2nd Sunday in Lent Year C

2nd Sunday in Lent Year C March 17, 2019 I was taking an advanced English class my Junior year in college—a seminar class titled Medieval Visionary Women Mystics. It was a fascinating part of the Christian tradition that I had very little experience with and the women were inspiring to me, even though some of them were quite weird. But then I found Dame Julian of Norwich. And after I read her work Revelations of Divine Love from the 14th century, my understanding of God and my relationship with Jesus would be completely changed. Julian revealed to me a part of our tradition which looks at the feminine nature of both God and Jesus which I had little experience with. I can remember being electrified as I read Julian’s words where she wrote about Jesus as mother and how he cares for us daily: “In our spiritual birthing, he shows tenderness and care beyond any other mother in so much as our soul is of more value in his eyes. He kindles our understanding, he directs our ways, he eases our consciences, he comforts our soul, he lightens our heart and gives us, in part, knowledge and love of his blessed Godhead… If we fall, hastily he picks us up in his lovely embrace and touches us graciously… A mother may allow her child to fall sometimes and feel distress in various ways to be a lesson, but she will never, out of love, allow any kind of danger to come to her child. And though it is possible for our earthly mother to allow her child to perish, our heavenly mother Jesus will not allow us who are his children to die” (Revelations of Divine Love, chapter 61). In our gospel reading for today, Jesus has set his face to Jerusalem, and on the way, he receives this strange warning from some Pharisees saying that Herod is out to get him. Jesus is unafraid, undeterred, and even defiant, telling them to go back to Herod with a message: “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.' But then Jesus’s tone immediately changes from one of defiance toward Herod to lament toward Jerusalem and his people: “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 wings, and you were not willing!” Jesus confesses his longing to care for Jerusalem in a way that is visceral and maternal—like a mother hen gathering her brood under her wings. It’s an amazing image, and at our Wednesday service, we started discussing what this image evokes in us, what it could possibly mean. Think about it for a minute. What does the image of Jesus as a mother hen gathering you under his wings evoke in you? Does it make you uncomfortable? Does it fill you with hope or comfort or surprise? For me, it reminds me of a time when my mother was fiercely protective of me. I have a wonderful mother who is nurturing and loving and also spunky, and fierce, and independent. I never doubted her love for me, but it wasn’t until I was a senior in high school when I witnessed and understood the protectiveness of her love. We were having a lovely family dinner in the dining room celebrating my dad’s birthday, and the phone rang. I went to answer it, and it was the mother of a classmate. She was calling to chew me out because I had scheduled a club meeting at the same time as her girl scout troup’s regular meeting. And she was absolutely horrible to me. I’d never had an adult act so ugly to me, and I responded that I had asked the other people in the group if they had a conflict and no one responded (including her daughter), so I had set the meeting. She was unappeased and continued to berate me, until I managed to get off the phone with her. When I came back to the table clearly distraught, my parents drew the story out of me. We finished our dinner, and my mother slipped out of the room, and as I was helping to clear the table, I discovered her on the phone absolutely eviscerating the woman who had called me. She told her she had interrupted our family dinner. She told her that I had never experience an adult acting so ugly to me and that she should be positively ashamed of herself. I was stunned and felt surrounded and upheld in her protective, fierce, maternal love. (A footnote to the story is that the next day, the woman showed up at our house with a loaf of homemade bread and a sincere apology, extremely chastened.) Episcopal priest and writer Barbara Brown Taylor wrote an article for the magazine The Christian Century years ago where she reflected on this gospel passage. She wrote: “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. ...” She continues, “… 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.”i This week, I invite you to sit with these images of Jesus as mother. What would it mean for you to think about Jesus as one who would and does fiercely protect you? What implications does that image of Jesus have on how you follow him as his disciple? i. -Barbara Brown Taylor The Christian Century 2/25/86