Advent Lutheran Church

"Listen to Your Mother Hen"

³¹At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, "Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you."   ³²He replied, "Go tell that fox, 'I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.' ³³In any case, I must keep going today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!

 ³⁴"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! ³⁵Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord."

I can see this passage as two units of scripture.  Who really knows how close the two occurred together, but our author Luke has presented them to us in back-to-back stories.  First, there is the warning from the Pharisees to Jesus that going to Galilee would not be the best thing to do at the moment.  Herod may be scared or “ticked off,” and word on the street is he wants Jesus killed. In the second, Jesus is lamenting over Jerusalem and the evil things going on there.  But at the same time, does Luke attempt to tie the two stories together with reference to a ‘fox’ in verse 32 and ‘hen and her chicks’ in verse 34?

What are the Pharisees up to here?  Warning Jesus?  Most of our stories reflect the Pharisees as hostile to Jesus.  Were the Pharisees just like me, sometimes poking Jesus just to see if he will react to their wants and needs?  Maybe they were even tattling on Herod, saying, “There is a bad man in Galilee just waiting for you.”  Talking smack and baiting Jesus... “What are you going to do, Jesus? What you going to do?”   Certainly, not all Pharisees were bad, and since we are reading this story from Luke, I think Luke is showing  these people in a good light.  As you know, the Pharisees are really ‘Fair you see’.                              Jesus simply replies, “Just go and tell Herod I am not finished here,” and uses a timeline, if you will, of three days.  Hmmm… 3 days.  Where else have I heard that?  That third day, for me, certainly points to Easter Sunday and the promise of the resurrection and eternal life.  The other two days are work days, telling the people that bringing the message of good news is an ongoing job.  It tells me that I need to share that message of good news --  whether that be for two days, two years, two decades -- until through grace I am received by Him on my third day. Not always a task I am good at, but Jesus lets us practice over and over and over. 

How difficult it must have been for Jesus to know all the prophets who had been to Jerusalem before him, and their message for the most part fell on deaf ears.  Looking over the city, he probably asked his Father, “What part of this ‘Message of Good News’ don’t they understand?”  If Jesus were here today, in person, looking at our world, He would give me the big “Really? Why aren’t you listening to my word and sharing the ‘Good News?’”  Even living on this side of the cross and seeing that promise of that third day, I come up short of living and walking with him daily.

During summers as a youth, I worked on a farm in central Kansas.  Sooner or later every summer, the day of cleaning the chicken coop would come.  After 12 months since the previous cleaning of the coop, the depth and smell of chicken ‘droppings’ was enough to make the job unbearable.  The other thing to be on the lookout for was a mother hen with new chicks.  A mother hen is very protective of her chicks, even after they grow up, go out of the coop and come back. You soon learned who was boss of the chicken coop.  You were not getting close to that area until mother hen was ready to let you come close.  Verse 34 always takes me back to those summers and the chicken coop.  Jesus is that mother hen.  No matter whether I stray away or go out and need to meet the fox face-to-face, he brings me back under his wings, no questions asked, for love and protection.   

Prayer:  Heavenly Father, especially during this time of Lent, direct us with Your Spirit to focus on listening, walking the walk and talking the talk of the good news.  Thank you for giving us your Son so that we may be saved, through him.