The Barnyard Gospel

The Barnyard Gospel--March 18, 2019

"At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, 'Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.' He said to them, '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. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 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 wing, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord'." [Luke 13:31-35]

Mama Hen doesn't gather her chicks for no reason. Chickens are not huggers, generally speaking.  Mama hen gathers her brood under her wing to protect them... with her own life.

That is the underlying idea here that Jesus taps into.  He has it in mind to offer his own life to protect his beloved.  He has hatched a plan to put himself between the danger and his own.  Jesus offers up his own life as the shield which protects ours--an image which is lovely if you are the one behind the shield, but which means that the shield bears the force of each blow from the enemy.  That's what Jesus offers--his own life like a mother hen's, offering her own body to protect her own.  Jesus chooses to be a human shield.

And because Jesus is so utterly clear about what lengths he is willing to go to for the sake of us scattering peeps, he is willing to be defiant toward the powers of the day and vulnerable to the ones he seeks to gather in.

That's the other amazing thing to me about this scene from the barnyard gospel: Jesus is both outrageously brazen in the digs he takes against Herod, and at the same time, he lets himself be rejected by the very people he loves enough to die for.  Both the defiance against the "fox" Herod and the vulnerability come out of Jesus' choice to be the mother hen who offers up her life with courage and grace.

In this scene from Luke, the voices of conventional wisdom advise Jesus to get out of Dodge, as it were, because the Roman-installed puppet king Herod, next in the family line after the previous ruler Herod "the Great," wants to kill Jesus.  The warning of these respectable religious people is simple enough: Herod is willing to kill you to silence you, just as he did to John the Baptizer, so you should stop the work you are doing, Jesus, and save your own skin.

But Jesus will not be intimidated.  He will not give up or give in.  He will not allow Herod's threats to stop him.  And so Jesus says as much.  "I still have work to do.  Herod doesn't frighten me.  I'm going to keep doing exactly what I've come to do, and no pompous, bullying blowhard on a throne is going to stop me."  Jesus knows--and drops a hint that he knows--that his mission will eventually cost him his life, and that it will all be completed "on the third day" (a winking resurrection reference).  But he doesn't run from that destination or seek to preserve his own life.    Jesus is courageous enough not to let Herod intimidate him, and just keeps on doing what he intended to do--healing, casting out evil, and bringing the Kingdom of God close in human skin.  

And at the same time, Jesus shows himself to be profoundly vulnerable at the same time.  Not to Herod or his threats, mind you.  But to the very people he has come to rescue, to save, to deliver.  Jesus laments over the city of Jerusalem because, like God voiced so many times in the days of Israel's past, God was willing to risk being rejected by the very people God had specially chosen.  Like God lamenting to the disheartened Samuel, saying that the people had rejected God from being their ruler, Jesus too speaks of God's unrequited love.  Jesus longs to gather, and yet also bears with our hard-hearted rejection of God--and Jesus doesn't give up.  He is perpetually opening up his arms, offering up his embrace, and bearing the heartache when we insist on turning our own direction.  Jesus is vulnerable enough for us to break his heart.  And that is exactly what we did to him.

All of this points right to the cross of Jesus. The cross is the place at which Jesus' defiance against Herod (and the other powers of the day) meets his heart-rending willingness to bear our rejection over and over again.  That's what a mother hen does, too: she doesn't run away from the danger, but instead faces it head on with her chicks under her wing... and at the same time, the mama hen keeps chasing after the chicks who don't understand what she is doing and go running off.  Not a bad picture for the reach of Jesus' open arms at the cross, actually: he offers to lay down his life even for us when we are running away and scattered.

That's the barnyard gospel: over against a world full of salivating, self-interested foxes, Jesus lays down his life gathering us up under his wings so that we can be restored to life.  That's news worth telling someone today.

Lord Jesus, thank you for your choice to lay down your life.  Let us dare to believe it is true.