Luke 19:28 – 40 / Psalm 118:1 – 2, 19 – 20 / Isaiah 50:4 – 9a / Psalm 31:9 – 16 / Philippians 2:5 – 11 / Luke 22:14 – 23:56
This is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania
by Fr. Gene Tucker on Sunday, April 10, 2022.
“GUARDING AND GATHERING”
This
Holy Week’s events, and the theme of those events, might be summed up in the
following two words: “Guarding” and “gathering”.
This
past week has offered me an excellent example as a way to understand all that
Jesus was about in making His way into Jerusalem, where He would confront the
powers of that age, even to the point of death. The way of understanding that
Jesus is doing comes from nature, and it has to do with a mother bird, who wards off possible
intruders from her nesting place, so as to guard her newly hatched chicks.
This
past week, members of the Friends of the East Broad Top (Railroad) assisted
members of the Rockhill Trolley Museum, which is adjacent to the railroad, with
the rehabilitation of some of the trolley museum’s track.
One
day near to where we were working, a small Killdeer bird came at us, squawking
for all she was worth, flapping her wings as widely and as wildly as she could,
and making aggressive moves toward us. Eventually, we figured out that she had
a nest nearby that she was protecting. (Sure enough, later on in the week, we
spotted her again, sitting on what was, most likely, her nest, even as she kept
a close eye on our movements.)
This
mother bird acted like so many mothers in the animal kingdom do, ones who would
sacrifice even their own welfare in order to protect the possibility of new
life coming into the world.
Our
Lord’s actions in this Holy Week are of the same stuff: He guards those who are
His own, even to the point of taking on far superior forces of the powers of
that age (at least on the surface, those forces seemed to be superior), and
even to the point of sacrificing Himself for the protection of that new life
which will come as a result of His sacrifice.
And
as a result of this sacrifice, new life does, indeed, come into the world. That
new life consists of all who come in faith to claim the inheritance of new and
everlasting life that comes through the gift of Jesus Christ, that one who rose
again from the dead on Easter Sunday morning, that one who demonstrates God’s
power over all forms of evil, including the power of death itself.
AMEN.
