“Question Authority”
By the Rev. Casey Kloehn Dunsworth

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

Most of you know that I am married, in part because I use two last names and in part because I wear a traditional wedding ring on my left hand, and also in part because I have spoken to you about Jonathan, my spouse, at some point. 

Jonathan is an English teacher, teaching 7th and 8th graders over at Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Junior High on the Eastern side of Davis. He has been teaching English for as long as I have known him, and even a few years before that. As a self-proclaimed word nerd, it surprised no one in my life when I chose him as a partner. 

One of the things that is most excellent about Jonathan is his curiosity about the work that I do, and his willingness to take part in some of it, including, but not limited to, talking out my sermons with me when I’m in the brainstorming spitballing wondering stage. 

I can’t cut corners when talking with Jonathan about the assigned texts for the week. He does not have a graduate theological education nor a pastor’s library from which to draw; in addition to his degrees in English, History, and even a minor in Religious Studies, his Jewish upbringing in the Christian hegemony of the United States has made him a thoughtful, and good, and moral person, and so his collaboration is a treasure. 

As he is my beloved, I could spend a long time telling you about him, but you are perhaps wondering what he has to do with you, on this second Sunday in Lent. Well, I’ll tell you. But first, I’ll tell you about the Bible. 

As progressive protestants, our relationship with scripture is so rich, because we are not limited by an allegedly literal reading of the Bible nor by a top-down hard-line “this is what the Bible says” approach from our preachers and teachers. We are free to read the Bible for the complex collection of literature that it is, from generations of God’s people throughout their known world. 

Our scripture has histories, and poetry, and apocalyptic literature, and interpersonal correspondence, and narratives, and wisdom, and prophecy. The people of God have been theologizing their experience for millenia, and that’s reflected in the dozens of centuries of events chronicled in the Bible. 

The people who compiled our lectionary had a lot to work with, and I do not envy them their task. This week, they gave us such an interesting collection of texts, full of different ways to imagine God. What a treat! This week, Jonathan’s English teacher chops got to shine, because on top of talking theology and history, we’re talking about imagery and metaphor. 

Think back to your last English class, and remember those units in figurative language. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a metaphor is “a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable” and imagery is defined as “visually descriptive or figurative language, especially in a literary work.”

If you’d be so kind as to pick up your bulletin—or, if you’re with us online, please click over to that window—and review the pages with the scripture printed on them. I want you to skim and then please shout out—or type in the chat—any figurative language that you encounter. This is the kind of audience participation feared by congregations and middle school classrooms alike!

[The congregation begins to shout out answers]

Excellent work, everyone. So many participation points were scored for today. 

Why did I have you do this? Oh, several reasons. For one, I like causing a ruckus. Two, I like tricking people into exegesis. 

What’s exegesis, you may ask! It comes from Greek words that mean “to lead out of” and it is our fancy word for the critical interpretation of scripture. It’s the act of reading scripture and extracting meaning. 

There are books and books of exegesis done by other people that you can read, and you can also sit down with your Bible and scribble in the margins and wonder about what it says, whenever you like. 

If our scripture did not contain figurative language like these phrases we have just identified, and was simply a list of literal and declarative sentences about God, it would be a lot shorter and a lot less interesting. So, the main thing our exegesis has taught us is that there is more to the stories in our scripture than meets the eye. 

We are in the second week of the season of Lent, the 40 days leading to Easter. Last week, Ernie led us through Jesus’ 40 days of temptation in the desert, which recall the Israelites 40 years of wandering, which recall the Great Flood’s 40 days of deluge. Scripture is full of self-referential instances like this, reminding us of the connection between all these characters in God’s story, including us.

In our scripture during this season, we follow Jesus on his journey in public ministry, ultimately leading to his arrest and execution. This week, we read a terse exchange with some religious leaders. They tell Jesus to leave town, because Herod is trying to kill him. 

This is interesting, because more typically in our lectionary, we read stories that set the Pharisees against Jesus, arguing with him about any number of things. This instance, though, seems like perhaps they are more aligned than that, giving him a heads up that he is in danger. It’s also possible that they are simply trying to get Jesus out of the way.

