Are We Willing?

As Jesus describes Jerusalem’s unwillingness to be gathered by him, we must confront our own fear of being gathered.

Gathered with Jesus amidst the Pandemic
Lent 2C | Luke 13:31-35

“How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

For teachers, parents, caregivers: do these words not resonate?

That desire: to gather what is divided, separated, or driven to its own course. To bring us together as a mother, to nurture and protect. To offer safety from the scary world out there.

We recognize that desire to protect and how unwilling the people are to receive that protection.

Has this not been our last two years? Struggling like chicks whose mother longs to protect. And as mothers longing to protect the unprotectable.

How much time we have all spent on this very concept! With our schools, churches, and government buildings. How to protect our children, workers, and community from danger.

You and I have no doubt spent time daily. Literally daily for two years. Over 700 days we have spent worrying, hoping, praying that our families, friends, neighbors, strangers, even people on the other side of the planet, would be saved from COVID-19.

And we’re tired, aren’t we?

Not just of the safety measures or the thinking about it. But worrying about each other.

I recently had a conversation with parents of adult children. And we talked about the testing of boundaries: particularly curfews during the teen years. In one case, the son had climbed out a window and so the Mom waited in the dark, sitting on his bed. The shock on his face must have been worth the wait.

The stories are funny because they involve children who, in the end, are willing to listen. At least a little.

But they are also stories of longing. And concern. A mother who can’t protect the child who refuses her protection.

What is interesting for us, however, is that Jesus addresses this not to the Pharisees, but to the city, Jerusalem.

“How often have I desired to gather your children…and you were not willing!”

Jesus isn’t speaking to individuals claiming their own liberty. He’s speaking to a community, its government, and the Temple at the center of it. It isn’t simply that some people were unwilling, the city and nation were unwilling.

Being gathered

From the beginning, we’ve struggled with how to be the church when all our norms are thrown off. Church every Sunday. Inside this building. Eucharist. Coffee Hour. Vestments and bulletins. Ushers and Greeters, acolytes and chalicists. The gospel processed and read from the middle of the room.

Bread in our hands and wine in our mouths.

Being physically separated from our routines didn’t just feel wrong, it felt like a denial. It was painful.

But it also reveals things about us. How much our faith has been dependent on this particular routine rather than the breadth of Christian practice and witness. And how our physical presence with each other is, in some ways inseparable from our sense of presence with Jesus.

You all might not call yourselves theologians, but that is some deep, incarnational theology we’re all doing. And we’re basing our very lives on that theological conviction.

Gathering

In part two of We shall be changed, the authors Lizette Larson-Miller, Andrew McGowan, and Deanna Thompson invite us to see how traditional it is to describe the church as gathering in multiple locations. That physical presence together is not a requirement for gathering or communion.

It is certain that there are things we can only do when in each other’s presence. But gathering as children of God doesn’t require it.

In the first conversation in the book, Lorenzo Lebrija brings up the advent of virtual reality and artificial intelligence. Whole ways of engaging our world that transcend our physical bodies and locations in it. And these offer us new avenues to participate and commune.

This is especially true for the disabled and the homebound; who may gain access to community like never before.

The same can be said for anyone who feels lonely. At home or in a crowd.

Virtual Reality and the use of artificial intelligence are not insignificant alternatives but new frontiers that account for part of the wider whole we not only can, but must attend to. As it is only now being realized.

The Problem with Getting Specific

I know some of us hate this level of abstract thinking. Just tell me what to do! Or What does this have to do with us specifically?

But, it has been our failure to attend to the abstract thinking, the true why of what we’re doing that has made it so hard to gather Jerusalem’s chicks in this pandemic time.

We have given laser-like focus to the details of our protocols and timelines, our arguments and our politics, our reason and our conviction, that I have rarely heard talk of our theological curiosity and spiritual journey through a time of turmoil and emotional struggle.

How have we grown?

I did not “lose” anything. I have lived the last two years. This is not just survival.

This time certainly reminded me of how easily we define living by the trips we take or the stuff we do or by our general busyness rather than the wealth and depth of experiences we have. The terrible Zoom Thanksgivings in 2020 may now be remembered as something kind of sweet. We didn’t just try something new. We did it. And it is easily more memorable than most years.

Christians have gathered in separate places from the beginning. It is actually a modern distortion to pin the in-person, physically-present worship experience as not only the centerpiece of faith, but the entirety of it. Our physically coming to this place to do the Eucharist weekly in an unbroken streak for perpetuity is a brand-new idea.

In her piece, “Come, Let Us Worship!” Lizette Larson-Miller names how the pandemic invited people to discover for the first time how to pray in new and innovative ways. Ways that are, in fact, only new to them, but have deep roots within our tradition.

That we as a community have struggled is quietly condemning. For we have sought to sustain ourselves only on the Eucharistic feast in the physical presence of our neighbors for so long, we found ourselves unprepared to gather in our homes for the daily offices, devotionals, or contemplative practices that make for a well-rounded and robust life in faith.

This, however, is not an opportunity to berate ourselves for our failure, but to learn and try again.

In our gospel, Jesus names the separation that the people have chosen. It wasn’t inevitable. This was no “act of God”—God didn’t choose this for them.

Sometimes we aren’t willing to be faith-full.

In those times, we aren’t willing to see ourselves as together in our different homes; together where we are; together in our difference. We see our separation, distance, as manifested by our physical bodies, but not that our physical bodies feel! That we drop to our knees in anguish and frustration! Or sing with jubilation with Christmas hymns.

Of course it’s not the same! Why would it be? My kids are unwilling to eat baked mac and cheese, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t, in fact, mac and cheese! It means they are being picky and refusing to eat dinner the way it is!

And I don’t blame them! They are allowed their preference. But that is their choice. WE are still eating together, gathered at the same table.

So are we willing? To eat together? Pray together? Dream together? Serve together?

Are we willing to live together? In this life, with all its messiness and dysfunction?

Are we willing to dwell here? Encourage our neighbors here? Love the children of God here?

Are we willing to do all of this knowing that words like presence and here extend beyond the physical, just like willing extends beyond Jerusalem; commitment beyond the disciples; ministry beyond the apostles; church beyond the building; faith beyond our beliefs; and life beyond ourselves?

Are we willing to be gathered by Jesus in all of these new frontiers? Jesus knows we are. We just need to believe him.