Genesis 15.1-12,17-18, Luke 13:22-35
The Second Sunday of Lent, 21 February 2016
Queen Camel, Corton Denham, Sutton Montis, Weston Bampfylde
I once took a group of primary school children from inner-city Toxteth on a visit to an urban farm. It was one of those hands-on experiences which gave these kids contact with farm animals, possibly for the first time ever. Some of these encounters were beautiful, and some quite stressful, but the staff of the farm, who had seen it all before, were quite relaxed about our kids handling the stock. At the end of the afternoon the children were invited to go into the large free-range chicken enclosure to round up the dozens of hens and direct them into their shed for the night. You can imagine the scene. It was chaos, carnage - chickens and children scattering everywhere in a cacophony of screams and squawks, feathers flying, scuffed hands and knees. Have you ever tried gathering chickens together? Not an easy task, by any means.
As he turned his face towards the place and time of his trial and execution, Jesus said,
‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 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 would not.’
This is a sermon about scattering and gathering: and the place on which it is focussed is that holy hellhole, that ultimate arena of gathering and scattering: Jerusalem.
Patrick Woodhouse’s book ‘Life in the Psalms’ begins by contemplating Psalm 122, which opens with these joyful words:
I was glad when they said to me,
‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’
And now our feet are standing
within your gates, O Jerusalem. [1]
It’s a pilgrim’s psalm, a song from one the scattered people of David, expressing the anticipation and the joy of travelling together up to Jerusalem, to gather in the Temple.
Patrick shares his memory of ‘visiting Jerusalem in 1993 and being astonished at the scale, the symmetry, and the size of the Temple’. He sensed the awe a pilgrim would feel in seeing such a building at the heart of this city for the first time. ‘Jerusalem’ says the book of Lamentations, ‘was the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the world’’. [2]
The experience of this Jewish pilgrim, beholding their beloved holy city with the Temple at its heart, mirrors the experience of countless pilgrims - Jewish, Christian and Muslim - as they gather in Jerusalem today.
But even as those pilgrims gathered back then, there was the sadness of a sense of scattering, for these pilgrims would have travelled not as one unified mass but as distinctive tribes - innumerable ones, drawn from the descendents of Abraham’s eight children and the twelve tribes of Israel. Like today - where Jews gather to pray at the wailing wall, Muslims congregate to pray in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and Christians together walk the Via Dolorosa - Jerusalem gathers the tribes.
But the tribes keep apart from each other, each praying in their own place, each staying in their own rooms, huddling together to protect their group against the others, whilst each mirroring the other’s intensity of belief and devoutness, and each mimicking the others’ desire to claim Jerusalem as their own. This city of disunity reminds us that this is the way in which human beings have always gathered - together in tribes, their faces set against other tribes.
This is the way that the world gathers: under a religious sign, under an ideology, under a flag. It has the appearance of being unifying; but it is divisive. It is why Jerusalem is split apart by security walls and checkpoints today, and why in Jesus’ time Herod had his forces on alert, fixated on ensuring that when the tribes gathered in the city, potential troublemakers would be isolated and eliminated.
This is the way of the fox, whose way is always to divide, isolate, attack. Whenever we gather under the sign of a crucifix, or a crescent, or a star, when we do so in opposition to others, the fox stalks among us. [3]
So as the world gathers tribally, self-identifying in hostility to other groups, being prepared to kill the prophets who question this way of gathering, and stoning those sent to try for unity, as the world adopts the way of the ruthless fox, Jesus models a different way of gathering.
For Jesus is no inner-city child chasing hens around an enclosure. In his own words Jesus is the mother hen who gently lifts her wings so that all of Jerusalem can snuggle under them - the high-priestly, politically conservative Sadducees, the pious and morally conservative Pharisees, the contemplative Essenes and the revolutionary Zealots, the Herodians and the occupying Romans - ‘How I desire to gather you all together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings…’ he said.
Not the mighty eagle of Exodus, or Hosea’s stealthy leopard; not the proud lion of Judah, mowing down his enemies with a roar. No, the mother hen is what Jesus chooses, which ‐ if you think about it ‐ is pretty typical of him, who is always turning our expectations upside down. So of course he chooses a chicken, which is about as far from a fox as you can get. That way the options become very clear: you can live by licking your chops or you can die protecting the chicks. Jesus won’t be king of the jungle in this or any other story. Jesus will be a mother hen, who stands between the chicks and those who mean to do them harm, who has no fangs, no claws, no rippling muscles, just her willingness to shield her babies with her own body. [4]
Now, if you have ever seen a mother hen gather chicks you’ll feel the power in Jesus’ metaphor. For, unlike unruly inner-city schoolkids rounding up hens, a mother hen gathers her chicks easily; with an economy of motion and a few well-chosen clucks of comfort and guidance she draws them to herself - she needs not chase them, they come to her, gladly, for they know that under her wings is love, warmth and protection. This is the way that Jesus longs to gather us, away from the lure of the fox. Jesus values the uniqueness of each person, of each pilgrim party, of each tribe, and longs to shelter each one just as they are, united in their diversity, under his wings.
