. Christ enters into the violence of our human existence to save us from the violence we experience.

And here, in today’s Gospel, we hear that Christ has set his face toward Jerusalem, knowing the pain that awaits him there. He will not heed the Pharisees’ warning (that Herod wants to have him killed), because in order to fulfil his mission from the Father, he must complete his work as Redeemer. He must submit himself to that violence which will disclose his identity as Saviour.

And not just a Saviour who undoes the violence of death, but one who inaugurates a new way, one who gathers us as those redeemed from violence, under his protective wings, into a community together. That Christ talks of gathering us together indicates that there is something corporate going on here. The redemption from violence he offers isn’t available to each of us as a sort of cosy, hippy-like, individualised way of peace and love. Rather, he gathers us into a community where his way of peace is to be lived out together.

St Paul, in our epistle talks of our bodies being “conformed to the body of [Christ’s] glory” (Phil 3.21). Likewise, he tells us that “our citizenship is in heaven” (3.20). The glory of Christ’s body is that which is revealed to us in his Resurrection, when his experience and transcending of the violence of the Cross is realised. This glory that transfigures the dead body of Jesus into the radiant body of the risen Lord, is the same glory as is known in heaven, for it is the very glory of God. How then, are we, as St Paul says “conformed to this glory”, to the glory of the Risen Lord, which is the heavenly glory of God?

Well, simply put, this happens here. Christ calls us to this place, to this community, to this Church, and to each other, again he gathers us together here that we might be conformed to the glory of his body. The Spirit’s work within us is to reveal, bit-by-bit, the glory of God, the image of him in whose image we were first created. We do this by being a community of love, by being a people of prayer, by study and reflection on Scripture, by being people of kindness, generosity and charity, by our gathering here to share his body and blood in the Sacred Feast. These are the disciplines of Lent, these are the spaces within in which the Spirit works to conform us to his glory, to gather here and be an anticipation of that place where our true citizenship is –in heaven, where the fullness of Christ’s glory will be revealed, and the fullness of his glory in us will be realised.

To be conformed to the glory of Christ’s body isn’t to put-on the straight-jacket of refraining from coffee, alcohol, chocolate or whatever else we might have given up. Although such disciplines will inevitably focus our thoughts on our goal, they are the means rather than the end. Rather, to be conformed to his glory is to be more truly ourselves, to more fully be the person he has created us to be. For we were created in his image, so the truer we are to our real selves, the truer we are to his image in us – the more of him will be revealed in us.

And this is a gradual uncovering, which the Spirit of God effects in us. Think, for instance, of an old portrait painting, on which, over the years, has accreted layers of dust, of grime and smoke until the image of the man in the painting has become obscured, almost hidden by this mess that masks him. Now think of the work of the picture restorer, gradually and painstakingly revealing the image that has always lain beneath. The picture restorer, with brush and cotton bud and cloth gently rubbing away, bit by bit applying tiny amounts of water, of white spirit. And gradually, slowly, the true image, the image that was first intended by the artist is revealed. The old details and features are exposed and given new life.

So is the Spirit’s work in us. As Christ did, the Spirit eschews the way of violence. Imagine what would happen if one took a wire-brush and some bleach to that old portrait. So God, by his Spirit, reveals in us the image of him by whom we were created. We are conformed to the glory of Christ’s body not with the jarring, angular use of violence, of bleach and wire-brush, of aggression, but with the gradual, gentle removal of layers of sin and dirt, the purging of walls of defensiveness and pretence, of all those things that impede our receptivity to God’s work in us. We are conformed to Christ’s glory by the gentle uncovering of the image beneath, the true image, the truer self.

George Herbert, that great 17th Century Anglican poet captures this dynamic of God’s rejection of the means of violence, and his choosing of the way of gentleness and peace in his dealings with us in his poem “Discipline”.

THROW away Thy rod,
Throw away Thy wrath;
O my God,
Take the gentle path!
For my heart's desire
Unto Thine is bent:
I aspire
To a full consent.

Not a word or look
I affect to own,
But by book,
And Thy Book alone.

Though I fail, I weep;
Though I halt in pace,
Yet I creep
To the throne of grace.

Then let wrath remove;
Love will do the deed;
For with love
Stony hearts will bleed.

Love is swift of foot;
Love 's a man of war,
And can shoot,
And can hit from far.

Who can 'scape his bow?
That which wrought on Thee,
Brought Thee low,
Needs must work on me.

Throw away Thy rod;
Though man frailties hath,
Thou art God:
Throw away Thy wrath!


So the image of God is revealed in us by the way of anti-violence, the way of Divine action in the world of which Christ’s choosing of the Cross is the archetype: That way by which Christ gathers us under the protection of his wings, gathers us to this place, and begins the work of conforming us to the image of his glory: the image in which we were created, and the glory of heaven which is ours in him.


May we be gathered closer to him,
and closer to each other this Lent,
that we may be conformed to the body of his glory,
and his image revealed in us,
who lives and reigns now and forever.
Amen.