Jesus: Mother Hen
Today’s
Lesson: Luke 13:31-35
Some
Pharisees came and said to Jesus, "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, and 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.'"
In today’s passage
from Luke, Jesus calls Herod a fox and compares himself to a mother hen.
Instead of his usual parables, it seems that he is about to tell a fable. If
Herod is a fox, then who would expect a chicken to survive in a contest between
the two creatures? Yet Jesus suggests that the hen will be triumphant.
My dear aunt,
Mabel Estes, who, like my mother, was born just down the road at the Estes
homeplace, was a first grade teacher, avid gardener, and amateur bird watcher. Many of my most significant childhood
memories center around Aunt Mabel, with whom I spent much of every summer at
the farm. From Mabel I learned many things about the natural world. There was an extensive garden at the
farm in those days, including lovely flower beds and all of the customary
vegetables (potatoes, tomatoes, beans, and corn) as well as strawberries,
rhubarb, asparagus, and even a patch of bamboo for the would-be fisherman. I
was Aunt Mabel’s gardening assistant, and I remember her teaching me how to
pick strawberries (very carefully!) and arrange flowers.
When I was seven
years old, Mabel gave me an illustrated book of birds and began teaching me the
names of the common ones that were then plentiful here in the valley. The first bird I learned to identify
was the catbird, a sort of plain little gray bird, but with its “meow” and
little black cap, it was easily distinguishable from its cousin, the
mockingbird. Knowing the birds by
name opened a new window on our world for me. I loved to hear the bobwhites
calling in the sunny summer fields. At night, the whippoorwills’ shrill cries
echoed from the mountainside. One summer, a wild mama turkey and her brood made
a regular trek past our kitchen window every morning.
I still love
watching and listening to birds, a great pleasure I owe to Aunt Mabel.
Considered by some to be the only surviving dinosaurs, birds are remarkable in
so many ways—most notably, in their gifts of feathers, flight, and song.
All those things
considered, it seems both surprising and wonderful that of all the birds Jesus
could have compared himself to, as he does in today’s lesson from Luke, Jesus
chose an ordinary chicken. Not just a chicken, but a mother hen!
The chickens of my
childhood were so plain and everyday, smelly and underfoot, that it was hard
not to take them for granted, as we do today. They had to be fed and tended;
every now and then you’d see one running around without its head. I’m not sure I even thought of them as
being in the same species as the beautiful redwing blackbirds or the soaring
hawks. I believe that’s exactly
the point Jesus is making.
Chickens were
first domesticated by humans some 2000 years before the birth of Jesus. No
other bird is as present in the lives of humans as is the chicken, and in his
teachings, Jesus reminds his followers that He, in the form of the Advocate (or
Holy Spirit) will be ever present with them. Knowing how we humans take God for
granted and turn our backs on him, even in our need for him, Jesus cries out to
Jerusalem, “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen
gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”
Surely in saying this, Jesus is making
reference to the many psalms that include verses about God sheltering humans in
the shadow of his wings. Most of those verses seem to imply a big strong bird
of prey, such as an eagle, capable of defending us from all enemies. Here Jesus
is telling us something very different about the power of God’s love to protect
us: God is maternal and, like any mother, God will shelter and save us,
even at great cost to himself. As
we know, Jesus paid such a cost in his duel of wits with Herod, and yet, Jesus
(the mother hen) has the final word through his resurrection.
Today, our Lord
continues to offer us the shelter of his wings. If we listen, we may hear God
clucking over us!
Amen.
