Preacher: Dana Cassell

Scripture: Luke 13:31-35

My friend Cindy spent her career as a high school teacher in Virginia Beach. Cindy is funny and snarky and fiercely protective of the people she loves. She started the first GSA – Gay Straight Alliance – at the school where she taught, and was a staunch protector and supporter of hundreds of queer kids who needed protection and support during particularly tender times in their lives.

A few years ago, Cindy’s daughter Alicia organized an online fundraiser for the GSA club that her mom was running, and in the invitation to give, she said that if you knew Cindy, then you knew that she was not necessarily a PLEASANT person, that she actually complained about everything all the time and that she had far too many FEELINGS, but by GOD, she was fiercely committed to those kids and that was worth celebrating.

Maybe you know somebody like that: not exactly polite or always pleasant to be around, but motivated by a fierce kind of protective love for others.

My neighbor, C, is another one of those people. I think sometimes he actually tries his hardest to be rude to people who come through our lobby. He is grumpy and sour most of the time, and likes to complain about stuff. But he treats every dog that crosses his path with the utmost respect and care, a true giveaway to his actual character. And as I got to know him, I learned that he volunteers to drive another of our neighbors hours away for their regular medical treatments, and he also donates his time three days a week at the local free clinic.

Maybe you know some of these people, people who refuse to be “nice” or “polite,” but whose lives bear witness to a deep well of compassion and love. I bet you’re picturing their faces and remembering some of the things they’ve done right now.

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I often wonder what it would have been like to know Jesus when he was walking around here on earth. I mean, of course we have the accounts of who he was and what he was like in scripture, but the gospel writers were, on the whole, more concerned with making their theological arguments and narrative points than they were with drawing a full character sketch of Jesus.

What was Jesus LIKE? Was he funny? Intense? Good at small talk? Did he keep a rigid schedule or was he more go-with-the-flow? Did he enjoy interacting with all the people who crossed his path or did that exhaust him? Did he annoy people? Were his disciples ever just totally fed up with his behavior? Would I have liked him? Wanted to be his friend?

Do you ever wonder about those things? 

I think it can be hard to think about Jesus’ personality, his eccentricities, the particularities that would have made him a real, live, flesh and blood human being. Jesus was God, right, so how could we dare to imagine him with…FLAWS? It feels almost heretical to think about Jesus as possibly being…ANNOYING, doesn’t it?

But Jesus was a person, and just like all of us, he had habits and personality, particularities and eccentricities. This passage from Luke’s gospel gives us an interesting little glimpse into some of those particularities.

First of all, when the Pharisees show up and tell him that King Herod wants to kill him, Jesus gets salty: “You go tell that FOX,” he says, straight up insulting the Roman governor who is threatening his death.

Calling Herod a fox is intentional, and it’s not nice. Generally, kings would have been compared to lions: majestic, powerful, top of the food chain. But foxes are, well, small. They are sneaky. They survive by prowling around the edges of daylight and stealing from others. Jesus calling Herod a fox isn’t polite or kind or politically correct. It’s an insult.

And, uh, did you know that Jesus talked like that? Did any of your Sunday School teachers tell you that Jesus regularly leveled such sick burns against the corrupt powers of his day? Has anyone suggested that the answer, sometimes, to WWJD might actually be: have serious and snarky beef with the people in charge?

I cannot count the number of times I have gotten in trouble for being snarky. My parents, my sunday school teachers, people in my congregations, denominational leaders: they have all, at one time or another, chastised me for the way I speak. Snark is not welcome in church contexts, and insults are *especially* forbidden. But you know what? In certain contexts, with certain conditions, Jesus was SUPER snarky, and Jesus DEFINITELY used insults as a way of communicating power dynamics.

But it’s important to notice the context: Jesus never punches down. Whenever he gets salty or uses these kind of insults, he is always directing them at the people who are abusing their power. Jesus uses snark and satire to dismantle structures of abusive power. 

It is also worth mentioning that even though he was the son of God and presumably had access to all kinds of divine power, Jesus never used violence against anyone. He didn’t strike Herod down with a really bad case of boils. He didn’t curse the Pharisees with blindness or hemorrhoids (both of which are curses that actually show up in scripture). Jesus used language to point out power differentials. He was snarky and salty about abuses of power.

I think this passage tells us that Jesus WAS funny, quick-witted and snarky. I think I would have liked him.

And this passage in particular is a particularly great one, because it pairs that aspect of who Jesus was with another one: immediately after he insults Herod, Jesus laments the state of Jerusalem, the city who kills prophets and refuses to be soothed. Even though the city is so hard-headed and unrepentant, Jesus says that what he wishes he could do is to “gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.”

Here is Jesus, one sentence after being super salty and cranky about Herod, expressing deep compassion and fierce protectiveness – toward the people he knows are about to detain, arrest, try and crucify him. This kind of tender mercy – to gather an entire strong-willed and defiantly violent people under his wings like a mother hen – is also part of Jesus’ personality.

I love this passage because of the ways it draws out Jesus’ character so intimately. Jesus was a funny, snarky, quick-witted and fierce opponent of all the forces of death represented here by King Herod. He did not suffer fools, or vengeful kings, and he was willing to let everyone know it.

And he was also, simultaneously, fiercely protective and loving. His deepest desire, he tells us, immediately after spitting insults at Herod, is to gather all of Jerusalem – all of Israel, all of us – under his wings like a mother hen, protecting her babies.

This picture of Jesus makes me think of my salty friend Cindy and my grumpy neighbor Clay, people who contain multitudes, who refuse to be “polite” or “politically correct,” people who have no trouble pointing out the problems and abuses of our world, but who are also in possession of deep wells of fierce, tender mercy. 

Jesus must have been a fascinating person to know, don’t you think? Complicated and contradictory, sharp-witted and tender-hearted. I love that about Jesus, because it makes him more REAL to me, and it also seems like it gives me – us – permission to live that way, too.

Maybe there ARE some powerful, vindictive people in our lives who deserve getting called out as foxes. Maybe we ARE allowed to be snarky and salty and angry about how unfair and cruel the world around us is. It makes me wonder, actually, if the kind of fierce, mother-hen mercy Jesus practiced can even exist if it isn’t paired with an equally fierce dissatisfaction with the people and systems that threaten the ones we long to gather under our wings.

Maybe you are feeling vulnerable this morning, like an endangered chick, waiting to be gathered under the wings of a fierce protector.

Maybe you are feeling fierce, like a protective mother hen, longing to gather others under your care.

And maybe you are feeling salty, needing to call out the foxes for who and what they are.

According to Luke’s gospel, all of those are real, valid feelings. And according to Luke’s gospel, all of them will put you squarely inside the biblically accurate answer to the question “what would Jesus do.”

Which is, I confess, a huge relief. Because I’ve got a lot of salty snark, a whole lot of people who need to be named as foxes, just waiting for an outlet.