March 16, 2025 "Love bridges the gap"

Second Sunday in Lent

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

Psalm 27

Philippians 3:17-4:1

Luke 13:31-35

Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ,

grace and peace to you from the one who gathers us under her wings. Amen

Sometimes in a life of faith

 there seems to be a disconnect

 between the promised future and the present reality,

a gap that needs to be bridged

 but no apparent means of building a bridge.

And time and time again

God fills the gaps with self-sacrificial love

 and invites us to imitate that response as a way of life.

Throughout all of our lessons for today

 we see these gaps and this love.

Abraham,

often lauded as the most faithful of persons,

 the one who drops everything and follows God,

 who is the poster boy for trust and faith,

still has questions.

He believes God

when God promises him descendants

 as many as the stars

and the land to go with it,

and God knows that his belief is genuine,

God reckons him as righteous,

but Abraham still wonders,

 how?

 How will this be when I am childless and landless?

 There is a gap between what you have promised God and reality

 how are you going to do this?

And God responds,

 not with a detailed plan of how this is going to work

but by doubling down on the promise,

a promise that puts God’s own self on the line

 in the making of a covenant.

 It’s a strange scene that is described,

 God directing Abraham to gather a collection of animals

 and to cut them in half

and in the dark God in the form of a flaming torch

passing through these dismembered animals.

What is going on here?

What is going on is the making of a covenant,

a serious promise,

one that puts the life of the one who is promising on the line.

 Passing through the animals in essence says

“If I break my promise

may it be to me as to these animals.”

It is a promise made with one's own life. 

Similarly we hear self-sacrificial language

 in Jesus’ response to the Pharisees

 who come to warn Jesus away from Jerusalem

because Herod wants to kill him.

As a devout Jew

 Jerusalem is the center of the world for Jesus,

 it is the home of the temple,

 which is the home of God. (https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-in-lent-3/commentary-on-luke-1331-35-6)

 Luke tells us that Jesus comes from a family

 that travels to Jerusalem for all the festivals,

that when he is young

Jesus feels so at home in the temple

 that he stays there debating with the teachers

 even after his family leaves for home

so that they have to come back for him,

 and after looking all over for him

 and they finally find him in the temple

Mary scolds Jesus,

And he is confused as only matter of fact adolescents are confused:

 “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49).

 Jerusalem, the temple,

 is a place that Jesus loves dearly,

 and yet he knows that this beloved place

 also fails to live up to the holiness contained within it,

 there is a gap between what is

 and what is promised.

 And Jesus throws himself into the gap,

weeping over the reality,

and then painting the image of himself

 as a mother hen gathering her chicks beneath her wings to protect them.

A lovely image

 but one that indicates what is to come.

Herod is pictured as a fox,

and as protective and defensive as they might be,

 hens are simply no match for foxes,

 the chicks will be protected at the expense of the mother hen’s life.

We know that this is precisely what Jesus does on the cross.

What he chooses to do

as the Christ hymn in Philippians says:

“who, though he was in the form of God,

 did not regard equality with God

 as something to be exploited,

 but emptied himself,

 taking the form of a slave,

 being born in human likeness.

 And being found in human form,

 he humbled himself

 and became obedient to the point of death —

 even death on a cross.”

We heard last week

how at the beginning of his ministry

Jesus was tempted in the wilderness with his own humanity.

 The question being would he,

could he

 set aside his divinity

 for the full suffering experience of humanity?

And he did,

 he continued to go hungry

 despite the fact that he could have turned stones into bread.

Throughout his life and ministry

Jesus continues to resist the temptation

to avoid the realities of humanity,

even and especially the reality of death,

and he does this not for himself

but for us,

to fill the gap between the reality of life now

 and the promised life in God.

Jesus is the bridge.

And Jesus is still the bridge,

 because we are still waiting in the gap

between the kingdom of God that has come near

and the fullness of the Kingdom of God

where there is no more mourning or crying or pain or hunger.

we hear the promise that Jesus has come to bring good news to the poor,

 release to the captives, sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed.

And like Abraham we trust that it is so,

and like Abraham we look around us and wonder, how?

It seems like an impossible leap.

 And to our question

Jesus points us to his work on the cross,

and invites us to imitate his self-sacrificial love,

this is Paul’s message to the Philippians,

indeed he introduces the Christ hymn with: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus…”

and again in our second reading invites the faithful

to imitate Christ

just as Paul and the other apostles are imitating him.

 Paul is realistic,

there are lots of people who live contrary to the way of the cross,

 in direct opposition to it even,

 people that make imitating Christ difficult

 but he reminds the Philippians “our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself. Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.”

Stand firm in the Lord,

Abraham’s shield,

the psalmist’s light, salvation, and stronghold,

 Paul’s savior,

Jesus’ mother hen.

we are to imitate Christ,

 to fill the gaps we find in life

with the love with which we have first been loved.

Love that comes at a cost

Love that promises to even then

Gather us under the safety of her wings. Amen