My dad’s brother Rick has quite a sense of humor. He is a quiet man, but when he does speak, he is usually saying something pretty funny, even if a little twisted. He lives in Alabama, and isn’t able to drive, so for Christmas this last year, he mailed a present to our family here in Georgia. We opened the small package on Christmas morning and found a DVD, a documentary entitled “The Natural History of the Chicken.” Now I don’t know what your reaction might be if you got something like this as a Christmas present, but most of us said: “hunh. A movie about chickens. Well, it doesn’t sound too thrilling, but we’ll check it out.” So the next evening, as the day was winding down, we gathered around the tv to watch this movie all about The Natural History of the Chicken. I will tell you what – this was a fascinating movie, with some really wonderful stories in it – stories about a town in Ohio that had so many roosters that people couldn’t sleep from all of the crowing, stories about a woman in Maine who found a chicken frozen solid in a snowstorm that came back to life after thawing for a while on the kitchen table, stories of folks who keep chickens as pets, grooming and manicuring them like you would a French poodle. Chickens are funny animals, always moving around and pecking things, and generally when we think of regal and majestic animals, chickens are not at the top of the list.
But here in our reading, we find Jesus comparing himself, of all things, to a chicken, to a mother hen. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem” he cries, “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing.” What is Jesus talking about? Why is it that the Messiah, the Lion of Judah, the Holy Lamb of God, here takes on a different image for his mission and ministry? What is Jesus up to when he calls himself a chicken?
All of this begins when some Pharisees, the holy rollers of the day, approach Jesus and clue him in to a threat on the horizon: “Get away from here” they say, “for Herod wants to kill you.” Now Herod was the king, of course, but this is not Herod the Great, the Herod who reigned when Christ was born. No, that Herod had passed away, and at his death the Romans, the imperial overlords who really ran the show in Judea, divided the territory of Herod the Great among his sons and other family members. The Herod in our story this morning is Herod Antipas, the tetrarch, which was a Roman title that meant “quarter king.” Herod wasn’t even allowed to be a real king, a full king, he was just a petty tetrarch – sort of like your daddy being governor and the only office you could hold was county commissioner, important, yes, but without the reach of your predecessors. So this King Herod was a petty ruler, always trying to grab and hold whatever power he could, politicking left and right and up and down to maintain his fragile grasp on his influence. He sends some messengers, some Pharisees to Jesus to tell him to scram, to try to scare Jesus out of Herod’s territory. Jesus, with his teachings about the kingdom of God and the miracles he was working was a threat to the petty king Herod, and so Herod sends some Pharisees to threaten Jesus, to tell him that Herod was out for his life.
But Jesus doesn’t skip a beat – “You go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.” Jesus calls Herod a fox, a crafty, wily predator, an animal generally regarded as untrustworthy and fierce. And Christ faces this wily threat with a firmness, with an unwavering determination to his mission to heal and to cast out demons and to go to Jerusalem and face his destiny there. Jesus will not be distracted from his ministry, his reaching out to the last and to the least and to the lost, and maintains a position of quiet, firm strength in the face of opposition, in the face of threats and attempts to manipulate and divert him. In the face of the fox, Christ is strong and firm, and does not flee, but continues on with his mission, even though he knows it will cost him his life.
But Herod is not the only fox on the prowl. There are still wily and craft folks out there, looking to preserve their power, looking to derail the ministry of Jesus, looking to protect their own petty kingdoms of me, myself and mine. This can be a visible attempt to bend things to our own way, along the lines of sending a messenger to Jesus to tell him to get out of town, that his sort of kingdom interferes too much with the kingdoms of our own making. Or our challenges to Christ can be subtle, with an unkind word against a neighbor, or by telling stories and twisting the facts to try to twist an argument to our advantage. Our challenges to the mission of Christ might be unintentional, or emerge out of a deep hurt from some long-past injury, a hurt that causes us to lash out against our fellow human beings with surprising ferocity. We end up doing all kinds of harm because we want to control our lives and the lives of others, and whether we are always aware of it or not, our words and actions are like the actions of that wily fox, Herod, challenging the mission of Christ to gather together the children of God like a hen gathers her chicks.
