Luke 13:31-35
What do you desire?
This is the traditional question asked of those who seek to enter monasteries. We asked it of our candidates for covenant companionship last summer, as they took their first steps. We asked it of ourselves when we began the Companions of Mary the Apostle. We still ask it.
Knowing your desire is essential to our spiritual life. If we don’t know our desire, we can’t pursue it. We will be left to the desires and plans of others. We will wander from the path, and we might very well endanger others as they follow us. Our desire defines our life, whether we are conscious of it or not.
In today’s Gospel we hear of three desires. The same Greek word, thelo, is used three times. Herod, that fox, desires to prey on Jesus. He wants to kill him because he is threatening the oppressive “peace” of Galilee. The people of Jerusalem do not desire Jesus’ message; they reject him as they rejected others before him. They desire not to hear his message.
And Jesus? Jesus desires to gather Jerusalem under his wings. Jesus is the mother hen.
We don’t spend much time on this image for God, or for Jesus, but it is an image that runs through the Scriptures and invites us to know God in a new way. This new way is particularly apt for Lent, that season of repentance and renewal.
Jesus the mother hen.
“How often I have desired to gather you under my wings.”
When a fox threatens a flock of chickens, the roosters go to work alerting the flock and attacking the intruder. Many roosters will die defending the hens. The hens do not fight directly; instead, they gather the chicks under their wings. They offer themselves first, hoping to save the chicks.
It’s not only predators that incite this protective instinct. Any danger to the chicks calls for this response.
Recently I learned a moving true story. A group of young college students were helping measure range damage after a wildfire raged across the prairie outside their university town. As they walked over the expanse of blackened earth, they noticed a cluster of small smoldering mounds. One of the volunteers was particularly interested in the unidentifiable heaps and asked one of the more experienced range managers what they were.
The manager replied that he had seen this phenomenon a few times and suggested that the young man turn over one of the piles. He did. To his great surprise several sage grouse chicks ran out from under the upturned mound. He was fascinated. How incredible, he thought, that these little chicks had known to find and run underneath this mysterious shelter.
The young man asked what the mound was and how the chicks knew to take refuge there. To his amazement, he was told that the smoldering heap was the remains of their mother. When there is danger the mother hen instinctively calls out to her young ones and stretches out her wings for them to run under and find protection in her embrace.
That’s Jesus.
That’s how much God loves us.
Jesus longs to shelter us from the foxes, the fires, the storms.
But Jerusalem was not willing. Imagine the scene: the fox is coming, the fire approaching, and the mother hen is trying to gather her young. But each time she gets one, another one goes running back out. The little ones don’t understand the danger, and too often they are caught out in the open.
That’s the Jerusalem Jesus is addressing. He is not condemning them, not threatening them. He is grieving. He longs to bring them to safety, to salvation, but they can't see the danger. They think they know what’s what, and they do not desire his protection.
I don’t think they’re alone. So many times I’ve thought I know best. I didn't know about the foxes in the world, or the fires. I thought I could handle it. And I got burned, and i got preyed on. And for many years I thought I had to be a predator too. It’s a dog eat dog world, right? Don't be chicken! So instead I ran around like a chicken with its head cut off - busy, frantic, aimless. And dead without knowing it.
One day I stumbled - literally stumbled - under Jesus’ wings. Some instinct, like those grouse chicks’ instinct, brought me to that church. I have no idea why I could hear it that day. I knew the desire to be sheltered, and I knew where to find that shelter. I crawled under the wings.
Have you ever crawled under the wings of Jesus? It sounds like a weird folk hymn, I know, but it’s real. Jesus desires to shelter us, to gather us. Jesus wants to protect us from the foxes, and is willing to die to do it.
There’s a lot of room under those wings. There’s room for whole communities bound in love. In fact, the more people gather, the bigger the wings get. Under those wings there’s room to grow, room to find out who we are and who we belong to. There’s room for others to grow as well.
As we grow, Jesus teaches us how to fly. When eagles are first learning to fly, the mother flies under them so when they fall they land safely on her back. Over time they gather strength and they can fly on their own. Over time they become the source of strength for others. We too are encouraged to grow, and to share our growing gifts with others.
But in order to grow, to really have the freedom to try our wings, we must first be safe.
Our world is increasingly dangerous. We are bombarded every day with new terror, new warnings. We are encouraged to put our trust in some pretty foxy candidates, who tell us they will keep us safe. Sometimes they tell us that our safety depends on going to war or building walls, on being foxes ourselves before we’re outfoxed. But this is just ob-fox-scation. It’s a lie. It’s the fox luring us out where we can be picked off one by one, exposed and alone.
The lie always consumes the fox as well as the chicks. No fox lives forever. Predators are prey for someone else. They fool themselves that they are in charge, until a lion or an eagle comes up behind them.
Jesus promises a better way. It doesn’t guarantee that we will never die or be in danger; he himself will die on his way to new life. This better way is the way of love, a source that never dries up or dies out. The foxes of the world try to counter it by appealing to our fear or our confused desires, but fear will never keep us safe or make us strong. Only love can do that.
Jesus compares God to a loving father welcoming back the lost children. Today we see Jesus, the loving mother who calls to us to come into the shelter of love. Today, if you would live, hearken to his voice.
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