So we hear the despair in Jesus’ voice because the scattered tribes of Jerusalem refused to be gathered together by him. Rather like a diplomat or mediator in a neighbourhood dispute, we can appreciate his sadness:
That the Sadducees would not be gathered by Jesus with all the other tribes of Jerusalem for fear of compromising their social standing; that the Pharisees refused for fear of corrupting their religious purity, the Essenes for fear of undermining their precious separateness; that the Zealots refused for fear of being accommodated to the system they aggressively opposed, the Herodians refused because they could not be seen in the same room as Zealot terrorists, and the occupying Romans refused for fear this would undermine their power in the region. [5]
And so the way of the fox, the way of Herod, the way of all empires, prevailed, in the end, all the way to Calvary. And it is the way of the fox which seems to still prevail in Jerusalem - and in all our Jerusalems - today.
Jesus spoke of Jerusalem killing the prophets, and we are reminded of the assassination of Folke Bernadotte, Swedish diplomat, wartime rescuer of thousands of Jews, postwar United Nations Middle-East mediator, killed in West Jerusalem in 1948 by the militant Zionist group the Stern Gang, for his advocacy of a Palestinian settlement. [6]
Jesus spoke of Jerusalem stoning those who are sent to it: and only weeks ago The Times of Israel reported a senior United Nations official in the Palestinian Territories, Mounir Kleibo, sustaining serious injuries to his jaw after coming under attack by Palestinian rock throwers in East Jerusalem. ( ‘Allah will forgive them’, he is later reported to have said). [7]
The power in this gospel passage, today, lies in the question it raises for us. In a divided world, will we persist in gathering only in our tribes, posturing behind our religious dogmas, clinging to our market certainties, aggressively waving our flags - clinging to the way of the fox, vulnerable to the attacks of the fox?
Are we happy for Jerusalem to continue being a holy hellhole where Jews, Muslims, and Christians gather together in tribes, their faces set against each other? Or will we be drawn, and encourage others to be drawn, to the way of the mother hen? Remembering our common ties as children of Abraham, and finding common ground in our vulnerable chicken-ness, will we commit to learning the way we can shelter together under the wings of love, warmth and protection, united in our diversity?
This is not about Christians assimilating people of other faiths - it is about people of all backgrounds finding common ground. Standing today over Jerusalem, Jesus, the once-and-always Jew is not coercing the Jewish people to ‘accept him as messiah’ but longing to embrace them in safety; Jesus, revered as a prophet in Islam, is not forcing Muslims to ‘worship him as Lord’, just yearning to include them in his way of peace and protection. Jesus, the subject of Christian devotion, is not asking us to gather in a huddle, faces set against those of other faiths, but to learn to embrace the goodness of unity, with our scattered brothers and sisters.
Even as he celebrated the wonder of Jerusalem, the writer of Psalm 122 felt the need to pray for the peace of the city. It’s just as true now as it was back then: if we pray for the peace of Jerusalem we pray for our own peace.
So let us pray for the peace of Jerusalem. May they prosper - all Jews, Muslims and Christians, who love and gather in that place. May peace reign among all those within her walls and palaces, for the sake of all pilgrims of the earth, so that God will continue to dwell among us. [8]
Notes
I am indebted, as ever, to Paul Neuchterlein whose notes and references on this passage have been invaluable in preparing this sermon: Girardian Lectionary, Lent 2C.
[1] Psalm 122.1-2.
[2] Patrick Woodhouse, Life in the Psalms: Contemporary Meaning in Ancient Texts: The Mowbray Lent Book 2016, p.38, altered.
[3] This section inspired by Sydney Carter’s song ‘The devil wore a crucifix’, sung here by Franciscus Henri.
[4] Barbara Brown Taylor, As a hen gathers her brood.
[5] This section was inspired by part of Jesus the Mother Hen, a Sermon on Luke 13:22-35, posted on the Holy Ground Holy Space Facebook page, 25 February 2013. It is unclear, but the author of this particular passage may be Barbara Brown Taylor.
[6] Wikipedia: Folke Bernadotte.
[7] UN official hurt in stoning: ‘Allah will forgive them’, Times of Israel, October 12, 2015.
[8] Patrick Woodhouse, Life in the Psalms, p.39, altered.
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