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Twinbrook Baptist Church Rockville, MD Second Sunday in Lent March 04, 2007 Pastor: Kip Ingram Kip@TwinbrookBaptist.com |
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In the gospel of Luke, Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem, and by the 13th chapter he is very near that famous city. Our passage says, ”At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, 'Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.'” We don't know if these Pharisees are friendly towards Jesus, and just giving him a friendly warning, or if they are enemies and want him away from Jerusalem. At any rate, Jesus responds: ”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.” Jesus refers to Herod as a fox because of Herod's dangerous scheming toward someone like John the Baptist, whom he had beheaded. Now, to say ”today and tomorrow” was a common way of speaking at that time that meant for a little while longer. ”The third day” meant at a completed time. So Jesus is saying, in effect, ”I will continue what I am doing until I am done with it.” Jesus is claiming his own power for the time and place of his compassionate service to others. There is a sharp tone to Jesus' response here. You can almost feel his determination to continue his ministry on his own terms and not be swayed by threats and challenges about Herod. Nevertheless, he continues his response: ”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.” In effect, Jesus says that there is still a place for practical wisdom in what he is doing, so he will stay away from Jerusalem for awhile because Jerusalem is the dangerous place where prophets often find their demise. He will keep doing ministry, but he will wisely do it where he can, away from the city. Then Jesus, almost as if he is looking out over the city, offers a lament: ”Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often I have desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” You can feel the compassion of Jesus as he shares this lament. It's as if he looks out on the city, he recognizes the violence and struggle, the sins and failures, the brutality and apathy of so many there, and yet he does not judge them and leave it at that, he comes to a place of profound compassion, and in doing so, he reveals to us his heart and the very heart of God for them and for all people. Compassion is a word that means to feel with or to suffer with. It describes a process that begins below the neckline-in the gut, in the bowels, in the womb, as one person feels for another. It's what you feel when you see a news story about high school kids in Alabama killed at their school by a tornado, or a busload full of college kids on their way to a baseball game who are killed when their bus tragically crashes and turns over on the highway. It strikes you in a visceral way; it touches something elemental and fundamentally responsive within us. This is the way that compassion can sometimes shock us. At other times, compassion comes in more quiet and gentle ways, when we realize the depth of feeling we have for someone. It can happen in situations as common as a shared meal, a goodbye hug, a phone call, or at the sick bed of a family member. Following Jesus means opening ourselves to possibilities for compassion, of getting in touch with the heart of God for ourselves, for others, for our world. As Jesus looks out over Jerusalem through compassionate eyes, he uses a striking image for his lament, comparing himself to a mother hen who desires to gather her young together in order to protect and nourish them. Of all the images Jesus could have used-a soaring eagle, a roaring lion, a cunning fox-Jesus chooses the mother hen. You see, the mother hen embodies the elements of compassion in unique ways. Like God, she is both fierce in protecting her young and gentle in caring for them. She is both wise in how she handles them and willing to risk when the situation calls for it. She gives herself in love for her own, and perhaps there is no better way to describe the compassionate heart of God for the world. When Jesus uses this maternal image, he is drawing on biblical images which he certainly knew about, mother images which often sit side by side with father images. As in Deuteronomy 32, where God is compared to the role of the mother eagle, who hovers over her nest, caring for her young, and eventually teaching them how to fly. This image of God as mother eagle finds echoes in verses like Psalm 57:1, where the psalm writer says ”in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge.” Ultimately, the motherly image of God finds expression in the writings of the prophet Isaiah. In Isaiah 66:13, God says through the words of the prophet: ”As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.” The Interpreter's Bible commentary calls this ”one of the Bible's most cherished expressions for God's grace.” Now, often when I give this kind of reflection on mother images, someone will respond: yes, but Jesus called God ”father” and taught us in the Lord's Prayer that we should do the same. And while I appreciate that sentiment, I would point out that if it was so clear in the teaching of Jesus, why did his immediate followers not practice it in the Bible? You see, there are 11 specific examples of direct prayer to God in the New Testament made by the followers of Jesus, and in none of those 11 examples, is God addressed as ”father.” The point is not that we can't or shouldn't call God ”father.” Obviously, we call God "father" in prayer each Sunday when we pray The Lord's Prayer. The point is that God is so rich in being that limiting God to any one name can cause us to miss the wealth of God's character and being. In the Bible, God is our rock and our refuge, a burning bush and a cloud of fire, our creator and the shade at our right hand, our shepherd and our king and much else besides. We even use non-biblical images for God like trinity, which was slowly embraced over several centuries after the Bible was