There are few sights more idyllic than a bunch of
little baby chicks pushing their way in underneath their mother hen for warmth
and security. At any sense of danger
they will instinctively seek to hide under their mother. It is all but impossible for them to do
otherwise. If a dog comes into the yard
where there is a mother hen with her babies, without fail the chicks will flock
together putting the mother hen between them and the dog and then they will
start to burrow in under her. The mother
hen will start to look real defensive.
She’ll stare the old dog in the eye and face it square on and fluff up her
feathers making herself look big and ferocious.
The brood pushing in under her adds to that effect. If you’re a curious old farm dog who’s
feeling a bit playful, you get the message.
“Stay away from my brood or I’ll poke your eyes out.”
A fox is a different story. If he’s hungry, he’s got killing on his
mind. That’s what foxes do. It won’t matter how ferociously fluffy the
mother hen looks a hungry fox will just go ahead and kill her. Akin to a squirrel trying to avoid a car
while crossing the road only to meets an unfortunate demise, a mother hen will
still stand her ground. She will not run
away to save her self. The chicks will
still try to burrow in under her and she will do her best to remain atop her
brood. Her grand display of ferocity unfortunately
turns to defiant martyrdom. Her noble maternal
instincts only just make her a fairly easy grab for a hungry fox.
Looking at our passage here in Luke, Jesus has pulled
out quite a powerful image to describe his love, God’s love, for his people. Due to her instinctual love for her chicks a mother
hen will stand her ground to her death to protect those chicks. Sadly, against a fox she becomes an utter
example of futility and vulnerability. Of
course we are supposed to see an analogy here to Jesus’ death on the cross, a
revelation of God’s nature by God the Son in which we learn that the power of
God is marked by weakness. God is not
all-powerful in the way we think of power.
Rather, God is all-loving.
Fox’s have power.
King’s have power. Yet, there’s a
rule of thumb when it comes to power. Lord
John Acton wrote in 1887 in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton: “All power tends
to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts
absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” That’s what happens when people have power
over people. If we remember last week’s
reading, this is the sort of power the formed the basis of the devil’s second
test of Jesus. The devil showed Jesus
all the kingdoms of the world in an instant and said he could give Jesus all
that power and if Jesus would worship him. Jesus didn’t fall for it, if you catch the
pun.
Returning to our fox in the chicken yard image, it is
kind of interesting here how Jesus, the mother hen, deals with the threat from
Herod, the fox. First thing to keep in
mind here is that the Pharisees were probably lying to Jesus about Herod
wanting to kill him. This particular
Herod, Herod Antipas, was a Roman pawn who liked to throw parties. He was indeed the Herod responsible for the
death of John the Baptist. But, we know
he was a reluctant participant in a tragic turn of events in that case. Herod apparently liked to listen to John the
Baptist. We learn later in Luke’s Gospel
that this Herod was equally curious about Jesus. In chapter 23, after the Jewish authorities
arrested Jesus, Pontius Pilate sent him over to Herod to see if Herod could
find anything against Jesus. According
to Luke, Herod was happy to finally meet Jesus because he wanted to see Jesus
do some sort of miracle. But when Jesus
refused and simply stood there silent, he had Jesus mocked and sent him back to
Pilate who in turn stood before a mob roused by the Temple authorities and said
that both he and Herod could find nothing wrong with Jesus. So, I think its more likely that the Pharisees
are just trying to mess with Jesus, and this whole exchange is like basketball
players out on the court talking shmack.
So, the Pharisees tell Jesus to get out of there because
Herod wants to kill him and Jesus gives a very “cocky” one. “You go tell that fox that today, tomorrow,
and the next day I’m going to go do what I do – casting out demons and healing
the sick.” Jesus comments here are not
directed towards Herod, but rather to the Pharisees. And we know about the Pharisees. They were the devoutly religious people back
then who knew their Bibles and had the most power of all the groups in Jesus’
day. Actually, they were effectually
more powerful than Herod. They should
have been able to recognize by the things that Jesus was doing, that he was imbued
with the true power of God and was therefore their Messiah, but they didn’t see
it. And so, Jesus goes on to note that
it’s not kings who kill prophets, but “Jerusalem”. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem”, the
power seat of religion, “Jerusalem” is who kills prophets and stones those God sends
to them. It’s impossible for Jesus to be
killed by anything other than Jerusalem.
Next, Jesus creates an image that’s not so idyllic. Imagine a fox coming into the chicken yard and
the mother hen calling the chicks to find their protection underneath her. But the chicks don’t want to come. There’s something seriously wrong with this
picture. By instinct the chicks should
run to their mother. They should flock
together putting their mother between themselves and danger and wriggle in underneath
of her, but that’s not what’s happening.
Rather, it seems the fox could care less and all the while, the chicks
are actually attacking the mother hen.
What a bizarre scene.
What a bizarre scene.
The Greek word for desire, for longing shows up three times in this
passage. First, the Pharisees said that
Herod is desiring, longing to kill you.
The next two times is when Jesus says to “Jerusalem”, the religious
leadership of God’s people, “How often have I longed to gather your children
together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you (Jerusalem) did not
long for it.” Shuh-mack. So, Jesus tells the Pharisees that their
house, the Temple, is left empty to them meaning God is not there and they are
not going to recognize him until they see the children of Jerusalem welcoming
him into town singing, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” The
day of his triumphal entry, Palm Sunday.
The heart of the matter driving this whole bizarre
scene of chicks turning on their mother hen when a fox is in the yard was a
lack of a longing desire on the part of the Jewish religious leadership for
those entrusted to them to find the security of a life giving relationship with
their God. “Jerusalem” likes its power
to control others with religion, with rules for morality and proper
ritual. “Jerusalem” likes its the power
to condemn and to enslave and oppress by means of rules and images of an angry,
judging God who must be pacified lest he break forth in wrath against you.
The moral of this story is “don’t let your religion
get in the way of your relationship with God.” Christian faith is not a religion, though the
institution of Christianity can be.
Christian faith is new human existence, people indwelt by the Holy
Spirit so that we are in a relationship with God in which nothing can separate
us from his love and presence. Like a
mother hen God longs, deeply desires, for us to come to him...not to some
religion about him. The new human
existence that God has wrought in Christ Jesus is new human being in which God
is restoring his image in us, the image of a self-giving, loving communion of
persons. This new creation is not found
in the observances of religious institutions.
But rather, in prayer and meditation on Scripture and in worship – times
when we are in his presence and his nature simply rubs off on us. It is found as we learn to love our neighbours
as we love ourselves, unconditionally and unselfishly and indeed
sacrificially. It is found when we forgive
and love those who have hurt us and try to bear them up understanding their
woundedness. It is found in extending
hospitality and gracious fellowship, friendship, to all. All who are in Christ are new creation, the
old life is gone and a new one has begun – a new life filled with and
transformed by God. We, this
congregation, we are new creation in the midst of the old, new humanity in the
midst of the old. The more we live it,
the more we will know it. Amen.
