"Totally Easter Barbie"

This morning’s scripture reading is Luke 13, verses 31-35, and can be found on page 739 in your pew Bibles.
I invite you to listen for the word of God
At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, “Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.”
He replied, “Go tell that fox, ‘I will drive out daemons and heal people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.’ In any case, I must keep going today and tomorrow and the next day – for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!
“Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often have I longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! Look, your house is left to you desolate. I will tell you you will not see me again until you say, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”
-The word of the Lord
-Thanks be to God.
Sermon
We all know that Herod was a bad guy; it should come as no surprise that he was out to kill Jesus as he had been trying to get Jesus since the beginning. Matthew’s gospel tells the story of Herod’s attempt to kill Jesus just after he was born as one of the wise men told Herod that a king was born who would threaten Herod’s power; for Herod in Matthew’s gospel Jesus was a political threat that had to be stopped. The author of Luke does not compare Herod to the Pharaoh of the Exodus using the slaughter of the innocents as Matthew’s author does, but still in Luke’s gospel Herod has already beheaded John the Baptist and now, by chapter 13, Herod is going after Jesus for he knew that Jesus was a person that people could believe in – and when people start to believe in something – hope in something, that can be dangerous, threatening for people who are happy with things as they are.
It is good though, that here in this passage some Pharisees warn Jesus and tell him to “leave this place and go somewhere else” as “Herod wants to kill you.” It makes sense that teachers of the law would see Jesus as the fulfillment of that Law, that the people who have been taught the most about God would recognize God in front of their eyes. We assume that these kinds of people would know that God can change things; these kinds of people would recognize the hope in a miracle worker.
But we also know that the Pharisees turn against Jesus too. That they, the educated, religious elite, who should have recognized him for who he was, missed him. If anyone should have recognized the Son of God who fulfills the prophecies, the long expected redeemer who is the fulfillment of the Law, it should have been the people who knew the Law the best.
But they missed him, and though in this passage some Pharisees are warning Jesus to get out of town, in some passages it is the Pharisees who attack him, accusing him of breaking the Law, disobeying the Sabbath and giving people who had given up on things the hope to believe that life can be different, maybe even better.
We might assume that with all their efforts towards purity and righteousness under the Law they would have recognized and celebrated Jesus’ efforts to make society more just.
I don’t know if all of you gave up anything for Lent, I am still debating between red meat and desert. I have already cheated twice so I am trying to think of something else; but I assure you, these Pharisees would have had all of us beat. Last week I heard that someone gave up snacks out of the snack machine, someone else gave up procrastination, and another person has given up bacon, but those Pharisees could teach us all something about giving things up for Lent. They were fasting all the time, staying physically clean and ritually pure; but still, they were the ones who didn’t recognize him. Though in this passage some Pharisees are warning Jesus, by the end of Luke we know that they wanted him gone just as Herod did.
It can be exciting to think that we are different today, that Georgia is different from ancient Israel and that we are very different from the Pharisees; that if Jesus were walking with me through the Kroger last week people would have embraced him, celebrated him as he walked through the rows and rows of cereal, hugged him before the huge variety of cheese-its, stopped and stared at him rather than the ice cream, the eggs, or the bread; and think of what would have happened before Kroger’s display of Totally Easter Barbie there on the shelf.
All that food and yet Kroger’s Totally Easter Barbie doll is still as skinny as a rail, I think Jesus would have been amazed.
How would people react if Jesus were to walk through the Kroger, would he be celebrated or would security be called to calm things down in much the same way that the Pharisees were offended by the Jesus who ate with sinners, tax collectors, and prostitutes, upsetting the traditional barriers of society. Would order be restored so the isles could be cleared and people wouldn’t have to fight to make their way to their cheese-its, their Totally Easter Barbie, or to the money changers who set up shop at the entrance of the Temple in ancient Jerusalem.
Things seem a lot different from the perspective of the Kroger. Modern Georgia is a lot different from Ancient Israel, and we must be a lot different from Herod and the Pharisees because we know who Jesus is, we recognize him, we listen to him.
Or maybe things aren’t so different.
Maybe we are more like the Jerusalem that Jesus calls to than we think.
Maybe we are more like the Pharisees who don’t want order disrupted, who just want to go to their temple and abide by the Law.
There were people in need of miracles then, and there still are today. There are those who are blind, who would love for Jesus to give them their sight, there are those who are sick in need of Jesus to heal them, the mourning who want their dead brought back to life. There are people today who have given up on the future, who don’t believe that things could be different, who are waiting for a miracle but not expecting one, and there are those who are perfectly happy with things as they are.
