Last week I found a questionnaire online called ‘If you were a dog, what kind if dog would you be?’  And I couldn’t resist it.  It had questions about personality, relationships, likes and dislikes, and attitudes to things like exercise and work.  I chose my answers from the list of options and then hit return and it told me what type of dog I’d be.  I really, really didn’t like the answer.  The breed of dog this questionnaire said I’d be was a Jack Russell Terrier.  Really.  I’m not happy about this.  So I can only conclude that this test was wrong.   I wonder what kind of dog God would be.  Not a Jack Russell Terrier, I’m sure.  Something loyal, loving, hard working, intelligent.  And while we’re at it, what kind of bird would God be, if God were a bird?  Well, thankfully we do know the answer to that.

In the Gospels Jesus uses a lot of wonderful images and metaphors in his teaching.  He talks about farmers and crops.  He likens his followers to salt and light.  He describes himself as the Bread of Life, the door, the Good Shepherd.  And then in today’s Gospel reading he likens himself to a bird.  What would you naturally think?  Maybe you’d think a majestic, powerful, graceful, imperious bird of prey – an eagle soaring above the clouds, a hawk gliding silently on the thermals, king of all he surveys.  That might be your bird that describes God.  You wouldn’t pick a vulture – too ugly.  You wouldn’t pick a buzzard – disgusting eating habits.  You wouldn’t pick a songbird – nice voice, but hardly a symbol of power and majesty.  You wouldn’t choose an ostrich – it can’t fly and what good is a bird that can’t fly.  You wouldn’t pick a penguin for the same reason and it looks funny when it waddles.  And of all the birds you would not pick as a symbol of God at the top of the list would surely have to be a chicken.  You know, you just wouldn’t pick a chicken as your image of God.  You think ‘God’ and you don’t think ‘chicken’, do you? 

Here’s why you wouldn’t choose a chicken – it’s ugly and God isn’t; it’s pretty stupid and God isn’t; it can’t really fly (unless you call flapping its stubby little wings for about four feet flying).  ‘Chicken’ has even passed into our slang as another word for coward.  And yet, in this passage Jesus likens himself to a farmyard chicken.  And a female one at that.  Jesus compares himself to a drab old hen.  Because, ugly and undignified it might be, but the hen is a tender parent.  Those of you who have first-hand experience of hens can probably tell us about how a hen will gather up her chicks under her wings for protection.  Apparently the mother will fluff out her wings and squawk at the top of her voice to call her babies to safety.  And Jesus says that he has those same intimate, tender feelings for his people, a heart full of compassion for his children.  On the western slope of the Mount of Olives overlooking Jerusalem there is a small chapel called "Jesus wept".  It’s in the shape of a tear drop.  Inside the chapel, the altar is located in front of a high arched window that looks directly out over the city.  On the front of the altar is a mosaic medallion of a white hen with a golden halo around her head, a red comb resembling a crown, and wings spread wide to shelter the little yellow chicks crowding around her feet.  They look happy to be there, and the hen looks ready to spit fire if anyone comes near her babies.  I found some really good photos of it at www.Biblewalks.com, and promised myself that one day I’ll visit.

In Mission, British Columbia, the story is told of a hen house which burned to the ground one day.  The owner, a man named Ike, arrived just too late to save anything of the structure.  As he and his grandfather sorted through the smoldering wreckage he came upon one hen lying dead near what had been the door of the hen house. Her top feathers were singed brown by the fire's heat, her neck limp.  Ike bent down to pick up the dead hen, and as he did four chicks came scurrying out from underneath her burnt body. The chicks survived because they were insulated by the shelter and protection of their mother's wings.

“Jerusalem, O Jerusalem.  How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.”   The parental love of Jesus.  And of course, like that hen in that story, Jesus died saving us.  And everyone who hears his call and scurries to him will find protection from the things that destroy our lives, both now (spiritually) and at the hour of our deaths.

 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often have I longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her children under her wings, but you were not willing!”  Think about that for a moment.  The passion, the compassion, the emotion welling up in Jesus’ voice, his pain and anguish that the people he loves are in danger and in need of protection.  And Jesus feels deeply, passionately that they would wake up to his loving words of warning.  The pain of a parent who sees their child making choices that are not good, that will bring harm to themselves, but being powerless to do anything about it.  Those of you who are parents of grown up kids know what I’m talking about.  Your child – your flesh and blood.  You can’t make decisions for them – if you love them you must let them make their own decisions.  Only then can they learn to take responsibility for their own lives.  In fact, if parents try to make decisions for their grown-up kids they will only deprive them of opportunities to grow, learn and develop richer lives.