written. So biblically, and in church practice, we have reasons to widen our understanding of God to include many images, including maternal ones. Monica is not as well known as her son, but her place is no less significant for the role she played. History says she was deeply concerned about her child, concerned about his well-being, about his choices and the things happening in his life. In fact, she was so distressed over his situation that she approached the spiritual leader of her time, the christian Bishop of Milan, and she asked him to talk with her son and help straighten him out. The bishop responded to her request by suggesting that it was not the right time to approach her son, that he would not be able to hear what was said. The bishop also offered that he had been in a similar situation as her son early in his own life and had managed to get through it. Still, this did not satisfy her, and she continued to plead that something would be done for her son. Finally, the bishop told Monica, the mother of Augustine, in words recorded later in Augustine's Confessions: ”Go your way, as sure as you live, it is impossible that the son of these tears should perish.” ”The son of these tears,” the child of these tears-this is a telling phrase. For every mother, indeed every parent and grandparent, understands what this means. Before a mother's child is even born, she starts to care and feel the pull of compassion toward the life that is growing within her. When that child is young, she knows the joy and delight, as well as the tired nights and long days of compassionate care for her own. When the child matures and begins to move out in the world, she feels her own compassion and concern follow her child into each new step of life. Even after the child moves out, does a mother's compassion ever really stop? That child will always be the child of her tears--tears sown in fierce love, anxious worry, gentle wisdom, and tireless effort. Every mother, every grandmother, however imperfect she may be, surely understands what it means to say ”the child of my tears.” You may say, now pastor, isn't it a bit presumptuous for you as a man to be talking so much about mothers and what they experience? And in a sense, you are right. I will never have the particular experience of being a mother, and I will never know exactly what it feels like. But let me say two other things in response about the risk I am taking in talking about this. First, I feel like I can say something about this subject because I have seen it in the lives of so many of you. I have been privileged to speak with a number of you, mothers and grandmothers, who have shared your concern and tears with me for your children and grandchildren. I have heard and felt your compassion, your deep and undying love, your strong desire to protect, your longing for the well-being of your children. I bear witness to it today, and I want you to believe that in your strong compassion, there is truly something of God in it. In those moments when your compassion is most intense, perhaps you are feeling something of the depths of God's infinite, everlasting compassion. A second response for my speaking about mothers as a man is this: mother compassion isn't just for mothers. It's something we can all learn from and grow toward. You see, God wants us all to grow toward the fullness of life, which means growing in our character and personality and emotional life as we learn from one another-fathers can learn from mothers, mothers can learn from fathers, children from parents and parents from children, males from females and females from males. For the Christian, biology does not fully determine psychology. As a male, I can learn some of those tender emotional qualities often associated with the opposite gender, just as a female can learn some of those tough emotional qualities often associated with the opposite gender. So even as males, we can grow as we learn to identify with those attributes often considered motherly, and we can do it just as surely as the male Jesus identifies with the motherly compassion of a hen for her young. The state of Louisiana has been known in the last year mostly for the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina. I wonder, however, if any of you have ever seen the state flag of Louisiana adopted in 1912? It features an Eastern Brown Pelican, which recalls the abundance of pelicans in that area. In fact, Louisiana has sometimes be known as ”the pelican state.” At any rate, the pelican on the flag hovers as a mother above three small baby pelicans. And she has three small red dots on her breast. This image captures an old, popular medieval legend about the pelican mother. The legend says that when her young are starving and dying, a pelican mother will pluck her own breast and feed them with her own blood, so fierce is her love for them. And Christians down through the centuries have considered this legend a fitting picture of the self-giving of Christ, who sacrifices in love so that others may know new life. Like the mother hen, Jesus opens his arms to Jerusalem and to us all, and he doesn't stop even if there is no immediate response. This kind of compassion is what every person knows in their better moments, every parent and grandparent, spouse and friend. It is the stance which God takes with us and the stance to which we are called for others. As Barbara Brown Taylor writes of this image: ”If you have ever loved someone you could not protect, then you understand the depth of Jesus' lament. All you can do is open your arms. You cannot make anyone walk into them. Meanwhile, this is the most vulnerable posture in the world-wings spread, breast exposed-but if you mean what you say, then this is how you stand.” This is the way compassion stands, the way of Jesus, the way of a compassionate God. i.Paul Smith, Is It Okay to Call God "Mother": Considering the Feminine Face of God (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1993), 80-83. |
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