Jesus, the Mother Hen

Luke 13:31-35

At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’ Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, yet you were not willing. See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’ ”

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This notion of God – in Jesus – as a mother hen who gathers her brood under her wings doesn’t get as much play as the other images we have of Jesus from Scripture. The Good Shepherd, The Bread of Life, The Light of the World, The Lamb of God…all of these are more common, more popular, it seems to me – more appealing, perhaps – than the idea that Jesus is like a chicken. Not a dove – white, clean, and pure like the Holy Spirit. Not a pretty red cardinal or the first robin of spring, either. But a chicken. Poultry. But a chicken, at least, who cares for her brood like a loving, protective, faithful mother does.

For some reason, this is not a text I’ve preached on very often – or at least not in the last nine years, from what I could tell – so I’ve never taken advantage of the opportunity to show off my pictures of the hens and chicks I’ve taken in Haiti, which make me think about this text every time I see them. Because I’ve seen them do their mother-hen-protecting-her-brood-under-her-wings-thing on more than one occasion when I’m there. So I was glad to go on a wild goose chase through my pictures to find what I could. Unfortunately, this is all I could come up with:

You can’t tell much, thanks to my bad timing, thanks to the quick-footed baby chicks, and thanks to that mother hen who does just what Jesus describes – which is kind of the point of my pictures. You can’t tell much because the mother hen is doing her job. So, you’ll just have to believe me - there is a flock of baby chickens under there. Something like this:

Gathered together. Well-protected. Safe and sound from the American human with his camera, safe from the dogs that are never too far away on the hillsides of Haiti, and safe from whatever or whoever else might be waiting to do them harm or turn them into breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

And it’s no mistake that Jesus compares himself to a mother hen so soon after he calls King Herod a fox. Jesus has been making his way around Galilee doing his thing – casting out demons and curing the sick as he says. So when the Pharisees tell him he needs to am-scray, because Herod is out to kill him, Jesus isn’t surprised; he isn’t scared; and he’s not deterred, either.

“Tell that fox that I have things to do,” he says. “I have demons to drive out. I have sicknesses to cure. I have people to love.” And not only that, Jesus lets whoever is listening know that he knows what’s to come for him. He’s been making his way to Jerusalem for some time now, it seems, and he’s not running from Herod – that fox who’s out to get him. Jesus is running toward his demise in the city … toward his crucifixion … which he knows can and will only take place in Jerusalem, if what the scriptures say is true.

“I must be on my way,” he says, “because it’s impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.” In other words, “I’ll get there …” “I’m on my way …” “I am, in fact, the prophet to be killed.” “Don’t you worry about it, and don’t tell me what to do or when…” “I have work to do first, but I’m headed to Jerusalem so that, when the time comes – on the third day, as a matter of fact – my work will be accomplished.”

In other words, Jesus is the mother hen headed into the fox hole, toward the fox’s den, ready to take one for the team. And all of it points to the lengths God, in Jesus Christ, goes to for the sake of God’s chickens … I mean for the sake of God’s children.

Speaking of heading to the city, staying in the city, and taking one for the team, Ukraine’s President Zelensky isn’t Jesus, but he has headed toward and stayed in the city of Kyev and dared “that fox,” Vladimir Putin, to come for him while he tends to and protects his people. When given the chance to escape, Zelensky stayed because he had work to do, too.

And the Russian people, the ones protesting the war in Russia, aren’t Jesus, either, but they are risking their freedom and maybe their lives, allowing “that fox,” Vladimir Putin, to arrest and imprison and punish them in who-knows-how-many-ways, for who-knows-how-long, as they stand up for their neighbors, their family, and their friends in Ukraine.

And those moms in Poland aren’t Jesus, but the ones who left their strollers, lined up at the train station for Ukrainian refugees to find when they arrive after whatever hell they’ve endured to escape their homeland, are like so many mother hens themselves: opening their arms, spreading their wings, welcoming into their fold, the most needy and desperate and vulnerable in their time of great need.

So, I wonder if God isn’t calling us to be more like hens and chickens this morning and in these sad, scary days when the proverbial “fox” of war and death and empire and sin threaten so many of God’s chickens … I mean so many of God’s children, in this world.

In a world, still convinced that “power” looks like might in the form of tanks and rockets and weapons of mass destruction – Jesus reminds us that God’s kind of power comes in the form of a mother hen’s feathered wings that don’t stand a chance, really, against the teeth and claws of the fox.