But how you long that all the decisions they make would be the right ones; and you see your child make a decision that you know is a bad one, you know they will regret it further down the road, but you know you have to let them learn, rather than depriving them of the opportunity to grow in wisdom.  And here’s Jesus with exactly those same feelings, but more so.  Here is God incarnate, the man who really knows what is wise and what is foolish, and who sees his beloved people choosing the wrong way in life, choosing to turn their backs on God and choosing death rather than life.    And the parent-heart of Christ is broken by their immature decisions.

Let’s now note why Jesus says these things about being a hen.  At the start of the Gospel reading some Pharisees come to him.  Now, what they say to him is unique in the whole Bible.  They say to Jesus, “Leave this place and go somewhere else.  Herod wants to kill you.”  The amazing thing about that is not that Herod wants to kill him (actually, that fits in pretty well with what we‘d expect from the psychopathic tyrant we know and love as Herod!  This is the man who cut off John the Baptist’s head in order to please the mother of the girl who was dancing at his party).  No, what’s so incredible is that the Pharisees are worried about Jesus’ safety.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the one and only time in the Bible when the Pharisees show any respect and concern for Jesus.  You might think, well, they’re just using Herod’s violence as an excuse to try to get Jesus to leave town and they weren’t really concerned for his safety at all.  And if that’s what you’re thinking then it would be really cynical of you!   

Jesus replies, “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.  In any case, I must keep going today and tomorrow and the next day – for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem. 

Now, wait a minute.  Jesus has just called the local governor a fox.  This was a direct slap in the face.  Jesus was casting doubt on Herod’s authority.  Foxes are cunning.  What they lack in size they make up for in deviousness.  All cultures have always cast foxes as sly.  So Jesus is calling Herod a weak imposter, a bit of a joke, a poser.   One New Testament scholar says, "‘fox' … describes an insignificant third-rate person as opposed to a person of real power and greatness. To call Herod ‘that fox' is to say he is neither a great man nor an honest man; he has neither majesty nor honour." (T. W. Manson).  But wait.  I think there’s more going on here.  Jesus likens himself to a hen, and calls Herod a fox.  Chicken and fox.   Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but isn’t one of those the natural predator of the other?   Maybe he’s looking towards his own death.  We usually think of Pilate being the authority that condemned Jesus to die, but Herod was in the picture too.  He was part of the whole dog and pony show that sentenced the innocent Jesus to die.  The fox killed its prey.   So maybe Jesus is pointing to the bigger picture.  He is going to die, at the hands of small people in high places.  I suspect that the reason this scripture is selected to be read in Lent is that it is a prophecy from the lips of Jesus about his own impending death.  The hen will lay down its life for the chicks.  Even the chicks that see the danger and won’t come to the safety of the hen.  Because that is Jesus’ point.  Jerusalem, the city of David, the home of God’s people was going to reject its Lord.  And in turn it was going to suffer destruction.  Jesus prophesies, “Look, your house is left to you desolate”.  And it was just around 30 years after the city’s rejection of Christ.  In AD 70 the Romans sacked the city of Jerusalem, and destroyed the Temple, which has never been rebuilt.

The Episcopalian preacher, Barbara Brown Taylor writes this, “Jesus won’t be king of the jungle in this or any other story. What he will be is a mother hen, who stands between the chicks and those who mean to do them harm. She has no fangs, no claws, no rippling muscles. All she has is her willingness to shield her babies with her own body. If the fox wants them, he will have to kill her first.  Which he does, as it turns out. He slides up on her one night in the yard while all the babies are asleep. When her cry wakens them, they scatter. She dies the next day where both foxes and chickens can see her -- wings spread, breast exposed -- without a single chick beneath her feathers.”

I read a commentary on this passage that said when we read it we should substitute the name Jerusalem with our own names.  And then see how it feels.  So here goes.  “Your name, how I have longed to gather you as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings but you were not willing.”  Yikes.  That’s a little uncomfortable isn’t it?  The thought that God loves us enough to die for us, that he longs to welcome us to his side, that he calls us frantically to come to the safety of his protection, and yet we run away, content to go on our own, oblivious to the dangers that we will run into.  It might be an uncomfortable thought, but it can be very accurate.

So let’s use this warning as a reminder of God’s parent-love for us and the need to remain close to him through prayer, Bible reading, worship, and fellowship.