You won’t believe what Mr. Morgan is trying to get me to agree to now. He says he wants a pigmy goat. He found out one of his distant cousins Raises them and they’re so cute and they make good pets.
I’ve been telling people for years, as a general rule (there are exceptions), but generally a marriage will fare better and last longer if both of you develop a habit of saying “yes” more than you say “no”. I don’t care how cute a pigmy goat is, I’m saying no, if it’s the last no I ever get to say! Not that I have anything against goats in particular but I will not have one in my back yard. He says it’s cause I’m such a city girl. He’s right. I don’t want to share the space I live in with a goat. And I don’t want chickens either, come to think of it.
We lived on the western edge of the city when I was a kid, truth is, Little Rock was more like a town in those days. We had chickens in the back yard and a rooster too until the day he made what turned out to be a fatal mistake. He attacked my little brother, scared him half to death and clawed his back all up.
The rooster ended up on the dinner table. But I couldn’t eat it. We never ate the hens either, just their eggs. I’m glad we didn’t. That would have shed a different light on today’s Gospel.
Jesus describes himself and his feelings for Jerusalem s a mother hen who wants to gather her chicks under her wings to protect them and hold them close to her heart. I find it particularly interesting that he calls Herod a fox at the same time he uses the imagery of a hen for himself since a fox is a predator for hens like a wolf is a predator for sheep.
At this point in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus has told his disciples on two separate occasions that he will be betrayed one day, killed the next, and that he will rise again on the third day. In fact he has already begun the journey toward the city of Jerusalem where this will take place. The image of a mother hen gathering her chicks under wings shows the tender love Jesus feels for Jerusalem. It also shows that he is aware of his own vulnerability, especially to Herod the fox. The fox will see the mother hen slaughtered as a sacrifice.
The work Jesus will be doing at the edge of Jerusalem is the work of suffering and dying for the sake of the same people who have rejected the love of God for many generations.
The city of Jerusalem is so full of symbolism it would take a half a day to tell you about it. Let’s just say in light of today’s Gospel that Jerusalem represents the whole People of God from the time God first called them together through Abraham, until the time of Jesus. It may be helpful for us to note what a city was like in that time and place. Cities were centers of commerce and trade. They had walls around them to protect the people engaged in various business ventures. They had their own armies. There was one temple in which to worship God. And one ruler who had been given God’s authority to rule over the People of God in that city.
Many generations passed and the city of Jerusalem strayed from their relationship with God. Its people repeatedly turned away from God and killed those God sent to turn their hearts back to God. And, the city has come under the rule of one who served the emperor, not God. There is much that needs to be forgiven and much to be set right to restore the symbolic city of Jerusalem to a proper relationship with God. That’s what Jesus was lamenting when he spoke of Jerusalem.
In the words of Luke’s Jesus, I hear the tender heart of our heavenly Father speaking to the People of God, the whole People of God, past, present, and future.
That includes us. The divine heart of the Father and the Son both yearning for the People of God to draw near so the process of forgiveness and setting things right to restore us to the life God desires for us can begin.
This piece of scripture, like most of the Bible, does not tell us how we should live. The Bible is NOT an instruction book on how we are to live as you might have heard. There are instructions in it. Like how to build an ark and a temple, how to celebrate feasts and observe fasts, how to share ministry, and how to pray. But mostly the Bible is a collection of books written by ordinary people who were in a proper relationship with God at the time they were writing and through that relationship the nature of God is revealed. That’s why the scriptures are sacred texts. That’s why the Bible is called holy.
Our work in the season of Lent is to get ourselves back in a proper relationship with God – a relationship that is continually strained through our own sin. When we know what our sins are, we can confess them and participate in restoring the relationship. But we won’t know what to confess until we first draw near to God. We are not afraid to do that because of what we know about the nature of God as it has been revealed in the scriptures through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
The nature of God that is revealed in Jesus is tender, compassionate, and full of abundant mercy. God desires to be in a loving relationship with creatures like us as much as I do NOT want a relationship with a pigmy goat. And that’s a lot!
God sent Jesus to the cross and he went obediently. Through that we learn that God is with us in suffering and dying and welcomes us with open arms when we awake from death; that God loves us a mighty love; and more than anything, like a mother hen, God wants to gather us up and bring us close and keep us there, forever.
Copyright. 2010. The Reverend Pamela S. Morgan