Yes the food is different in our grocery stores than it was in the marketplace a long time ago in ancient Jerusalem, but wouldn’t we be able to see beyond all our modern contraptions to see the King of Kings?
Sure there are still those who have plenty, maybe too much, and those who don’t have enough; but aren’t things more equal today than they were long ago?
And maybe there are still those in need of a medical miracle, but isn’t modern medical technology much more advanced today than it was in ancient Jerusalem?
Maybe we don’t demand strict Sabbath observance, but are we not offended or at least made uncomfortable by the homeless men and women on the street – a living sign that everything is not just right.
Maybe we would never find Totally Easter Barbie at the Jerusalem bazaar, but might we be blind to our fallenness as so many still think they have to look like Barbie to be good enough, to be beautiful.
In our passage for today from Luke, Jesus was calling to Jerusalem like a mother hen to her chicks.
But many had trouble hearing the call.
Herod and the Pharisees had trouble hearing the call.
Many today have trouble hearing that call.
But do we have trouble hearing the call?
That is what lent is all about, examining ourselves, recognizing our sin, seeing in our lives the ways that we don’t listen to Jesus calling us in like a mother hen to her chicks.
But we don’t like to spend much time in Lent, as I said before I have not been successful giving up red meat or desert, two small things.
And there is a reason Totally Easter Barbie is on the shelf of the Kroger rather than Totally Lenten Barbie.
Can you imagine what she would look like, Totally Lenten Barbie? Dolls are supposed to beautiful and clean, without outward signs of their inward sin. Totally Lenten Barbie would have to wear sack cloth and ashes, the mark of the cross on her forehead, she wouldn’t be very fun to dress up I am sure. Maybe Totally Lenten Barbie would have a shaven head – a traditional symbol of repentance and mourning – an outward sign of something inside that needs to change.
But maybe we don’t have to imagine what Totally Lenten Barbie would look like; maybe she would look something like Brittany Spears, with a shaved head and dark circles under her eyes, or maybe like Anna Nicole Smith as she mourned the loss of her son, over dosing on drugs to kill all the feelings of regret in her life. Maybe Totally Lenten Barbie would be well represented by a judge more interested in self promotion than doing justice, or boyfriends more interested in inheriting money than a daughter as we have all see in the Anna Nicole Smith court proceedings.
Our society has focused on Brittany Spears and the Anna Nicole Smith case in recent weeks and I’m not sure why. But maybe they reflect something about our society that things like Totally Easter Barbie try to ignore. Maybe they reflect the sins of our society the same way that Jesus did – bringing attention to societies brokenness rather than ignoring it by focusing on the shiny ritualized purity or the flowing golden locks atop a body supported by two tiny little feet – washing away societies make-up, getting down to the tears.
Jerusalem, Jesus said, was desolate and yet the people of Jerusalem would kill prophets and stone those sent to her.
As we watch the downward spiral of Brittany Spears or the trial involving Anna Nicole Smith’s body, money, and daughter, can’t we see that something is very wrong?
In such people we can see our culture’s obsession with celebrity, with outward looks, with attention, with fame, and with money. Do we really believe that these things can make us happy? Do we really believe that being an American Idol, being rich, and being a star will solve our problems?
That if we can isolate ourselves from the rest of the world to mansions with clean tile and shampooed carpet – places where the homeless and destitute are rounded up and sent away – that if we can just separate ourselves from things that we regret, things we don’t like to look at, that we will be happy.
We look for happiness in all the wrong places. Like the Pharisees we look for purity by separating ourselves from things and people who we think are dirty though Jesus reminds us that we are not to call dirty what God has made clean. We run the rat race looking for fulfillment, abiding by the clock as the Pharisees abided to the Law.
So we must ask: do we really believe that earning more and more money is worth it?
Do we really believe that a bigger house will fill some emptiness or void in our lives.
Do we really believe that all our searching will find its way to happiness?
In all the sadness that surrounds Brittany Spears and Anna Nicole Smith, the underside of our celebrity culture, we can see that the wages of doing things by human standards, that searching for happiness in money and objects will lead to sadness, loneliness, frustration, and death.
Lent is the time when we are called to see the brokenness under the forced smiles and make up to the humanness that lies below. But will we be bold enough to realize that our ways are broken; will we trust and hear the voice of new life calling us to change? Or will we, like the Pharisees before us hold onto tradition, to ways that preserve order, that maintain the smile of Totally Easter Barbie despite the brokenness within?
Jesus is calling us, Jesus is still calling us, and Jesus will never stop calling us saying, “How often have I longed to gather you together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.”
Amen.