2C Lent
13 Mar 2022
As many of you know, I have a small flock of chickens. They are somewhere between livestock and pets. Over time I have lost several to either predation or disease and, while I am saddened, it is not to me as the loss of one of my dogs or cats would be.
Now that the weather is getting a bit more like spring, I let them out of the coop during the day. While we have a large acreage, they tend to stay in a fairly circumscribed area. The road, while busy, is not a hazard to them. I am guessing it is not because they know enough to avoid cars; there simply is nothing to eat on the asphalt. Come late afternoon, they head back to the coop and into their roost.
I always count to make sure they are all there, rather like Jesus making sure all hundred of the sheep are in the fold. A few nights ago I counted nine; one was missing. It was one of the older hens, a Rhode Island Red. I went looking for her all over the yard and down into the woods. No luck. I thought sadly that a predator had gotten her, but typically you find the corpse and there was nothing to be found anywhere. So I decided to fully lock the chickens in and go off to bed.
The next day I opened the coop door and let them out and then opened the fence, as some can fly over and some cannot. (In a month or so there will be a wing clipping so that they can’t ruin the flower beds; right now it is fine to let them dig.) I guess I somehow expected to find the missing hen, but no luck.
A few hours later I looked out a window and there she was. I have no idea whatsoever where she roosted for the night and why she was not killed by a predator, but she was back as though nothing had happened. I rejoiced that I had not lost her; I am rather fond of the old gal.
Now none of my hens ever get broody. For those of you who do not know what that means, and that included me until I started raising chickens, broody does not mean in a funk or depressed. A broody chicken is one that wants about all else to sit on some baby chicks.
My family doctor raises chickens with her children and they decided to have the chickens mother the new baby chicks they ordered. To do that the need to find hens that spend all there time in the nest box. You put in fake eggs and the ladies are happy as can be to sit on the fake eggs. Then, when it is dark and the hens are fast asleep, you remove the eggs and put the new baby chicks underneath them. Voila, instant mothering. Two hens in their flock were broody and they took turns sitting on the babies and getting food and water and then the chicks to the food trough. At night the hens would sit on the chicks and keep them warm. If a predator came, the hens would cover the chicks to protect them. They would die to save the chicks.
Jesus is often seen as the Good Shepherd, the one who would search for the missing sheep or lay down his life for his sheep, but just as much he is the mother hen who would take the chicks under his wings and protect them. Jesus is our mother and protects us like a mother. He is the one who loved Jerusalem and its people with a fierce passion, one that will get him killed as it had so many other prophets.
When we see someone we love fall prey to false narratives, slip into believing conspiracy theories, what can we do? Hearts and minds will not be changed by rational words or debate, any more now than in Jerusalem in Jesus’ time and the time of the prophets. How does he respond? Not with anger or malice, but with love and compassion. His heart is hurting; he is in sorrow and deep mourning for Jerusalem.
As Jesus longs for Jerusalem to turn to God and bless the prophets, so must we turn to God, not in our great and manifold sins, but out of and with love.
Do we see Jerusalem as hopeless? After all it remains a city of conflict and violence that peace seems to elude. Ironic that the very name means the city of peace.
Yet I do not believe it is Jerusalem the city but ourselves that are being addressed in this message. When Luke wrote his Gospel, much of Jerusalem had been destroyed by Rome, the Temple no more than a pile of rubble. Luke is speaking to us and the message is one of hope: you are loved beyond anything you could hope for. We are loved despite everything we have done, are doing, and will do. Lent should call us back to that love, the love that surpasses all understanding. It amazes me that repeatedly the Bible reminds us that God loves us and that love persists regardless of our actions. Lent should call us back to that love! I sometimes view God like the mother bunny in the children’s story The Runaway Bunny. God will follow us into each folly, each error, each sin and let us know we remain loved and wanted. Lent is Good News!!
When Jerusalem sings Hosannahs, Jesus will be there. When they know he comes in the name of God, he will be there. Meanwhile, it is dangerous to preach justice to power. When folks are entrenched in a comfortable lifestyle, they like nothing worse than a prophet. Prophets speak the truth; Jesus speaks that God’s love is freely given to all and that was, and still is, an anathema to those in power.
Jesus speaks to you and me and tells us we are loved and beloved. But he also speaks to those in power and reminds them of the Truth, reminds them that they, too, are God’s.
Are you willing to put yourselves under the wings of God, to let God protect you and care for you? That, my friends, is what Lent should teach us.
Comments