This is a sermon preached at St Nicholas, Eydon, on Sunday 13 March 2022

The occasion was the Second Sunday of Lent.

Scriptures relating are: 

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18 & Philippians 3:17-4:1 & Luke 13:31-end

You can listen to a recording of the sermon here.

Down the ages many parents have told their little ones some of Aesop’s fables of foxes and hens and goats and dogs and all kinds of animals … Do you know any of them?

In today’s story about Jesus - from the gospel book of Luke - Jesus uses the picture-language of fox and hens, just as with Aesop’s stories.  The story is for us grown-ups, as much as for the kids.

Jesus observes that there are those who choose to exercise wile and deceit, false flattery – in pursuit of their own agenda.  These are identified with the fox.  Jesus confronts their evil and their evil manoeuvring.

Jesus says that our wisdom about seeing and calling out this evil of wiliness is a gift of the Holy Spirit (what the scriptures often call ‘discernment’).

Our Lord Jesus calls us to exercise this discernment – through the Holy Spirit’s help – and also to have the determination to go a better way, ourselves…

When we are made Christians in our Baptism, the promises and decisions we make – or are made for us by our parents and godparents - talk about choosing to go Jesus’ way through life…

And it must be a way that cares for others…

Jesus presents himself as a mother hen to the people of the city of Jerusalem - the ‘weak one’ in the fox and hens story!

But, ultimately, the wise and rewarded one.

Jesus lives not just for himself, but as a servant of others.  He cares for others as much as for Himself.

We come to dear Tiggy’s baptism, in just a moment, now..

In baptism, God’s promise and call are bound together.  Come, you are a beloved child of God.  All these others are your brothers and sisters, equally beloved.  Trust God, like Jesus, like our father Abraham, that God’s children are more in number than the stars in the night sky. And give your life away for them…only that way will you really find it…

The hope of baptism, for all of us, the baptised, is that we will come to see God increasingly present in our lives; that Jesus will be showing her and us the shape to look for; and that she and we will say, as we shall liturgically in our holy communion meal, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord”.

+Amen