Göttinger Predigten
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Second Sunday of Lent, 02/21/2016
Sermon on Luke 13:31-35, by Luke Bouman
Luke 13: 31At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” 32He 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. 33Yet 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.’ 34Jerusalem, 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! 35See, 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.’”
Like a Hen Gathering the Chicks
The farmyard was dry and dusty against the backdrop of a multiyear West Texas drought. What was once green grass now lay withered and brown around the coop where the chickens slept and laid their eggs. The hens were now out and about, pecking the ground for bits of seed that the farmer had thrown, teaching their chicks to do the same. The rooster sat perched in the shade of some gnarled sprawling tree nearby. The chicks scurried to and fro, learning too many things to keep all of them in mind at once.
Was there a coyote nearby? The hens would know, even if the chicks were oblivious. Had a snake crawled under the hen house to steal away a quick chick of a meal? He had better beware the hens who would sooner peck his eyes out than give him a second glance. Was there weather about to break the drought with lightning that promised rain that too often didn't come? The hens would be sure to watch for it, glancing up at the sky and about against the threats of predators between every peck at the ground.
These hens, mothers all, held a fierce kind of love for their chicks. No sleeping in the shade for them while their young ones were about. They were determined, dedicated to their young ones' survival. How dedicated, you might ask? Just watch them as the drought turns to deadly fire. As the smoke reaches them first, before the brush fire races upon them in a blazing long line of yellow and orange death, they sound the alarm and beckon to their chicks. As the chicks respond one by one, the mother ushers them to her breast, holding them close beneath her. As the last chick is gathered, just before the firestorm engulfs them all, she huddles them close in and close to the ground, spreads her wings over them, and covers them completely in her last motherly embrace.
By chance, sometimes, the fire jumps over them all and both she and her brood are spared the fire. But more often than not the racing flames torch her body and the upper half burns black as she huddles her brood beneath her. Yet she flinches not nor moves, but in dying holds her chicks sheltered under her wings. The fire comes and goes quickly. Too quickly to burn the chicks under the hen's wings, but not quickly enough that she can survive. She dies to save her brood. All of the chicks, that is, except the ones that did not heed her call, did not run to her protection. Those chicks she cannot save. They burn with her, unheeding, unwilling, unwittingly victims of their own indifference to their mother.
In the ashes of the barnyard fire, the farmer and his wife assess their loss, not only of livelihood, but also of the beloved hens that have graced their table with eggs for time untold. They carefully restore their barnyard after the fire. But they are surprised to find life in the midst of death. As they uncover chicks who have remained sheltered beneath their fallen charred mothers' breasts and wings. They emerge and life in the chicken coop continues for them. By their mother's death, they have received a second gift of life from the hen who laid them in eggs bare weeks before.
When Jesus says he would have gathered Jerusalem up like a mother hen gathers the chicks under its wings, it is something like this story of a hen's love, even love unto death, to which he is referring. And his love is not only for Jerusalem, not only for Israel, not only for God's chosen people, but for all of the people of the world. So wide are his wings, spread and nailed on a cross. So far flung his love, as he hangs and dies, that it covers all of us, all people, of all times, or would, if we would be gathered.
But the flash fire of our sin, ever and ever, rages through our lives and our bodies, so that we cannot be gathered and saved from death in this life. So unlike the hen, Jesus does something more, something different, something greater. Jesus leads us into death and through it. Our sin will not allow us to be covered and sheltered, so instead Jesus takes us up not just into death, but also, through death into new life. The second gift of life that Jesus gives is not one that prevents our deaths, but rather one that renews our lives.
In this sense, what Jesus does for us is uncommonly gracious, but it does not depend on whether or not we heed the call, but rather depends only on his great gift of love. He calls us, as he does in baptism, to a washing. We are called to a bath where sin, and the sinful self, are drowned, not burned. We are dead to sin so that we may emerge from the waters alive again in Christ. We are sent into a world where death does not have the last word, and here we are called to give ourselves with the same kind of abandon to one another. We are given life so that we can be free to give our own lives, even to the point of death ourselves, in the service of others. We are free because though death overwhelm us, it does not defeat us. We return to our dust, but then, out of dust and the water of baptism, God breaths life again into lifeless clay and we are remade.
Jesus may shake his head and weep for Jerusalem, who will not be sheltered under his wings. But God's story does not end there. Through Jesus, God is at work in the world for the people of Jerusalem and us, even for the chicks who reject the call of the prophets and run away from mother hen's voice. We are called, gathered, sanctified and kept until that day when we too will rise with Jesus.
When twilight comes and the sun sets, mother hen prepares for nights rest.
As her brood shelters under her wings, she gives the love of God to her nest.
Oh! What joy to feel her warm heartbeat and be near her all night long;
so the young can find repose, then renew tomorrow's song.
One day the Rabbi, Lord Jesus, called the twelve to share his last meal.
As the hen tends her young, so for them he spent himself to seek and to heal.
Oh! What joy to be with Christ Jesus, hear his voice, oh! sheer delight,
and receive his servant care; all before the coming night.
So gather round once again, friends, touched by fading glow of sun's gold,
and recount all our frail human hopes; the dreams of young and stories of old.
Oh! What joy to pray close together, kneeling as one family,
by a mother's love embraced in the blessed Trinity. (Moises B. Andrade, tr. James Minchin, ELW 566)