Jesus replies by insulting Herod and them. He starts his reply by saying, “Go and tell that fox for me,” insinuating that they are in close contact with Herod, enough that they could pass along a message. As religious leaders, they should not be cozying up to the Roman occupying forces, friendly with the empire.

By calling Herod a fox, Jesus makes his understanding of Herod’s penchant for deception quite clear. Foxes, metaphorically, tend to represent suspicion and craftiness. Someone who is sinister and cunning and practiced in dishonesty might be called “sly as a fox”. Jesus holds Herod in fairly low esteem. 

His message is not simply to name-call, but to remind Herod that his authority is not ultimate. Jesus answers to one more powerful than Herod, or Caesar, or any earthly leader. And because he is loyal to no God but God, he has work to do in the world, and Herod will not get in the way of that work. 

There are wounds to heal and demons to cast out and that ministry cannot be waylaid by the likes of Herod. Jesus does not cower in the face of Herod’s threat. His primary concern is continuing to bring forth the kindom of God, even though that puts him in grave danger. We who know the whole story know just how much danger Jesus will be in. 

Jesus continues his figurative language journey by exclaiming, “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” Inasmuch as this is a reprimand, I don’t want us to lose sight of the idea that God desires to hold us close, keeping us together and free from harm. The image of a hen gathering her chicks is quaint, but the imagery is especially rich when we recall the idiom “a fox in the henhouse” points toward the danger of trusting someone with questionable intentions. 

With Herod the fox prowling God’s proverbial henhouse, we are left to wonder:

Who has our interests at heart? To whose authority should we submit? 

Is it Herod? Caesar? Empire? 

Or is it Jesus? The God who loves us? One another?

One of the reasons that we are gathered here this morning is because we need help answering this question. If it were clear to us, we could go about our lives with much less to-do around confessing and repenting and praying and learning and growing. But as it stands, as we repeat in our liturgy week after week, we have failed to love our neighbor as ourselves, and so we gather to worship the God who created us and who loves us dearly—just as a hen gathers her brood, so our God holds us close.

Meanwhile, wars rage as empires grasp for power. We are lured in so many directions, by so many foxes who would have us believe that they know what is best for us. Wouldn’t we like to make some money, gain some influence, live a life of leisure! But by submitting to the powers and principalities of this world—the imperialist white supremacist capitalist cisheteropatriarchy—we deny the authority of God.

At the start of this service, we said aloud the decalogue, the ten commandments. We began, “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of bondage. You shall have no other gods but me. You shall not make for yourself any idol. You shall not invoke with malice the Name of the Lord your God.”

Martin Luther is famous for his theological claim that we are all simultaneously saints and sinners, and so just as we receive these commandments, ask God for mercy, and confess the sin that so easily entangles, we are beloved. 

Every day, we choose the idolatry of individualism and power over the collective liberation freely given to us by the God of grace. But it is God who brought the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, and it is God who liberates us from the power of sin and death. It is not by our own power that we are free, not by our own power that we are healed. And it is not by any earthly power, either.

With these truths, we cannot devote ourselves to powers other than God. We cannot cause harm to one another in the name of God. We cannot fight wars in the name of God. We cannot legislate away human rights in the name of God. 

In this season of Lent, we are invited to ritually reimagine our relationship with God. We pick up spiritual practices that reconnect us with God’s presence, and we throw off everything that hinders. 

You may have, at some time, done some type of fasting as part of your Lenten discipline, abstaining from a food or drink that you considered a vice. If your relationship to those substances is hindering right relationship with God and with your siblings in Christ, then by all means, leave it behind. 

But the invitation to a holy Lent runs deeper than our diets. 

Could we fast from consumerism?

Could we fast from perfectionism? 

Could we fast from overwork? 

Could we fast from self-loathing? 

Could we fast from prejudice? 

Could we fast from idolatry? 

Jesus flouts the authority that Herod so desperately wants to exert, and returns to the fundamentals of his ministry. He has healing to do. In this season of Lent, I invite your pursuit of Christ-like-ness to include this same disregard for the fox in the henhouse. We have healing to do. Amen.

(Photo from Canva)