Luke 13:31-35
Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark
March 21, 2021
Chickens? Over the course of Lent, we have nested with the marsh wren, sung with the sparrow and soared with the eagle. And now chickens? Chickens do nest, of course, but it’s a stretch to imagine their clucking as a song. And pretty much impossible to envision their ungainly bodies soaring high. Even so, chickens get the final Sunday before Holy Week, the place of honor in our Lenten aviary progression, because Jesus uses the image of a mother hen to depict God’s love for us.
That one verse—about the hen who longs to gather her chicks under her wings—is often quoted, because it is a biblical example of feminine imagery for God. Rarely, though, do we broaden the context to read the verses before and after it, for when we do the picture of God’s tender love get lost in harsh language of disappointment and judgment.
Jesus is angry. He is angry at the Pharisees who say they are trying to protect him but really are just trying to get him to go away. He is angry at Herod, the puppet ruler Jesus dismisses as a fox, an inconsequential annoyance. He is angry with the political and religious leaders in Jerusalem, at the ways they have sullied the holy city with their willingness to accommodate Rome. He is angry at the intransigence of human communities—reflected in the history of his own people.
Jerusalem was the location of the temple, the place where God was understood to dwell in the midst of the people. Jesus points to a bitter irony: this place of divine-human intersection was also the place where prophets who proclaimed God’s word were stoned to death. He predicts the destruction of the temple, crumbling under the weight of human hypocrisy and greed. No wonder we prefer to take that gentle if ungainly image of a mother hen out of context.
In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus speaks these words shortly after he enters Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Luke, whose gospel Fran read today, places this outburst earlier, when Jesus and his disciples are on the way to Jerusalem. Just after the Palm Sunday parade, Luke records a second instance of Jesus crying out to Jerusalem: “As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, ‘If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace.”
That second outcry leads me to hear the first one in a different way. With the image of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem in my mind, I now hear the anguish behind Jesus’ frustration in today’s scripture. “How often have I desired to gather your children as a hen gathers her brood under her wings?” Jesus loves Jerusalem—the temple, the people, the city. Jesus’ anguish feels so human in this moment: the pain we feel when someone we love is making self-destructive choices and we can’t fix it, the disappointment when we have seen a vision of a better way and we can’t make even our closest friends see it, the despair when someone we care about reveals their potential for callous prejudice and hate. It is such a human anguish.
And it is a holy anguish. However we make sense of Jesus’ oneness with God—or Jesus’ closeness with God—, it feels to me that Jesus’ anguish here reflects God’s anguish. In his words, I hear God’s love for the people, God’s yearning for them to be safe and comforted, God’s pain at their pain, God’s distress at the ways fear and greed and hunger for power distort the God’s image in human beings.
The passage assures me that God’s love is not some abstract energy floating around the universe. God’s love for us is so engaged, so passionate, that God suffers and grieves and rages for us and with us.
Once I allow myself to hear the anguish behind the anger in this story, I am freed up to imagine Jesus crying out to us today. I see Jesus on the Framingham Centre Common, walking the Journey of Remembrance COVID Memorial. I see him pausing at every single blue flag, honoring every single one of those 232 Framingham residents who have died from COVID, praying for every single one of their family members and loved ones. “Oh,” he cries, “how I long to gather you under my wings, in the healing warmth of my love.” I hear frustration seeping into his cry: “Oh, when will you finally face the reasons so many more of my beloved siblings of color are suffering and dying?”
I imagine Jesus looking out over the city of El Paso, weeping as the tragedy of unaccompanied minors climbing border walls unfolds. He weeps tender tears, yearning to gather these vulnerable children under his wings, to protect them from the cruelty of this world. He weeps angry tears, crying out to political leaders of every party and every nation who have set this tragedy in motion, crying out to ordinary people whose fear and prejudice have led us to value some children less than others. “Oh, that you, even you, understood this day the things that make for peace.”
I picture Jesus crying out in sorrow as he looks out over grieving families in Atlanta, and Asian-Americans all over our country who have felt alternately invisible and targeted. He cries out in righteous anger as he calls our nation to grapple with violent expressions of racism and hate.
Jesus looks out over the people of Myanmar, daring to stand up for their rights; he looks out over a world struggling with isolation and grief as we mark a year of pandemic. He weeps. He cries out in anguish and pain. He yearns to gather us in and hold us with the tenderness of a mother hen caring for her chicks.
***
It was quite a light-hearted experience to film Fran reading this gospel text in the chicken coop. But this is not a light-hearted text. The anguish in Jesus’ cry is real—and touches the anguish of our time. It anticipates the anguish—human and divine—of Holy Week, as Jesus faces betrayal and crucifixion.
Thanks be to God, betrayal and crucifixion are not the end of the story. Anguish is not the end of the story. Joy breaks through on Easter. God’s love is more powerful than the agony of Holy Week. God’s love is more powerful than the racism and injustice of our world. God’s love is more powerful than COVID-19. God’s love for us is still as tender and fierce as a mother hen’s yearning to care for her brood. God is still holding out her wings, clucking at us to gather us in.
What a beautiful, evocative image for God’s love. And like every image that seeks to help us understand God, it falls short. The picture of chicks hiding under the wings of their mother evokes a promise of protection: if you come when I call and don’t stray from under my wings, I will keep you safe from danger. That’s not how it works! Staying close to God does not guarantee that our lives will be comfortable. Being faithful doesn’t shield us from pain or protect us from danger. Sometimes, following Jesus exposes us to even greater danger, for he leads us to places of hurt and suffering in our world.
Jesus yearns to gather us in like a mother hen gathering her brood—but not to keep us safe and comfortable. Throughout his ministry, Jesus proclaimed the coming of the realm of God’s love, and he called the people to come be part of it. He gathered in the tax collectors and the lepers, the ostracized women and the fishermen. He called them to a community of deep comfort—where they could claim their identity as God’s beloved. He called them to a community of deep discomfort, as they were challenged to honor the belovedness of people they named as their enemies. Jesus called them to let go of the security of wealth and trust the abundance that comes with generosity in community. He gathered them in and offered the healing power of God’s love; then he sent them out to offer it to others.
Jesus’ ministry reflected the tender and fierce love of a mother hen gathering her chicks in. The wings he gathered them under, though, were not soft fluffy wings of protection but the shelter of the kin-dom of God. He gathered them in to a shelter created by hands that reach out to give and receive, to heal and be healed, to welcome and encourage.
Today, Jesus calls out to us—with anguish as he grieves the pain of our world, with a mother hen’s tender, fierce and undeterred love. Jesus longs to gather us in to this kin-dom of God—a kin-dom reflected in this church community and beyond it. Jesus calls us into the deep comfort of accepting how loved we are and into the deep discomfort of accepting that those we judge are equally beloved. Jesus gathers us in to experience the healing power of being truly heard and then to listen deeply to another person’s story. Jesus gathers us in to name our fears and claim our courage, to risk giving and to risk naming our own deep need. Jesus gathers us in to a sacred community that is deeply human—centered in the unshakable love of God, tenderly honoring human frailty. Listen—can you hear Jesus clucking? Can you hear him calling us to gather under the wings of God’s healing, challengin