March 16 2025 Lent 2

Genesis 15.1-12; 17-18    Psalm 27    Philippians 3.17-4.1    Luke 13.31-35

On face value, this gospel passage is not necessarily easy to understand.  The first thing to understand is – for the Israelites, Jerusalem was the centre of the world, it contained their temple and all their festival celebrations involved the temple, everything they did revolved around the temple and what happened in the temple.  And as a first-century Jew, Jesus also saw Jerusalem as the centre of the world.  So his lament about Jerusalem expresses his grief for the city he loves.  When Luke puts these words into Jesus’ mouth, Luke is grieving for the city that was destroyed in 70CE when Rome crushed the First Jewish Revolt.

Now we are probably used to Jesus’ antagonism toward the Pharisees and theirs toward him, but in this passage, the Pharisees are looking out for Jesus, warning him to get out of there, warning him of Herod’s plans to kill him.  And in this act of protection, they are showing themselves to be Jesus’ ally.  And they join Jesus in his lament over the fall of Jerusalem.  They too loved this city at the centre of the world, they too hated Rome and the Sadducees who were collaborating with Rome. 

Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, the city that rejects God’s messengers and kills its prophets.  Jesus is only too aware of the fate that awaits him there, but he will not change his course, not for Herod, not for anyone.  When Jesus dismisses the warning from the Pharisees, and intimates that Herod can just ‘wait’ because ‘he has work to do’, and he is not afraid of ‘that fox’, he goes on to portray himself, and God, as a mother hen.  Now this is very strange image to choose if he is trying to show power or success or acumen.  Luke invites us to contemplate Jesus as a mother hen whose wings are outstretched offering welcome and protection to her children; but they are not interested, they will not come home to her.  Her wings, her arms, are empty.

So what does this reading offer for our Lenten journeys.

During Lent, we are called to embrace vulnerability.  Jesus may dismiss Herod and call him a fox, but he is not implying he is not dangerous.  Jesus, the mother hen, does not offer us absence of danger, but he is offering his unguarded, open-hearted, wholly vulnerable self in the face of all that scares and threatens us.  Like a mother hen protecting her chicks against danger or threat, he is offering his own body, his own life.  Wings spread open, heart exposed, shade and warmth and shelter at the ready, Jesus is offering his very being as a place of refuge and return for his children.  For all his children, even those who want to stone and kill him.  What would it take for us to embrace Jesus’ vulnerability as our strength.  Can we accept the ‘mother-hen God’ of this passage, the mother-hen who calls to us with longing and desperation, her wings held open and ready, standing in the centre of our terror, and offering refuge there, at ground zero, where the feathers fly and the blood is shed..

During Lent, we are called to lamentation.  It is not just parents who mourn lost opportunities, broken promises and crushed hopes.  All of us know what it is like to be rejected.  In this passage, Jesus grieves for his lost and wandering children.  For those who will not come home.  For the city that will not welcome its saviour.  Jesus’ lamentation is one of helpless yearning.  A yearning to all that ‘could have been’ in this broken, resistant, clueless world.  It is a lamentation for the real limits we live with as human beings, the lasting wounds.  Sometimes, like the mother-hen-Jesus, we cannot do what we most want to do, we cannot give what we deeply wish to give, we cannot save the loved ones we ache to save.  So, how might you be called to lamentation during this Season of Lent.  What eludes you that you yearn for, what missed opportunities, failed efforts, broken dreams pull at your heart and call you into mourning.  How might we lament with Jesus over our homes, our cities, our countries, our planet.  How might we stand with him in the Jerusalems of our lives and weep our sorrow into new hope?

During Lent we are called to return.  Jesus tells the wandering children – you were not willing, you would not come back, you would not relinquish your right to yourself – not even when your life depended on it.  The image of chicks snuggling under the wing of their mother is an image of gathering, of community, of love and belonging, of international openness.  And it requires return, a surrender, a tempering of our wild lone-rangerisms.  This Lent – what in us is not willing to be gathered; what is not willing to surrender to community.  Where in our lives have we chosen to ‘go it alone’, rejecting love because love is too risky.  And the thing is, loving a vulnerable ‘mother-hen God’ is possibly the riskiest thing some of us could do.  She is the one who weeps for us.  She is the one calling us home.  Her body and her heart are ‘on the line’ and yet her desire is fixed on us.  She will never stop calling us home. 

During this wilderness season of repentance and transformation, may the desire of Jesus become our desire too.  May the way of the mother-hen – the way of vulnerability, sorrow, hope and eternal welcome – lead us home.