Are You Willingly Going to Accept that Mother Hen Love?

Luke 13:31-35

Jesus as Mother Hen by Loren McGrail (encaustic, 2025)

“Thus says the Lord Almighty; have I not entreated you as a father entreats his sons or a mother hen her daughters or a nurse her children,

so that you will always be my people and I should be your God,

and that you should be my children and I shall be your father.

I gathered you as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.”

2 Esdras 1:28-30

God as a mother, as a mother hen, may be unfamiliar to us, even startling, but it was not to the early Jewish community who heard these Gospel stories for they would have heard the echo of 2 Esdras and realized that now Jesus, the son, was saying he was the hen, the one who wants to gather us in, protect us. But they refused. We refuse even when enemies surround us.

Jesus, on the other hand, is not afraid of that fox Herod and in fact tells the Pharisees to tell him the equivalent of “I am busy doing all the things you are most fearful of,” “I am casting out demons and performing cures…”

Now Jesus most surely had heard that his cousin, John the Baptist had been beheaded by this man’s illegitimate authority, but he was not afraid. Jesus knew that blood thirsty Herod feared all who challenged his rule. He knew that this animal saw him as a chicken, easy prey. Yes, Jesus was more worried about his followers than Herod; he was worried about his chicks, and about his city Jerusalem who had forgotten the ways of making peace. Jesus knew that his days were numbered and that he must enter Jerusalem to be killed. His lament is for his city and for those he wishes to protect who will not come to him—willingly. He weeps for them.

On the Mount of Olives there is a tear shaped chapel called Dominus Fleuvet where it is said that Jesus on his way from Bethany looked out over Jerusalem and wept, not for himself and his impending demise but for his city that continues to kill its prophets and knows not the ways of peace.

Inside the beautiful chapel there is a magnificent window that captures at its center the Dome of the Rock and Holy Sepulcher. Beneath the window is the altar with the golden mosaic of a Hen at the bottom.

This mothering image that Jesus himself claimed has been problematic from the beginning. His people rejected his offer to shelter them under his wing. Perhaps they were hoping for a more virile Messiah, a Messiah that would squash their enemies or at least ride into town on a white stallion, not a donkey, not a self-sacrificing mother hen.

One of my favorite theologians and preachers, Barbara Brown Taylor explored the metaphor this way:

… 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. It breaks her heart . . . but if you mean what you say, then this is how you stand.

She dies for all to see, the foxes and the chickens without a single chick beneath her feathers. The question must be asked then, “Why the sacrifice if it benefits none? Or rather if no one comes to take shelter, or more precisely if all scatter like Peter before the cockcrows, what difference does the sacrifice make?

Dear Ones, this is the question we must all ask ourselves. What difference will our acts of compassion make? Our standing in a protest in the freezing cold? Providing watchful accompaniment to children going back and forth to school? Delivering groceries to families still too scared to open their doors? Suing the Department of Homeland Security for the right of clergy to enter the Whipple Building (detention center) to offer spiritual support to those being detained? And finally what difference does our sacrifice mean? Is it worth giving up our own life to the masked thugs of empire?

Back to Mother Hen Jesus. Standard atonement theology, as codified in our creeds and prayers, says that Jesus died for our sins, that he is the sacrificial lamb. But what does it mean if we didn’t ask for this---if we don’t gather under the wing to be saved? Is this a prerequisite? Can we claim him as our Savior after the fact?

Some say it doesn’t matter; the point is that he did it or rather God sacrificed his only son for us. You either accept this or not. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t recognize it then, the Kairos time is now. You can be born again any time.

Others put more emphasis on the fox, the weasels, and all the other imperial forces that use crucifixion and the threat of violence or death to maintain their power. They say it is the nature of empire to try and assert its dominance over anyone and anything that challenges it. They say the taking of the stand against imperial forces is something you do because it must be done. It is not contingent on whether anyone asks you or follows you.

What a different story this would be if the chicks had gathered under the wing and let the Hen protect them. But they didn’t and we mostly don’t. We don’t walk into his arms because we think we can do it all by ourselves or because we reject this vulnerable unconditional self-sacrificing mother love. What kind of Messiah is this?

Even the Anglican Church while revising its Book of Common Prayers for inclusive language rejected this imagery in their prayer. The Bible says,

“Living among us, Jesus loved us. He yearned to draw all the world to himself as a hen gathers her young under her wing, yet we would not.”

Instead, they changed the words to “He yearned to draw all the world to himself, yet we were heedless of his call to walk in love.” This second version puts the emphasis on his call not his action of protection.

Protection is a word that comes up often now as we enter week 4 of this war of choice with Iran. Each side is seeking protection from the other by bombing them. Few are gathering under the wing of nonviolence or the mothering hen Jesus, who is still trying to remind us that we are his chicks, his children. But if we are, I hear you whisper under your breath, why did you not protect those girls in that school or the children in Gaza who are still starving to death? Or the children in our schools dying by mass murders or those girls sexually abused?

Jesus, where is your protection? Can we really trust you to protect and defend us from this warring madness or these Herods who want us to worship them as our savior? You can’t even save yourself.

Dear Ones, it is challenging to accept a mothering God right now when the talk all around is about what kind of weapons do we have or need to save ourselves?

Let’s acknowledge this and then make a choice to do what we can wherever we are to offer our vulnerable compassionate selves to each other. Let us practice being the one who offers shelter/protection/support to others but then also the one who can accept that same love when we need it. We are all vulnerable chicks. This is what we have in common. So let us then meet under those wings and invite others to join so we can offer mutual aid so we can all rise together.