Based on Luke 13: 31-35
February 28, 2010
Pastor Dwaine Bruns
A few weeks ago, I spent an afternoon visiting my mom and dad at their farm. They had a few jobs for me for me to do – cleaning snow off some sheds and grain bins, hauling a couple of loads of softener salt down to the basement, some snowblowing around the year. When the jobs were done, we had a nice visit, along with a little of the dessert that my mom knows is my favorite.
Finally, around 4:00, it was time to head home. But about then, it started snowing – and the snow, along with a pretty stiff wind blowing out there on the western Minnesota prairie – meant that that it was looking a little stormy. So before I went out the door, my mom asked me the same questions I suspect she’s been asking for the last 40 years. Do you have your hat and boots along? How about a shovel? So I assured her I was set for my trip back to Avon. But her last words as I went out the door were, “Call me, so I know you got home OK.” I just smiled and said that I would.
As I got in my Explorer, I couldn’t help but shake my head. Who knows how many times I’ve made that trip – sometimes in a lot worse weather than I experienced that day. And I’ve always made it safely. But of course, none of that really made any difference to my mom. So I suspect that she was waiting for that phone to ring in those 90 minutes it took me to navigate my way home. And most you know why – it’s because the words of that book I shared with the children this morning are true. As long as my mom is living, I’ll still be her baby. And age has nothing to do with it.
Most of us know about that kind of motherly love. Some of you are mothers yourselves – and you know that no matter if your child is a newborn – or a grown man or woman – he or she is still your baby. They are tied to you in a way that will never change no matter how many years pass.
Others of us have known, and often continue to experience, the love of our own mothers – caring for us with a fierceness that is sometimes hidden – but is always there, just under the surface.
And of course, that kind of love isn’t just limited to mothers. Certainly, it applies to us dads too.
The bond between parents and children has to be among the most powerful you’ll ever find. In fact, it makes me think of something I once heard at a conference on confirmation ministry. The speaker was talking about parents, and all of the pitfalls that come with accompanying sons and daughters through the journey called adolescence. He didn’t pull any punches in acknowledging that it can be a hard time for both parents and their children. But then he went on to say, that even with all the struggles and challenges that come with being parents, most mothers and fathers would die for their children. He paused for a moment to let the words sink in, and then he said it again – most parents would die for their children. Not theoretically, but in reality – they would die for their daughters and sons.
As I’ve recalled those words over the years, and as I’ve spoken with parents like some of you here this morning – it’s been confirmed to me how true the words are. Given the choice, life for themselves or for their kids – most parents would choose the kids. Now, or course, those choices don’t come very often – but we’ve heard the stories: a famine hits a village – and a mother ends up starving herself to death, so that her daughter will have enough food to live. A father diving into the water to save his son – but ending up drowning himself. A parent pushing a child out of the path of an oncoming car – only to be hit in that child’s place.
And with that kind of love in mind – sacrificial, self-giving love – perhaps it’s no surprise that Jesus, in today’s Gospel lesson, gives us this picture of what the God who meets us in Jesus is like. “How often have I desire to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wing.”
God is like a mother who wants nothing more than to know that her children are safe and protected in her care. God would echo the words of the one who sings to her children in the book I shared with the children, “I’ll love you forever – as long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be.” Jesus is like that parent who would literally die for his children. It is an amazing picture that Jesus offers us in these verses. God, covering us with her wings – gathering us together with the kind of love that only a mother can have.
But it is a bittersweet picture – because in our lesson today, it is a picture that never happens. God’s people hear the invitation to depend on God’s care. Like a mother hen, in Jesus God is calling to her children – clucking words of love, inviting them to rest under her wings of mercy and grace. But instead of coming to live in that blessed place of safety, they go about their business as if they don’t even hear. So Jesus says, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem – the city that kills the prophets and stones those that are sent to it. How often have I desired to gather your children as a hen gathers her brood under her wing – how often have I tried to love you with a mother’s love – and you were not willing. Those words seem to me to be among the saddest you will find in all the bible. “You were not willing.”
