The Love of a Mother (Hen) (March 16, 2025)
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13:31-35
The Pharisees warned Jesus: “Herod is trying to kill you.” And Jesus responded: “Go and tell that fox, today and tomorrow and the third day I continue my work – casting out demons, performing cures – and then I must be on my way to Jerusalem. Oh Jerusalem, how often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, yet you were not willing.”
This image of Jesus or God as a mother hen gathering her chicks and protecting them with her own body is, to me, a very profound image of who God is and how God acts in the world. Herod may be a cunning fox licking his chops at the thought of doing away with Jesus; the devil, as the first letter of Peter says, may be “like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Pet. 5:8) – but God is not an apex predator putting foxes and lions in their place. God is a mother hen who protects the chicks in her own way, without trying to beat foxes and lions at their own game.
This image of God as a mother hen protecting the chicks with her own body is relatively easy for us to visualize – we’ve all seen mothers of all kinds in the animal kingdom fiercely protecting their young – and yet it’s not necessarily easy for us to hear Jesus describing God in this way as good news. In a world of predators we might think we’d be better served by a God who is an even bigger and stronger predator, before whom the foxes and lions, the kings and devils that threaten us, would cower in fear and trembling. Is it in fact good news that God’s teeth and claws, such as they are, are like hen’s teeth and claws – in other words, no match for those of the fox and the lion?
I think Jesus is bearing good news for us in today’s gospel passage, and it will help us to see this by spending a little time on the much more difficult and confusing story of Abraham in our first reading today. The book of Genesis begins with the story of God’s good creation, of Adam and Eve failing to respond to God’s call to tend for that creation, which then falls into violence and human evil. In the Flood God tries to kill all the bad people and rescuing a few good people to try and start over again, but this does not work – because it never does. And so God comes up with Plan B, which takes up most of the rest of the Bible all the way to the final chapters of Revelation.
In Plan B, God decides to call a specific people and teach them who God is, so that they can be the bearers of God’s words, God’s ways, and God’s life in a broken world, so that in the end everything will be healed and made right. And this call begins with one individual – Abraham, who becomes the first of what will become a whole people made up of his physical and spiritual descendants, because Abraham is the first person to believe and trust the true and living God.
Now Abraham’s new faith was not primarily an intellectual journey. Abraham didn’t read a bunch of theology books or watch YouTube debates to figure out a philosophy of God’s existence or nature. Abraham discovers who God is by agreeing to change his life – to abandon his family and his city and their gods, because he trusted a promise that God would give Abraham a new family and a new land, in which he would discover a new and more real God.
The letter to the Hebrews says: “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance, and he set out, not knowing where he was going. For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. [Abraham and Sarah] confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, and people who speak in this way are seeking a homeland – a better homeland, that is, a heavenly one” – one where God’s will is done as it is in heaven (Heb. 11:8, 10, 13, 15). And so Abraham sets out in faith, not really sure he knew where he was going.
Well, one the of first things Abraham learns about the living God is that God does not want us to find God on our terms – as if God is under our control; God wants us to find God on God’s terms, and that means in ways and places we do not expect. Abraham expected a family of his own – as numerous as the stars in the sky – but Abraham wasn’t getting any younger, and more importantly neither was Sarah. In our first reading today, Abraham laments that apparently his business manager is going to take over the family business after Abraham dies, because he doesn’t have a family yet – but God assures him that, despite appearances, a family is exactly what Abraham will receive and that family will inhabit the land, the city, the heavenly community of which Abraham dreams.
And then Abraham asks God: And how am I to know that this is really going to happen? How am I to know that this promise is reliable? How am I to know, God, that you really are who I think you say you are? Abraham wants to believe, wants to trust God, wants to continue on the path he has embarked upon – but he asks God, how can I know this is all real?
