The Mother Hen’s Lament
March 13, 2022
Luke 13: 31–35
At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.’ He said to them, ‘Go and tell that fox for me, “Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed away from Jerusalem.” 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! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” ’ ***
One summer when my twin brother and were about 12 we had a chance to try poultry farming. Well, sort of. We did not live on a farm, but in a quiet residential area where yards were spacious and the neighborhood had a quiet, pastoral sense.
This attempt at raising chickens came about after we won two at the local summer festival. In a large, cordoned area of city park, children were allowed to chase and capture chickens for some token price. The details of how all this transpired are lost to the years. But two things I remember clearly. Our parents allowed us to bring the chickens home and my father quickly built a small chicken coop that was placed in the far corner of the backyard.
The chickens were immature and at the start seemed to be enjoyable pets. They were a new attraction for all the kids in the neighborhood. Unlike the family Beagle who always had to be tethered, the chickens could leave the coop to spend the day wandering a small area, pecking at whatever looked interesting on the ground.
What never crossed my mind was the goal of keeping chickens. Were we going to enjoy fresh eggs every morning? I did not know about laying verses broiler chickens. I did not know about the difference between a hen and a rooster. In fact, we did not know what our two prize chickens were until one morning their clucking turned into crowing. This happened about 4:15am. My parents were horrified at the thought of how the neighbors’ patience with their twin sons experimental pets might be turning at this pre-dawn hour.
It was not more than a few days and the poultry pair were relocated to a nearby farm and our backyard coup was vacant. Word came later in the year that our chickens provided a tasty meal.
What I did not get to experience during this unusual summer experience was the thrill of eggs cracking and chicks emerging. I guess we should have asked for chickens with the necessary gender assignments before leaving the city park. Over the years however, I have observed mother hens and chicks and the strong, keen interactions between them. In a flash, chicks can be called in under their mother’s wings when she detects the slightest threat to their wellbeing.
In today’s reading, Luke invites us to contemplate Jesus as a mother hen whose chicks do not want her. Though she stands with her wings wide open, offering welcome, belonging, and shelter, her children refuse to come home to her. She is a mother in mourning. She laments aloud.
In the verses that precede this heartbreak, a group of Pharisees warn Jesus to leave the area where he is teaching and healing, because Herod wants to kill him. Throughout the Gospels, Pharisees are often juxtaposed against Jesus and his work. Jesus has earlier pronounced woes against them (Luke 11:42–44). Yet he also accepts their dinner invitations.
Jesus knows Herod is not one to mess with. He is the villain who ordered John the Baptist’s arrest and beheading. He tells the Pharisees that he is not afraid of “that fox.” I have work left to do, he tells them, and I will not be deterred by the machinations of a bully.
At this point in the story, Jesus has set his course for Jerusalem, the city that rejects God’s messengers and kills its prophets. Jesus knows exactly what fate awaits him there, but he will not change course. Not for Herod, not for anyone.
Even as Jesus stands up to a “fox,” He is thwarted in his work. In an unusual turn, Jesus expresses grief. He compares himself to a mother hen who will do whatever it takes to protect her chicks from a menacing fox, even to the point of giving his own life in the hope that they will be spared. Like the hen who gathers her young under outstretched wings, Jesus laments over Jerusalem’s hard heartedness.
As disjointed as this passage is, Luke is once again teaching us that mercy and self-giving is the way of God, even when it comes up against power and domination.
But why the image of a mother hen? A hen is powerless against a fox. Even as she tries to protect her chicks, all could easily be devoured.
Perhaps it was a handy image. The parallel of the hen as victim of the fox worked. In making his way to Jerusalem, Jesus faces increasing threat, even as he yearns to care for people. His heart is responsive to those who have been marginalized by all sorts of debilitating illness, threat, oppression, and injustice. Like the mother hen, his efforts are solely for the sake of a hurting world. Without the cunning intent of a fox, Jesus expresses an undying love, like a mother hen in protecting her chicks.
Perhaps the image is also a way Luke wants his readers to visualize a feminine dimension of the divine. It is rare in the Word and in our discourse as Christians to stray from masculine pronouns and images for God. We have been encultured in a male dominant understanding of God. The Bible offers us few female voices. Only 93 women speak in the Bible and of them only 49 are named. (Around 3,000 men are named). These women speak a total of 14,056 words collectively — roughly 1.1 percent of the Bible. Mary, the mother of Jesus, speaks 191 words; Mary Magdalene gets 61; Sarah, 141 (Freeman, Bible Women: All Their Words and Why They Matter).
How does incorporating feminine images of the divine into our thinking and speaking broaden the breadth and beauty of God?
No matter the reason for Luke providing us this metaphor of a lamenting Jesus, picturing Him with heartfelt regard for the wayward people of Jerusalem, like a mother hen for her chicks, foreshadows the suffering love that would be seen in a matter of days. Luke has Jesus choosing the attentive, self-sacrificing, mother hen to show us something about God who is intent upon saving us from all that threatens.
And that is where the image finally comes home. We join this biblical story today as the brood of chicks scattered, distracted, unable, somehow, to comprehend the very real danger which is the fox’s threatening ways.
But we know we are stranded and only in earshot of Jesus’ lament. The good news is that we are not left to our own devises to escape the dangers of this life and this tormented world.
The fox has been outfoxed. The hen wins and thus, do her chicks, too.
