Genesis 15: 1-12, 17-18
Luke 13: 31-end
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen
As you know I am a great film fan and I like lots of different types of films (almost everything except rom coms to be honest!). I like tense thrillers, spooky stories (but not gory ones). I like sci-fi, fantasy, epic, historical, the list is pretty long. I like stories where the hero has a quest, or a difficult path. I love a long narrative arc with trials and difficulties, building to a finale. I like a story where good conquers evil.
During Lent we watch/experience/ a long and dangerous journey with a ‘climactic finale’ (as one writer puts it) at the end. Lent is a spiritual and liturgical journey but it is also a story. And the episode (if you like) this week finds Jesus journeying through Galilee, and in Herod territory. He is warned by the Pharisees that he should leave—he is in danger of being killed.
But Jesus does not leave, instead he keeps doing what he does, healing and teaching. He knows he has nothing to fear, because (if you like) the final act hasn’t begun.
Jesus knows that many prophets of old have trod this path, lived this story, made this journey only to meet their end in Jerusalem. He knows it must end in Jerusalem.
In a classic heroic epic, this is where the actor has a long night of thinking, preparing herself with thoughts of all the bad things that she must put right. Jesus does not do this, he is not driven by revenge or anger. Instead he laments.
And in his lament he uses the beautiful image of the mother hen protecting her chicks. I particularly love the little book of Lenten meditations called ‘Christ in the Wilderness’ which uses paintings from a series by Stanley Spencer. You may be familiar with them. In one image Christ cradles a tiny scorpion, in another he leans against an earth bank in which foxes can be seen moving in and out of the holes they have made. There is also an image of Christ protectively sheltering a mother hen and her chicks, I like to meditate on those images during Lent but this time I was also drawn by a writer to a new thought about that image, which I will share with you today.
Think about chicks in a farmyard. They run around, exploring and pecking, they fall into ponds, they get stuck in haystacks, they wander out into the road, they are nearly eaten by the family cat. They go in whatever direction strikes them as interesting at that moment in time. Their behaviour reminds us that we have the gift of free will, and like the chicks, can do what we want with it.
Whether we have the gift of children to raise and look after or not, we can all appreciate and relate to a mother hen. We wish to protect those whom we love and no matter how far they drift away from us over the years we are still prepared to step in front of them and spread our wings to protect them from danger.
At the moment it might feel like there is danger on all sides. We are witnessing a time in the world of new alignments, where the battle between good and evil is at its most clearly defined and obvious. We might feel that the events that we see in the news every day are stark and polarised (and polarising). We live in a world obsessed with status and power, and consequently, we can clearly see how political leaders bend the narrative to suit their purposes. This is particularly problematic in a world of social media. If there had been social media in his time I think we can be pretty sure that Herod would have used it to its utmost (and probably made some stirring propaganda films too!)
And yet, Jesus chooses an image that is so far away from propaganda and hubris as possible. Instead he offers us the image of the mother hen, gathering us to him. And that image is probably not what we would see on a propaganda poster or in a classic epic film. It would be an eagle, owl or hawk. These birds are known to fight and win.
And a final thought. Our epic, our story is different. In our story the hero does not fight, and yet he still wins. He simply spreads his wings on a cross and offers himself up to save his children.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen