Sunday, 21 February 2016 Luther Memorial Lutheran Church
+The Second Sunday in Lent, Series C Seattle, WA
Paul E. Hoffman, Pastor
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How often I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings; and you were not willing.
I am perplexed with the current fascination of people in Seattle to have their own chickens. Maybe some of you are among the urban hen house crowd.
For the first ten years of my life, I knew nothing but chickens. Over two thousand of them – long before automated, caged chickens were kept in those endlessly long, aluminum barns, mind you. The chickens I knew were free-roving in eight or ten chicken houses spread across the property of our small rural Pennsylvania farm. Before I have memory of much anything else, I have memory of going into those dirty houses with a wire basket in my hands, pulling those grumpy hens off their nests and stealing their eggs. Most of the people in the towns that surrounded our farm called my dad The Egg Man.
So I have an ambivalent relationship with chickens. And eggs. And this passage from the Bible: How often I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings; and you were not willing.
I have to admit, that for all their sputter and fuss when an invader like me came to plunder their nests and steal their eggs, there was a tender side to those chickens. When they had a nest full of chicks – and I mean a nest-full: sometimes 16 or 18 – they found a way to bring each and every one of those adorable little fuzzy peeps underneath their wings and spread them over top of them. I was never under those wings, but I imagine that it was warm, and secure, and comforting.
It is this warm, secure, comforting Christ who looks across the holy city of Jerusalem and laments. What he hoped for – what he imagined – was a city where love and mercy prevailed. He pictured a place of justice and compassion, but saw instead a place that both historically and currently was a hotbed of hatred, class division, religious competition, death and destruction. Abraham had been promised a land where his heirs would be as numerous as the stars of the heavens. And Jesus looks into the central city of that Promised Land and sees nothing but trouble. Troubles, suffering, competition between races and classes. How often I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings; and you were not willing.
Let’s pretend for just a minute that Jesus is here, today, with us. And stretch your imagination just a little bit farther. Instead of looking into Jerusalem, let’s imagine that he’s looking at the bigger picture – the whole world. What does he see?
There are wars currently raging in fourteen different places across the globe. The greatest refugee crisis since the middle of the twentieth century is stretching the compassion and capacity of receiving nations. Terrorism and the threats and fears surrounding terrorism are rampant, a guiding force in almost every political decision. There are more people incarcerated in America than at any time in our history – many of them warehoused in dangerous and overcrowded for-profit prisons. Across the globe, unstable governments have the capacity of nuclear annihilation, or at least mass destruction. More children are going hungry in America than at any other time in our history – going hungry in the richest, most prosperous nation on earth. As you know, this is just the beginning of the list, the tip of the iceberg. And Jesus sees it all. He looks upon it, just as he looked upon the mess that was Jerusalem so long ago and ponders… why won’t they come under my wings? Where has all this gone wrong?
The conflict that sets all of this pondering up in Jesus’ mind begins at a very personal level. It is a conflict between two men, not two nations. Before Jesus ever laments over Jerusalem, the Pharisees warn him about King Herod. Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you. And Jesus’ response is very clear. “I am NOT going to live in fear.” There is work to be done and Jesus is going to do it: casting out demons and performing cures. The world and its troubles are swirling about him, but it is the work of love and compassion that he is going to continue, even if it kills him. And we all know that it eventually does. Jesus is not going to be drawn into a power play with a political opponent. He is going to live by the only means that can ever bring healing or hope. He is going to live by spreading across the human race the wings of compassion and mercy, justice and peace. And he is going to do it by healing one person at a time, by helping one person at a time get out from under the demons that haunt them. Yet today and tomorrow and the next day I must be on my way, he says. There is loving work to be done. Jesus intends to continue, undaunted.
Maybe, just maybe, from our secure, comfortable place in the world – here beneath the wings of Jesus our mother hen – we could think about our lives, and our place in a world of pain. Maybe, just maybe, it’s the person-to-person conflicts that we are being poked and prodded by Jesus, our Mother Hen, to attend to: the festering wounds of a bruised friendship, the argument that lingers only for lack of an apology that you alone could give, the peace that needs to be made – not between nations – but between you and that cantankerous neighbor next door. None of us gets to sing the old familiar song “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me,” and then continue to hold a grudge, or remain unrelentingly superior, or just plain hardened to those who offend us.
That place beneath the wings of Jesus is a softening place. A strengthening place. The Lord is my light and my salvation – whom then shall I fear? Right? Beneath the wings of the Lord we are given what we need to get into the world and do whatever each one of us can do to make it a better place – not for ourselves alone – but for everyone.
In the end, whether we can muster the strength and the courage to step into the world of love and mercy to which Jesus invites us or not, there will always be a place for us beneath those mothering wings. As hard as it is for us to accept or trust this – Jesus loves a pious peace-maker as much as he loves a hardened criminal. He went the distance all the way to the cross to rescue all of us. Every last one. It’s true.
And since that’s all taken care of for you, since we don’t have to worry about our place beneath those wonderful wings of his – he’s got us covered – in thanksgiving and praise, he calls us all to follow. Doing whatever we can do to cast out demons, to perform cures. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day we must be on our way. The world awaits.
In the name of the Father, and of the (+) Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.