March 3, 4 2007
Second Sunday of Lent
The Rev. Barbara Schlachter

“Jerusalem,  Jerusalem…How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”  This lament of love and longing echoes that of Rachel, refusing to be comforted for her children who were no more, and of David, crying over the death of his son Absalom.   It is a lament of desire, of love that marks Jesus not as someone who preaches detachment from suffering and longing, but someone who is passionate for love and connection.

It is this passage that gives rise to the image of Jesus as our mother, which our Presiding Bishop drew considerable comment when she used it in her sermon at the General Convention.  It is this passage that Anselm, Bishop of Canterbury had in mind when he wrote a thousand years ago:  ‘’Jesus, as a mother you gather your people to you; you are gentle with us as a mother with her children.’

It is this passage that inspired Julian of Norwich in the 14^th century to describe Jesus as a mother who feeds us from his breasts.

It is an interesting image for Jesus to use: that of a mother hen.  How many times have I read this passage and missed the earlier reference to Herod, whom he describes as a fox.

The fox and the hen.  The fox is cunning and sly, determined.  His object is the henhouse.  But the hen is no easy mark.  I remember as a child that to be pecked by my grandmother’s chickens was a fearsome experience.  But the hen’s first concern is the chicks.  Just as the Good Shepherd’s first concern is the sheep.   Isn’t it interesting that we are so much more familiar with the shepherd image for Jesus than the Mother Hen? 

The hen will seek out her chicks to gather them under her if there is danger.  She will go to one, and then they will go together to the next, and on until they are all safely under her wings.  I remember reading that if a hen and her chicks are out in inclement weather, she will gather them under her and keep them safe, even if it means her own death. 

And that of course, is what we know will be Jesus’ fate.  Here, still early in Lent, we become aware that the journey is on from the Mount of Transfiguration to Jerusalem.  Some Pharisees warn him that Herod wants to kill him and he should leave Galilee, which he is doing.  But he is not leaving to escape his death but to go to it.  He is going to Jerusalem where the prophets of old have been put to death.  It is the center of Israel, spiritually because of the temple, and it is where he is to make his sacrifice.  These Pharisees show us that we can’t say all Pharisees are bad—or perhaps that any Pharisee is all bad.  They are concerned for him.  But he knows that it is not yet his time.  So he tells them to go tell that old fox that Jesus has work to do.  He is busy casting out demons and healing people and when he is finished with his work, then he will enter Jerusalem for his death. 

He wishes that Jerusalem would give him a different welcome.  He wishes that they would receive his love and teaching, but he knows they will not.  And so, they will not see him until the day when they will greet him with palms as he enters the city and they will then shout, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”  And then his work will be completed.  And it will be his time.

But, Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, what would it take for you to let Jesus love you, to let him assure you of God’s love for you?  What would it take for us to truly let Jesus love us, to let Jesus assure us of God’s love for us?

Jesus offers us a theology of tenderness and trust, as an antidote to our fear, but are we ready to receive it any more than Jerusalem was? 

God offers himself to Abram as his shield and tells him not to be afraid.  The psalmist tells us those beautiful words:  ‘The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear?  The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid?  For in the day of trouble he shall keep me safe in his shelter; he shall hide me in the secrecy of his dwelling and set me high upon a rock.” 

Jesus knew God to be light, salvation, shelter, a place to be safe: maybe not always physically safe, but spiritually safe.  Jesus had done his homework.  He had emptied himself of his ego and let himself be God filled, and he knew that on that deepest level of Self, he would always be safe.  He would always be under the saving wing, and he tried to offer this to others.  Some understood, but most did not.

This is a theology of tenderness and trust.  The other night we had our monthly healing touch gathering.  What a tender time of love and trust.  We who got to be the healing Christ and those who received the touch of Jesus, knew that something very powerful happened.  Our sense of being the hands of God was received by those who sensed that God was indeed their loving Abba or Amma, their father or their mother.  It was a powerful moment.

Here are some words by Desmond Tutu.  You need to imagine me as male,  black and short.  I know the short is not hard. He says: “We were created by love, for love and so that we should love.  ‘Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you,’ is what God said to Jeremiah.  These are words that apply to each of us.  We were planned for from all eternity.  None of us is a mere divine afterthought.  None of us is an accident.  Before the foundation of the world God chose us to be his children in Jesus Christ.  God chose us

to be his children in Jesus Christ.  We were loved, that is why we were created.  God created you because God loved you.  You do not therefore need to do anything to earn or deserve God’s love.  You do not need to impress God so that God will love you.  God already loves you and God will love you for ever and ever.  There is nothing you can do that will make God love you less.  There is nothing you can do to make God love you more.  God’s love for you is infinite, perfect and eternal.  Tremendous stuff.”

He goes on to encourage us to keep still in the presence of God, to luxuriate, luxuriate in this knowledge.  It’s like a warm bath—a spa massage!  Those are my images.  Tutu goes on to say, “All we must do is to be deeply thankful, to be eucharistic people, to say forever; “Thank you, God, for loving me so much.”

I wish I could say it as he would say it.  Tutu drips God’s love from his mouth like honey from a comb.  Tutu has let himself come to rely totally on the tenderness of God and to trust God fully.  How could he have made it through what he has made it through and still have an open heart of love if he did not?

This is the next part of it, though.  When we feel and know that love of God for us in the deep cracks and crevices of our being, we cannot help but want others to know this love.  And we cannot help but love others with this same love.  There is no longer any separation into the good and the bad.  Those who we think have hurt us, we see that they never did, never could.  We are so totally safe under Mother Jesus’ wing that it was only our ego that got pecked, out small self, not our Real Self.

There is such power in this knowledge of our being loved like this.  There is such power in our loving others like this.  And here I would like to quote Martin Luther King, Jr.

“…one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites—polar opposites—so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love.  We’ve got to get this thing right.

What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.  Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and just is at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.  It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our time.”

He wrote these words forty years ago, but maybe now is the time we’ll get it right.  Places where we can know how loved we are by God and by those with whom we break bread  help us know both our love and our power.  For both of these must be known in relationship, with others, not just on our own.  We need times of quiet stillness to contemplate this, and times of community where we experience this by giving and receiving. 

It is here together that we can dream God’s dream, said by the prophets of so long ago, that one day there would be a time when everyone could sit under their vine and fig tree and live in peace and without fear.  And into plowshares turn their swords.  Nations will not make war anymore.

Here is our fig tree.  Here all around us is our Mother Jesus.  Rest in God’s love and live with the power of that love in all that you are called to do and to be.

Amen.