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. It is amazing that 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 run, without
fail the chicks will flock together behind the mother hen start to burrow in
under her. The mother hen will start to
look real ferocious. She’ll stare the old
dog in the eye and face it square on and fluff up her feathers making herself
look big. 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. Unfortunately, she won’t flee. She will still stand her ground. The chicks will still try to burrow in under
her. Her grand display of ferocity unfortunately
turns to defiant martyrdom and the chicks still get eaten. Her noble maternal instincts sadly only make
her a fairly easy grab for a hungry fox with killing on his mind.
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 protect those chicks, but 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 vulnerability and 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 that 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 having
a desire 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 actually enjoyed listening 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. That said, I think it is more likely that the
Pharisees are just trying to mess with Jesus using an empty threat to run him
off.
So, the Pharisees tell Jesus to get out of there because
Herod is longing to kill him and Jesus in response gives a very “cocky” answer.
“You go in my stead and tell that fox
that today, tomorrow, and the next day I’m going to be doing what I do – casting
out demons and healing the sick – that’s what I’m going to be doing here while
I’m on my way to Jerusalem. Oh, and by
the way it’s impossible for a prophet to get killed outside of Jerusalem.” With that answer Jesus basically told Herod
and the Pharisees that Herod was powerless to kill Jesus outside of
Jerusalem. Politicians have no power to
stop God or the work of God.
Jesus’ directs
his next comments more towards the Pharisees than to Herod. And we know about the Pharisees. They were the hyper-religious people back
then and they had the most political power at the populist level of all the
groups in Jesus’ day. Actually, they
were effectually more powerful than Herod.
If the Pharisees were as in with God as they believed themselves to be,
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 just didn’t see it. Powerlust
blinded them. 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. By the powerful drive of instinct alone the
chicks should run to their mother and wriggle in underneath of her for safety. But instead, the chicks – Jerusalem – attack
and kill the mother hen. What a bizarre
scene.
If you’re paying attention to the original Greek text
in this passage which we obliviously can’t and it’s a shame that the
translators haven’t done very well here for us either, if you’re paying
attention you’ll notice that the root of it all is problem with desire. The Greek word for desire, for longing shows
up three times in this passage. First,
the Pharisees said that Herod was not simply wanting, but rather longing to
kill Jesus. 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 anymore and they are not going to
recognize him until they see the children of Jerusalem whom they are
responsible to raise in the faith welcoming him, Jesus, into Jerusalem singing,
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” Please don’t miss the foreshadowing of Palm
Sunday here.
The heart of the matter driving this whole bizarre
scene of chicks turning on their mother hen when a fox is in the yard is a lack
of a longing desire on the part of the political and religious leadership to
find the security of a life giving relationship with their God. “Jerusalem”, this interesting mixture of
religious and political power likes its power to control others be it with empty
threats or with rules for morality and proper ritual. “Jerusalem” likes its power and will even
kill God to keep it.
The moral of this story is that religion and politics
make odd bedfellows. Religious authorities should not use
politicians to enforce religious values nor should politicians use religious
values to seek power. Presidents should
not sign Bibles nor should they be asked to –even if it's Jimmy Carter. That is bizarre. Christian faith is not a religion to be used
to undergird a nation. 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; a relationship with God in which God is a work transforming us to be more Christ-like, which means bearing--the-cross-vulnerable in our ways. 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 existence is not found in the
observances of religious institutions for the sake of national solidarity. But rather, in prayer and in meditation on
Scripture and in heartfelt worship which are 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 with a love
that is unconditional and unselfish and indeed sacrificial. It is found when we forgive and love those
who have hurt us and we 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.
