Luke 13: 31-35
God is my Light;
God is my source of Courage and Grace; and, God is my Hen!
Inward Journey
Metaphor. I’ve seen it defined as an indirect
comparison between two or more seemingly unrelated subjects that typically use
“is” or “a” to join the two subjects.
For example, king David said, “God is my fortress”; and Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a
stage.” In my beginning theology class,
we did an exercise where we were given a list of metaphors that describe God
and Jesus. We had to interpret in our own words why some of those images were
attached to God. Some of the images
included God as Father, God as Shepherd, God as Architect, God as Creator, God
as Hen, and God as Mother. Mother. God is spoken about as a comforting
mother. In Isaiah 66:13, the prophet
writes, “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be
comforted in Jerusalem.” Note a couple
of words here, the words comfort and Jerusalem.
I’ll get back to those words in a moment. What are your images that come
to mind as I speak of God as metaphor?
God as Father… God as Mother…Shepherd… Creator… Architect…, and
Hen. When I did this activity in class,
my small group got the word hen to hash out.
What does a hen do? A hen
protects her young. This mother covers her chicks with her massive feathers and
protects them from harm. Her chicks are
safe and secure under her wings.
Perhaps, she even might peck at them to keep them in line, but for their
protection. We’ll come back to hen in
just a second.
What
are some metaphors for Jesus himself?
Jesus as Lamb… Shepherd… Gate… Vine and Light…Bread of Life and
Bridegroom. I would wager to guess that
you may have heard one or two of these at some point in time. In John’s gospel, he writes in chapter 8,
verse 12, “When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said ‘I am the light of the
world. Whoever follows me will never
walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” Third word to remember: light.
In
the gospel passage today, Jesus is being warned by some Pharisees (Not all the
Pharisees were against Jesus) to leave and get out of harms way (i.e. Herod’s
way). Jesus politely tells them to go
tell that sly fox (not the most respectful thing to say regarding Herod) that
he will keep on doing what he needs to do.
“Listen I am casting out demons and performing cures today and
tomorrow…” And then he says, “O
Jerusalem, 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.” What is God saying to us here? I believe, God is saying together, each and
every one of us holds a special and uniquely our own relationship with God, or
as Wendell Barry terms, “the household economy” of togetherness. Everyday we are in the trenches of work,
school, just the ins and outs of everyday life in general. The trenches can be lonely places, places of
isolation and perhaps even danger.
People gossip about us, with all the best intentions things don’t go as
planned, we encounter unexpected illness, or an accident occurs, we lose a
parent or sibling, we worry about a sick child with a fever, or we suffer from
depression and anxiety. God knows our
fears and our shadowed selves. And God
says to you, to us, it’s okay. I
understand your fears. I understand your
anxieties. I understand how hard you
work. I understand how hard you
try. I’m here and I’ll protect you as I
am a hen and you are my chick. You are
my child and I will cover you with my feathers because I love you, and want no
harm to befall you. Sit along side me,
and together we will laugh and cry. I
will meet you in the ordinary.
Recently,
I’ve taken to having quiet time in the morning.
In my imagination, I see Jesus sitting next to me on the couch and we
talk in the early morning silence while I’m drinking my first cup of
coffee. In the quiet of restorative
stillness, Jesus and I talk about life.
I ask him a question or tell him what I’m worried about, or sometimes
even what I’m struggling to understand.
We talk. Actually, Jesus talks
and I write in my journal. But together,
we live life. I am the chick and Jesus
is the Hen. I am comforted; I am loved;
and I am protected. And, here’s the
kicker, sometimes I may not recognize that I am loved, but I am. I may not recognize that I am protected, but
I am; and, sometimes I may not recognize that I am comforted, but I am. It shows up in the ordinary. The smile from a stranger, the phone call or
the friend request on Facebook from the long forgotten friend, or even in the
person who you thought didn’t like you, giving you a kind word or gesture. Let me say that again, together, you and God
live life. You are the chick and Jesus
or God is the Hen. You are comforted;
You are loved; and you are protected.
And, here’s the kicker, sometimes you may not recognize that you are
loved, but you are just the same. You
may not recognize that you are protected, but you are protected just the same;
and, sometimes you may not recognize that you are comforted, but you are just
the same. It shows up in the
ordinary. As I end our inner Journey
with this poem prayer I found, remember the three words of Comfort, Light and
Jerusalem as you sit, with God next to you, in the restorative stillness. Lent is
a time of restorative stillness.
“Under
God's wings I am safely abiding,
Through
the night deepens and tempests are wild,
Still
I can trust; I know God will keep me,
God
redeems me, and I am God's child. And
the refrain goes,
“Under
God's Wings, under God's wings,
Who
from sever the love?
Under
God's wings my soul shall abide,
Safely
abide forever.”...Amen
Outward Journey
UCC
uses the revised common lectionary like many other denominations and churches
in America today. In the lectionary,
each week, the gospel reading is accompanied with a selection from the old
testament, a psalm, and a new testament reading other than the gospel, like the
letters of Paul. For today, Psalm 27 is
the psalm that is coupled with our passage from Luke. The first line reads, ‘The Lord is my light
and my salvation; whom shall I
fear? The Lord is my stronghold of my
life of whom shall I be afraid? The
last two verses read, “I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in
the land of the Living. Wait for the
Lord; be strong, and let your heart take
courage; Wait for the Lord.”
I
want to introduce two new words to remember:
Courage and Grace to our three existing words: Comfort, Light and
Jerusalem. Now, I need to step back and
explain or remind, that Jerusalem is a place, true, but it too can be a metaphor. It can stand for the world to come, or it can
stand for God’s kingdom here on earth, right now. God’s kingdom here on earth is a place where
we acknowledge God’s love for us, and the fact that part of God’s personality,
who God is, is to protect us and comfort us as a mother hen does with her
chicks. But, God also knows that when we
acknowledge that we stand in God’s light, and we acknowledge that Christ’s
grace prevails, our fears become courage.
And, we can become the hen to care for the world and for the people in
it.
So,
in the Inner Journey, Jesus or God however it’s comforting to think about it,
was the hen and we were the chick. In
the Outward Journey, we learn to become the hen, where the world is our chick. I learned recently in one of my classes that
grace begets grace. When a third person
watches a good deed, they too will do a good deed, or even a greater deed. And the action of love becomes a genuine response
to being moved by something. When we
hear that Haiti suffered a devastating earthquake, and now yesterday in Chile,
we want to help in any way we can. It’s
also when we want to take help someone whose in pain, even though others
condemn them. God gives us courage and
grace. We then go past what is believed,
the bias, and we show comfort and light to others. We bring Jerusalem right now to Austin Texas
or Ecaudor, Chile, or anyplace in-between, or on either side, or above or
below. We go beyond reason and react
from a place of love, fortified with courage and grace.
I
would like to end with this prayer I found this week. Please join me in prayer:
Sheltering
God:
When
we are afraid,
You
bring us into your heart;
When
we have lost our way,
You
give us gentle guides;
When
we cry out to you,
You
grace us with your presence.
Jesus
Christ
Like
a mother hen,
You
gather up our doubts
And
transform them into confidence;
You
surround our fears
And
transform then into faithfulness;
And
pick up our brokenness
And
transform us into your Body