In a world where “strength” looks like aggression and force and violence and bloodshed – Jesus reminds us that sacrificial love is stronger than all of that and that our God is one who sheds blood, too.

In a world – and in this war – where winning might be determined by who can count the most dead bodies, in the end – Jesus reminds us that one dead body matters most, because it will be raised again on the third day – as hope for all the others – when God’s work of resurrection is finished.

Like so many mother hens – as the body of Christ in the world – we are called to the same kind of power in weakness, the same kind of sacrificial love, and the same kind of humble service. And we’re called to the same kind of new life we will find – on this side of heaven – when we lay down our lives however we’re able, for the sake of the world where we live.

Jesus, like a mother hen, is vulnerable, so that we can be too. Jesus, like a mother hen, gives up his life, so that we might sacrifice something of ourselves, just the same. Jesus gives love and forgiveness and grace and new life, so that we will offer the promise of those blessings to others, too. He calls us “beloved” and gathers us together so that we’ll go out – as people of the Church – sharing grace and gathering others to know the new life that belongs to us because we belong him, to this one who comes – for the sake of the whole world – in the name of the Lord.

Amen

Wilderness Wandering

Luke 4:1-13

Then Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness were, for forty days, he was tempted by the Devil. He didn’t eat anything during those days and when they were over, he was famished. The Devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus said to him, “It is written, ‘one does not live by bread alone.’”

Then the Devil led him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world. He said to him, “I will give to you their glory and all this authority, which has been handed over to me, and which I give to anyone I choose. If you will bow down and worship me, it will all be yours.” Jesus said to him, “It is written, ‘you shall worship the Lord, you God, and serve only him.’”

Then the Devil led Jesus to Jerusalem and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple and said, “Throw yourself down from here, for it is written ‘he will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘on their hands they will bear you up so that you won’t dash your foot against a stone.’” Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘do not put the Lord, your God, to the test.’”

And when the Devil had finished every test, he departed from Jesus until an opportune time.

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The wilderness seems pretty close these days.

In First Century Galilee, Jesus apparently had to be “led out into it,” by the spirit. He had to go somewhere else to find it, it seems. …away from the river where he’d just been baptized along with crowds of people. …away from towns and villages like Cana and Capernaum. …away from whoever was looking to follow him, as would happen soon enough. Maybe Jesus had a hunch about what was to come in that regard, so he let the Spirit lead him out … lead him away … lead him into whatever and wherever the wilderness was for him.

And if “wilderness” is a metaphor for something… if “the wilderness” is a place of uncertainty, loneliness, disconnection, temptation, and fear … I’m not sure Jesus would have had to go very far to find himself there, if he were walking around in the world today.

“The wilderness” seems right around every corner, or maybe even following us around, no matter where we go, these days.

Maybe it’s the constant presence of social media in our lives …

Maybe it’s the news these days – the 24/7 nature of it all reminding us about our own broken politics, our own divided nation, and everything going on in Russia and Ukraine, of course.

Maybe it’s the ever-evolving list of prayers and concerns and challenges we wrestle with as God’s people in this place and out there in the world, ourselves…

Whatever it is, the wilderness doesn’t seem so hard to find… or so very far away… or too difficult to get to, if you ask me.

So I hope it’s strangely comforting for us to see Jesus out there in the wilderness this morning, doing his thing with the Devil.

The point of Lent – and the point of this Gospel story, for me, anyway – is to wonder what it means to be called into the wilderness. I think we’re invited to wonder – not so much about conversations with a guy and his pitchfork – which is how this story with Jesus gets reduced and dumbed-down a lot of the time. I think, instead, we’re called to wonder about the lonely places … the uncertain places … the scary places in the world where – and the lonely, uncertain, scary times in our own lives – when we are tempted to choose the darkness. I think, in these days, we’re called to seek out and to put a finger on the sin, the evil, the faithlessness and the temptation in our own lives. We’re called to name it, to stop denying that it finds us from time to time, and to confront it in ways we would rather not.