But here is where we hear a word of good news: even though we might behave like a bunch of crafty foxes, on the prowl for little chicks, on the hunt for the mother hen, Jesus reminds us that God sees us as God’s beloved children, and sees us foxes as confused and frightened little chicks. When Jesus cries: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those that are sent to it. How often have I desired to gather your children together…” he is including all of the children of God, including Herod, including Pilate, including the Pharisees and the scribes and the priests in his loving concern. Even when we challenge the ministry and mission of God in Christ Jesus, even when we act like wily foxes, with our sneaky plans and crafty schemes, Christ sees us as worthy of love, worthy of being gathered into the protective care of God.
In the interesting little movie my uncle sent us, “The Natural History of the Chicken,” one story in particular stood out to me. A farmer raised chickens of all sorts of varieties, white ones and brown ones and golden ones – and every so often, usually in the spring, the hens would brood and sit on their nests and after a few weeks out would pop a new little family of baby chicks. One hen in particular, a fancy ornate kind of chicken that was different than all the rest was never able to successfully hatch any young – she was so small, and her eggs were even tinier, so they would get crushed by other chickens or roll through the nesting box and break. But the farmer was fond of this chicken, so he built her a special henhouse, with a specially designed nesting box just for her. This chicken laid eggs and sat on them and amazingly in a few weeks out popped a little brood of tiny chicks. The chicken was very pleased and the new little family emerged from the special henhouse when it was time and began to explore the world the way that chickens do.
One day, a few weeks after the chicks were born, the farmer noticed out his window that the farmyard grew quiet. All of the chickens were scurrying about to find some hiding place, and when he looked up to see what their concern was, he saw a hawk circling not too far above. Again looking at the yard, he saw something that made his stomach drop – the only little chicken family that hadn’t found shelter was the little chicken that he loved so much and her brood of tiny chicks. As he watched in horror, too far away to do anything, the hawk swooped down. The new mother hen stretched out her wings, and all of her chicks ran underneath her wings, finding shelter underneath their mother. The hawk struck, and the mother hen collapsed, her chicks underneath her. Watching all of this, the farmer ran out of his house and chased away the hawk, and ran to the side of his fallen favorite chicken. As he watched, the little chicks began to poke their heads out from under their mother’s body. They had survived the attack because of the fearlessness of their mother, because of the unflinching love of the hen.
And it is this kind of love, this kind of selfless, sacrificial love that Christ is offering to the children of God, to the brood of the mother hen. To the foxes, to the confused chicks, to all of us whether we are proud and self-centered or lost and afraid, Christ is opening his arms, welcoming us, calling us to draw close to him, to find shelter in the shadow of his wings. It may seem strange for Christ to call himself a chicken, a mother hen, but what Christ is pointing to is to his vulnerable strength, to his mission and ministry to draw all of us to God, regardless of the cost to him. Jesus offers his life that we might live, walks to the cross, faces the challenge of the foxes, and dies to save each of us, indeed the whole world.
But the story doesn’t end in that farmyard. As the farmer watched with amazement, the lifeless body of his favorite chicken began to stir. The hen, that had seemed to be dead, began to move with life, hopping up onto two feet and moving around to make sure each of the chicks was unharmed. The mother hen had only been stunned, and her act of selflessness had saved her babies. And the miracle of Jesus Christ is that he suffered for us, died for us, but was also raised for us, for the salvation of the foxes and the baby chicks, for all the children of God. He is alive, my brothers and sisters, alive and calling, and it is his desire and his delight to gather together all of God’s children, to hold us in his arms, to care for us and shelter us from the hawks and foxes of the world. Jesus is offering his life to us, and it is up to us whether we will come to him or not. Will you continue to challenge Christ, telling him to depart from you, content to rule over your own petty kingdom, or will you come to his loving arms, giving up your hold on your life and placing it in the hands of Christ, the one who has created us and the one who loves us, even at the cost of his own life.