But perhaps what makes them even more sad – is that in my honest moments I know that these words are not just about God’s people who lived in Jerusalem centuries ago. They are also about me. That’s because there are those moments in my life too – times when I am deaf to God’s word of invitation, days when I’d rather just do things my own way instead of relying on the God who loves me. It makes me wonder how often Jesus has said with sadness in his heart, “Dwaine, Dwaine, how often have I desired to gather you under my wing – and you were not willing.” I’m convinced that if I can’t hear my name in Jesus’ lament today – I have missed the point. Perhaps the same is true for you.
So what will Jesus do? How will Jesus respond those people in Jerusalem? How will he respond to me and to you – and our sometimes stubborn lack of faith? Will he wash his hands of God’s disobedient children, saying, “they’ve had their chances, many more than they deserve. Or will he look for some other way to bring us under the wings of the God who wants nothing more than to mother us with love?
Back when I was growing up on the farm, one of my jobs used to be mowing alfalfa. It was a job I enjoyed. I loved the fresh air and the smell of freshly cut hay. But sometimes something happened that really bothered me. Hen pheasants would sometimes make their nests in those alfalfa fields. It was usually impossible to see them, which meant that those nests would be destroyed. But what was even worse for me were the times those pheasants wouldn’t move, even when the mower was upon them. I wondered why they’d be so foolish – why they didn’t save themselves instead of being killed.
But of course, the answer is that they were doing what mothers do. It doesn’t matter if you’re a mother pheasant or a human mother – you protect your babies. Even if it means giving up your own life.
And I remembered that story because it seems to me to be a picture of what Jesus has chosen to do about God’s children. Instead of abandoning them, Jesus chooses to love and protect them. But like those mother pheasants, all that Jesus has to use for this loving work, is his body. That is what he will use to save God’s babies, God’s children. He will give his body.
Do you remember how our Gospel lesson today began? Pharisees come to Jesus with a warning to get out of town because Herod is out to get him. And this is no false alarm. Herod has already had John the Baptist killed. It is no surprise that Jesus is next on his list.
But Jesus responds by offering a message for the fox called Herod. He says, “Go tell him that I have work to do. I am on my way to Jerusalem and neither Herod nor anyone else is going to stop me from finishing what I have started.”
And the work he has to do, is loving those people in Jerusalem, loving you and loving me. He will not give up on us. Even when we wander away or refuse to listen, he calls us back. He will never stop. Herod won’t stop him from loving us. Neither will an angry crowd, or jealous religious leaders, or a violent Roman governor. Even as he goes to cross, he cries out with words of love for those he came to rescue. “Father, forgive them. Forgive them.”
There, Jesus does what I saw in the mother pheasants in those hayfields. Jesus offers his own body as protection for the ones he loves. He will finish this work or die trying.
This is how Barbara Brown Taylor puts it, “Jesus will be a mother hen, who stands between the chicks and those who mean to do them harm. She has no fangs, no claws, no rippling muscles. All she has is her willingness to shield her babies with her own body. If a fox wants them, he will have to kill her first.”
“Which he does, as it turns out. He slides up to her one night in the yard when all the babies are asleep. When her cries awaken them, they scatter. She dies the next day where both foxes and chickens can see her - wings spread, body exposed to danger – without a single chick beneath her feathers.” And there at the cross there is no doubt she meant what she said. She loves her chicks to the end.
And this is Jesus’ answer to the many times we have forgotten God’s call in our lives and lived as though being God’s children didn’t matter. Like a loving mother, or a caring father, he calls us back to God who loves us. Even from the cross, the invitation is given. He will die before he gives up on holding us securely as God’s children.
Maybe as much as anything, this season of Lent is an invitation to open our ears to the loving invitation of Jesus – to listen again to his coaxing words which draw us to find our security and hope under his sheltering wings. May God bless your Lenten journey as you discover anew the loving call of Jesus in your life.