But that's hard to do, this wilderness wandering – whether it’s the First Sunday of Lent or any other day of the year – or we would do it more often, more faithfully, with more resolve and courage and success, I believe. It seems to me we don’t head out into the wilderness enough, following the Spirit’s lead. We’re more likely to find ourselves pushed there, dragged there, kicking and screaming, against our will. Or we end up there, in the wilderness – much to our surprise – before we know what’s coming. And then the temptation of it all is to let it overwhelm us – the grief of it; the fear of it; the unknown and uncertainty of whatever the wilderness is for us.

And so we fail the tests too often, don’t we? We fill ourselves with all the wrong things too much of the time. Where Jesus refused to turn a stone into bread – we grab the potato chips or the ice cream; the booze or the weed, the cigarettes or the pills.

Where Jesus turned down the offer for more power and glory, we go after as much as we can grab and look for it in all the wrong places – our ego, our work, money, things and stuff.

And where Jesus refused to put God to the test, we do just that … every time we throw up our hands and wonder why God won’t – why God hasn’t – just fixed everything that’s wrong with us, with the world, and with this wilderness.

Where Jesus went… followed… left...? We stay home… stay put… and stay safe… so much of the time.

And I think the reason we fail the proverbial tests so often is because we forget something Jesus knew and held onto, from the start. Remember, Jesus entered into the wilderness “full of the Spirit,” “led by the Spirit,” and on the heels of his baptism. I like to imagine his hair was still wet when he met up with the devil in the desert, because he was fresh from the Jordan River where the heavens had opened, a dove had appeared out of nowhere, for crying out loud, and God had declared him beloved, “the Son, the Chosen” with whom the Creator of the Universe was well pleased.

And it’s with all of that in his back pocket, that Jesus made his way into the wilderness to duke it out with the Devil, which makes it easier for me to imagine how he might have resisted all of that temptation and passed all of those tests, in the first place.

And that gives me hope. To remember, however and whenever we find ourselves in the wilderness (whatever that is for us) that – just like Jesus – we can enter it all on the heels of and filled with the promises of baptism. And we can go there, led by God’s spirit of wisdom and understanding, God’s kind of counsel and might, with faith and fortitude to endure the lonely, scary, uncertain, dark wilderness places that wait for us in this world.

In our Stephen Ministry class Thursday night we had a pretty hard, holy, heavy discussion about suicide – and tending to someone who may be in the throes of that kind of wilderness struggle. We were wondering about what to say and what to do and how to find the words and wisdom to respond in such a circumstance – should we ever find ourselves in that kind of wilderness with somebody else. I shared something with the class that seemed to resonate with them, so thought it might be meaningful to share with you all this morning, too.

It’s not rocket science, but whenever I find myself headed into a wilderness like that – an emergency of some sort, a crisis full of uncertainty, a scary situation where something is required of me that I’m not sure I’m prepared for (that maybe there is no preparation for, to be honest) – I try to remind myself that God is already in that place, around that person, gathered together with whatever or whoever has called me into their wilderness with them. And that kind of prayer, that sort of reality check, that exercise of faith has proven to be helpful and True over the years, and I believe it’s something like we see Jesus trusting, doing and believing this morning – out there in his own kind of wilderness, way back when.

See, I believe Jesus was able to enter his own wilderness because he knew he didn’t go there first, or alone. He let the Spirit of God lead him there, remember. And he was full of the Holy Spirit in the first place.

So, when the wilderness looms, when it seems too close… too easy to find… too hard to navigate… too difficult to escape... When the temptation to quit… to choose the selfish, prideful, destructive way… to get lost in it all… to take the devil’s hand and follow his lead – remember that God is already out there, too, in your wilderness, waiting for you.

I like to think of God, in the wilderness, as like a dad in the swimming pool promising to catch his terrified toddler about to jump from the diving board into the deep-end. Or maybe God, in our wilderness, is like a mother, waiting in the front office, to rescue her child from a bad day at recess. Or like the good friend who walks with you after the divorce, or the diagnosis, or the death, because they’ve been through it already themselves.

Whatever the case, we can enter into any wilderness trusting that God will be there waiting to walk with, stand beside, and catch us, even, if necessary. And we can go there, with the waters of baptism still dripping from our foreheads and divine promises of grace always ringing in our ears…

And we can go, following Jesus’ example so that we don’t have to be so afraid about any of it. So that we might even enter it all willingly – whatever our wilderness brings – and go boldly, bravely, with faith, to see God transform it all into something sweet, something safe, and something sacred, on the other side.

Amen