All the days of my life (March 16)

Image, Joan Mitchell, Cypress, 1980

In one of the great segments of The Twilight Zone a scholarly man finds himself post-apocalyptic scene, seemingly the last man left alive. It all seems fairly dire, until he stumbles upon a library... of course, it is the Twilight Zone, so things don't necessarily go as planned. You can watch the ending here.
 
We have a lot of stories where we long for a place, some utopia, and then, when we arrive there is a cruel and ironic twist. The vision of the future, the idealised time to come, the mythical place of the character’s dream looks great from afar, built up by imagination and yearning but by the end of the story we discover that what has been eagerly awaited cannot live up to expectations, plagued by some flaw inherent to its nature. Readied as we are by such stories and their twists, the words of the psalm, One thing I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, might be accompanied by a sense of foreboding. Like, yes, you wish that now, but have you really thought such things through? Will there not yet be a rug pulled out from under your dreams?
 
We are progressing through the season of Lent, the forty days of preparation for Calvary. We ready ourselves through piety, prayer, and proclamation to feel the upheaval, the drama, tragedy and victory of the cross and the empty tomb. Our readings today serve such an end.
 
The Psalm captures the Lenten yearning for refuge and salvation. The psalm teaches our heart to Come and seek God’s face. For at heart, this is what Lenten habits of fasting and forgoing, or of focused intensifying of spiritual practices are aimed toward: teaching our hearts to seek the one thing, to strip away the distractions and find the one thing to ask of the Living God, to discover or rediscover the one place in which we shall find true rest, refuge, and delight.
 
Pressed in on all sides the Psalmist looks toward the refuge of God’s presence. World-weary and wrung dry the Psalmist yearns to come in from the cold and exist in the warmth of God’s beauty – represented on earth for them in the Temple. Their desire, born of faith and struggle is to spend their days where eternity and time intersect, where divine presence dwells on earth. To press in with the assembly to seek God’s face, learn God’s ways, and see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
 
Speaking of a place where time and eternity intersect and the divine presence dwells on earth, let’s talk about the gospel reading. Evil doers assail Jesus, seeking to devour his flesh, and he is warned by some Pharisees to flee for safety. This is a good reminder that the relationship between Jesus and the Pharisees is not simply one of protagonist and antagonist. While there is (at times heated) disagreement between the parties, it is clear Jesus spends a great deal of time amidst the Pharisees. And here, we see that far from betraying Jesus into the hands of Herod, the Pharisees burst in with warnings… warnings which serve to ready us again for Easter.
 
For where the psalm readies us by giving voice to yearning, the gospel readies us by setting the stage of the conflict narrative that will drive us to the cross. For having been warned, Jesus offers perhaps his most explicit critique of Herod and the worldly powers assailing him: Go and tell that fox for me… The following proclamation of Jesus’ messianic mission, his prophetic cause, his foreshadowing of his death and victory is all placed here in direct confrontation and defiance of Herod, which is a confrontation and defiance of the imperial rule of his day.
 
In calling Herod a fox, Jesus is also able to define the nature of this conflict. Because, in the same speech that Jesus refers to Herod as a fox, he describes himself as a Mother Hen. Flee, Jesus is warned, a fox approaches, no, Jesus says, my desire is to gather the children of Jerusalem like a mother hen her chicks. Compared to the wily, destructive, and violent fox, Jesus is the nurturing, protective, and unassuming hen. The contest between Jesus and the forces out to subdue him is not likened by Jesus to two waring armies, but a fox and a mother hen. Jesus’ desire is not glorious battle, but to gather and shelter. To make of himself, a place where we will find our refuge, a place we can seek to live all the days of our lives, a place to behold the beauty of the Lord. Here, his very body – which at this moment is assailed and threatened by evil forces – is held out to the world as a place of refuge and hope. Jesus speaks to those around him: ready yourself, the hour approaches, and remember when the work is finished, who it was that dwelt among you.
 
We seek something which will not disappoint, sweet waters with no bitter aftertaste. For he who has been tried did not fail. He who was buried did not stay buried. Lent readies us for a crescendo, the climax of the contest. Lent readies us for an ending, the death of Christ on the cross. And Lent also readies us for a new beginning in the Easter dawn. And when we arrive at each of these sites, we shall not be disappointed. We shall not feel the pinch of poetic irony. We shall not grow weary of their fields and flowers. For this is the site at which eternity and time intersect, where the divine presence dwells on earth, where the kingdom of God draws near, on earth as it is in heaven. Pressed on all sides, world-weary and wrung dry we can come again and again to the story and find the very presence of Christ, his very body opened toward us offering shelter and refuge from all sorts of foxes. Be strong and take heart, for here we behold the beauty of the Lord.
 
And yet, while Lent readies us for an ending, teaching our hearts to seek the one good thing, it also teaches us to seek this ending in the middle. Lent teaches us, that is, to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. In walking these forty days with Christ we learn to value power which nurtures, shelters, and gathers, and wonder how we as Christ’s body might act the hen. In gathering together in prayer, piety, and proclamation we learn how to lift our heads to make sounds of joy, and wonder how we as Christ’s body might battle back the forces that compel our neighbours to keep their heads low. In moving out into the world to bless the living with love and good deeds, we learn to seek God’s face in the least of these and wonder how as the body of Christ we might behold the Lord’s beauty in places the world consigns as ugly.
 
Wait for the Lord! The Psalmist proclaims. This isn’t a waiting until there is finally time enough, when all the diversions are wiped away and the ecosystem aligns with the fruition of our desires. We are waiting for one who was and is and is to come, waiting for one who is present with us, and who has already gone ahead to make for us a room to spend all the days of our lives. This is an active, engaged, creative, and communal waiting where we live within the belief that we shall see (and indeed might become) the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. So be strong and let your heart take courage. Live as those gathered and sent by a hen amongst foxes, until the great and glorious day when you say, Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.