"Just Us Chickens" Luke 13:31-35

A Sermon Preached By

Rev. Peter W. Shidemantle

Second Sunday in Lent, March 7, 2004

PEBBLE HILL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

5299 Jamesville Rd., Dewitt, NY  13214 

Phone:  315-446-0960

                                                                                    phillchu@twcny.rr.com

If you were an animal, what animal would you be? Sometimes at our house we observe our 9 year old dog and say, "Wouldn’t it be nice to be a dog? You don’t have to worry about anything except eating, getting outside a couple of times a day, and having people pet you once in a while. The rest of the time you can sleep." Maybe for a day or two. But if there were an animal you could actually become, you’d probably choose one for its more admirable qualities, like an eagle who could soar across the skies, or the majestic lion who rules the plains, or perhaps a horse for its strength and speed. None of us would likely choose to be a chicken. Apart from how this bird who cannot fly is treated in our language as a designation for someone who scatters at the first sign of trouble, it’s just not a creature that is known for its desirable qualities, except that it tastes good. It is almost totally vulnerable to all other creatures, and an easy mark for predators. In a contest between a chicken and, say, a fox, the outcome would be in little doubt.

"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!" That’s an image of God that serves well, perhaps, in terms of comfort, but not so much in terms of protection, especially not when a fox is after you.

We’re very conscious of issues of security these days. We’ve found ourselves as a nation to be more vulnerable than we thought ourselves to be, and although as we’ve seen in recent polls, other issues have begun to overtake the issue of security, we know that should forces of terror find the opportunity, the issue would jump back to the forefront. It is not so much our "security" that all the efforts since 9/11 have sought to accomplish, I think, as it is our "protection." Security is more than just protection. As Webster defines "security," it is "freedom from danger," "freedom from fear or anxiety," "freedom from want or deprivation." Security cannot be ensured by guns or walls, even if protection could be ensured in this way. The operative phrase in Webster’s definition, I think, is "freedom from..." Security is the condition in which people are free to live without fear or want. An obsession with safety and protection can, as we have seen in many places in the world, even work against the cause of security by stifling people’s freedom.

God is more about security than God is about protection. A hen does not stand as much protection for her chicks against the attack of a fox, but she will stand with all she has between the fox and her chicks. Jesus lamented that the children of Jerusalem would not be gathered under the security of his love, as he laments still the refusal of God’s beloved children to do so. God reaches out to us with the deep security of his love and faithfulness to us, and still our tendency is to scatter in the illusion that we can make ourselves invulnerable. We’d rather live safe than secure, and Jesus laments our decision with an infinite, suffering love.

We’ve heard recently about groups of clergy being invited to see advanced screenings of Mel Gibson’s movie, "The Passion of the Christ." Several years ago a seminary classmate of mine was invited with other clergy in the Atlanta area to a special preview of Clint Eastwood’s movie, "Pale Rider." Before she went she wondered what in the world this movie had to do with the church. As it turned out, Clint played a frontier preacher with a past. You weren’t sure what kind of past it was, but he walked around in a clerical collar with a pained look on his face, and once, when he took his shirt off, you could see three old bullet holes in his back.

One day preacher Clint rode into an old mining town that had been overrun by foxes. The sheriff was in cahoots with a bunch of armed bullies who were always taking things that didn’t belong to them and killed anyone who got in their way. After taking it all in for a while, getting clear on who the foxes were and where their lair was, he walked into the bank in town and produced the key to a safe deposit box. Alone in the vault, he pulled out the box and drew from it two six guns and a belt full of bullets. Clint carefully took it out and strapped it around his waist, took off his clerical collar and put it in the box, while all the clergy in the audience, including my classmate, went wild. "Go get them, Clint! Gun down those foxes and nail their tails to the wall!" Which is exactly what he did.

That was Clint Eastwood, but Jesus was Jesus. He had scars on his body too. He meant to protect his chicks from the foxes but he wouldn’t become a fox himself in order to do it. He wouldn’t fight fire with fire. And when Herod and his bullies came after Jesus and his brood, he didn’t produce any six shooters to stop them, but put himself between them and the chicks, all fluffed up and hunkered down like a mother hen.*

It was a skirmish that might not have been very noticeable at the time, not like how the movies portray cosmic battles between the forces of good and the forces of evil, not like some who tell us that the mighty battle is coming and we’d better get ourselves aligned with the right side. Yet it was the cosmic battle of all time, in which the power of tooth and fang was put against the power of a mother hen’s love for her chicks. As my classmate puts it, "(and) God bet the farm on the hen."

We are here today, along with all those "chicks" who have gathered in places like this for the last 2,000 years, because we believe, or want to believe, who struggle to believe - that she won. It didn’t look that way at first, with bloody feathers all over the place and chicks running for cover. But in time it became clear - for soon afterwards she returned with teeth marks on her body to make sure they didn’t miss the point, proving that the power of the foxes could not kill her love for them, could not steal them away from her. Maybe they’d have to go through much of what she did to get past them, but she’d be waiting for them on the other side, with a love stronger than death.

Some images or metaphors should only be taken so far, but at the risk of doing just that, I’d suggest that Jesus wants us to grow from chicks into chickens. There’s a word that jumps out of this account from Luke’s gospel - the word "must." Jesus "must" be on his way. He "must" go to Jerusalem, to the temple, to Gethsemene, to Calvary. His mission is not negotiable. Though his disciples try to dissuade him, and even some friendly Pharisees try to warn him that Herod is out to kill him, he chooses the security of his Father’s love over his own safety and protection against the foxes of the world. And along the way he continues to love the ones he knows will not be gathered under his wings. He knows his own death is certain, but he continues to teach and heal and draw his children to him.

We know that often we do not walk our own journey of faith with the passionate conviction of God’s holy "must" for our lives. Lent challenges us to try, even though we cannot walk straight toward the cross like he did. Only Christ could do that. But as he gathered so many on his way toward Jerusalem, perhaps he will gather us too - teaching us, healing us, maybe just sitting with us for a while. As we grow in our hope, maybe our resolve to focus on the cross will grow as well, as we give what we have received, teach what we have learned, love in the way that we have been loved.

None of us gets through the journey unscarred. We cannot make ourselves invulnerable, as hard as we might try to scatter and scurry away from the forces and the effects of evil and our own sinfulness. Each Sunday we gather in God’s name (the first movement of our worship)- and I am thinking about that a bit differently now - like chicks gathering under the wings of a mother hen - the church as a mother hen, a fluffed up brooding hen. She offers warmth and shelter to all kinds of chicks, including runts and orphans, maybe even a few ducks. The church of Christ planting herself between the foxes of this world and her fragile-boned chicks, "offering herself up to be eaten before she will sacrifice one of her brood - staying true to the body she is by refusing to run from the foxes and refusing to become one of them."

Maybe that’s why it’s called Mother Church, where we come to be fed and sheltered, but where we also come to stand firm with those who need the same things from us - where we grow from chicks into chickens.

And when we’re through we scatter once again - but we remain within the reach of our God’s sheltering love, empowering us to live as people with passion and purpose to do the will of our God. In this Lenten season may you, and may we together, come to discern and discern again the "must" of our lives in Christ, and may we - all us chickens - come to know more fully and more deeply the true security, and from that the true courage, of like in him.

* I am indebted to Barbara Brown Taylor for her use of this image of "mother hen" from her sermon, "Foxes and Chickens."

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