Which is a good question, one that all of us I think ask ourselves from time to time. We say that God is all-powerful and all-good and yet there is a lot of evil in the world – how can we be so sure that God is as good and as powerful as we say? We say that God is merciful and compassionate and is eager to forgive – but what if God holds grudges, or what if God has more important things to worry about in this incomprehensibly vast universe than the problems of a few little people that don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world? How do we know? God is asked, and not for the first or the last time.
In the text, God responds to Abraham by asking Abraham to bring several specific animals. God doesn’t actually tell Abraham what to do with those animals, but Abraham assumes they are for a sacrificial ritual. And in fact, in the culture of that time, this was a common ritual by which a subordinate made a blood oath to a master. The subordinate would sacrifice an animal, cut it in two, stand in between the two pieces of the animal, and promise: If I don’t fulfill all my obligations to you, you can do to me what I have done to this animal. Our modern equivalent is to say “Cross my heart and hope to die” – I’ll die before I betray my promise. Same idea, just not as gory.
Abraham assumes this is what God wants from him – Abraham the servant will take a blood oath to God the master, God will know that Abraham really, really believes – and then God will be obligated to deliver to Abraham as stipulated in the contract. Abraham assumes that God needs a sacrifice before God can deliver on the promise. Oh, did Abraham have a hard time learning that God did not want the sacrifices that Abraham was prepared to make!
God did not need Abraham’s sacrifice, but Abraham sacrificed the animals anyway, and then waited for God to show up so Abraham could swear the blood oath he assumed God needed from him. Except that’s not what happened. Abraham waited and waited, protecting the sacrificed animals from the vultures, the predators that wanted to come and take advantage. Until Abraham fell asleep, and we read it was a “deep and terrifying darkness” that descended upon him.
And then God appeared – but it was God, not Abraham, who passes though the sacrificed animals. It is God, not Abraham, who takes the blood oath. It is God, not Abraham, who symbolically announces: I will die before I break my promise to you. You want to know how you can trust me? God asks. This is how – I, God, put my whole self on the line for you.
And this, of course, is exactly what Jesus promises to all of Jerusalem in the gospel passage today. Like a mother hen protecting her chicks, I desire nothing more than to put my whole self on the line for you. I will give my life if I must so that you will be safe from the fox. And therefore nothing – not even the threats of Herod the fox – nothing is going to keep me from doing what I have come to do, bringing deliverance and healing and persevering in my mission until the end.
Nothing will keep Jesus from going to Jerusalem – not because God needs Jesus to offer himself as a sacrifice. God does not need or desire sacrifice. Nobody had to die in order for God to love or forgive us. But sometimes we human beings need sacrifice. Sometimes we need God to show us that God can be trusted, that God truly is a mother hen who will protect us and keep us safe no matter the cost to God. And in Jesus this is exactly what God does for us. In Jesus we see that this is exactly who God is for us. In Jesus we see exactly how the kingdom of God, the city that Abraham set off in search for, brings healing and protection to the vulnerable.
This vision of the cross of Jesus as the answer to Abraham’s question: How can I know that God truly is who God says God is? – this vision is everywhere the letters of Paul, and especially in our second reading today. Paul writes from prison to the church in Philippi: Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me. Don’t imitate those who “live as enemies of the cross of Christ,” Paul says – don’t live like those who think the cross is something shameful, an unfortunate accident that befell Jesus because of cunning foxes, but who still cling to a vision of God as the biggest and baddest predator of them all. Their minds, Paul says, are set on earthly things.
But, Paul says, our citizenship is in heaven – we belong to the city that Abraham was looking for all along, and we trust that Jesus will transform our humiliations and our sufferings into his glory – the glory of a mother hen who gave everything for the chicks. Paul loves the church at Philippi so much that he wants them to imitate him in living with the faith of Abraham – a faith that does not necessarily see where we are going, but a faith that knows who is this God who is calling us and a faith that has come to believe that this God has proven trustworthy by risking all for us.
As Paul told the Philippians, so we must remind one another: “My brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.”