Living Lent 2 – “The Hen Reveals a Grieving Savior”
**This series is based loosely on the facts and stories found in the "Living Lent" sermon series written by Donald Neidigk.**
We are at the half way point of Lent! Congratulations for making it this far. In fact, something we haven’t done in quite a while… turn to someone next to you and wish them a happy half way point. :) We are indeed in the season of Lent… that is the period before Easter where we focus on Christ and prepare for his passion and sacrifice on the cross. As a church, we are spending this time hearing from… of all things… animals to teach us lessons and help us learn more (or hear once again) about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So far, we heard from a fox on Ash Wednesday… we heard from a donkey… and we have heard from a dove. This week we will be learning a little something from a chicken.
Now, if I were to start out this morning calling you all chicken… would you take that as a compliment or as an insult? That’s interesting to me. Chickens are such useful creatures. We can make fine pillows with their feathers, they provide us with eggs… and their meat is a staple for us. So… switching gears just a tiny bit… let me ask you this question… are baby chicks cute or ugly. Now that’s more like it.
I’m wondering how many of you have ever seen baby chicks interact with a mother hen. If there is a loud sound or some inherent danger… you’ll see all of those little chicks go SCHWOOMPFF and tuck right under momma’s wing. It’s the best place in the world for a frightened chick. That’s something a few of us can relate to as well! What happens when a small child who is a little shy comes into a room that is full of people… SCHWOOMPFF right behind momma’s or dada’s leg. Now THAT is a place of safety. THAT is a place of comfort. Perhaps you can even remember that feeling… right here… in momma’s arms… in dada’s arms… nothing can harm me.
That is something powerful. We rarely ever feel that “safe” ever again after we grow up. Well… it shouldn’t be surprising that this imagery has not been missed by the Bible writers. They say, remember what it feels like to be in the arms of a parent… do you know what it is like for a mother hen and her chicks? It is like that with our Father in heaven. And this illustration of a mother hen and her chicks comes up more than a couple of times.
The first example comes to us from the Psalms. As a king, David was always threatened by war… by evil men… by plots against him… and he could have frozen with fear, but instead he writes words like these:
Psalm 17:7-9
7 Show the wonder of your great love, you who save by your right hand those who take refuge in you from their foes. 8 Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings 9 from the wicked who assail me, from my mortal enemies who surround me.
And God protected him. Despite the intrigues, despite an attempt to overthrow him by his son Absalom David finished out his reign as an old man, dying in his own bed.
God was faithful to David. God has forever been faithful to his people. No matter how many times they turned away from him… God was and will be forever faithful. Lets just take a quick jog through the history of the Old Testament to get an idea of God’s steadfastness.
In the book of Isaiah, the King of Assyria launched an attack on Israel and instead of turning to the Lord… they turned to the King of Assyria and asked him to be merciful. And they are conquered… and they were scattered from their homeland. Isaiah told them quite simply… that as soon as they stopped relying on their enemies to help them, and turned back to God, God would bring them back home. He would protect them. They'll live safely under his wings again.
And they did, and for a while everything was great again. Until the kingdom of Persia came and defeated them and they were scattered. The people cried out to the LORD for help, and finally under leaders like Ezra and Nehemiah… the people were allowed to return home again. And they lived happily ever after right?
It didn’t take long and the Israelites grew lax in their relationship with God. They took him for granted. They stopped tithing, they offered God their sick and lame animals instead of the prize animals for sacrifice… and immorality was on the rise. And Alexander the Great rode in and conquered the Israel nation. The kingdom of Judah was turned into a Greek colony. The temples were designated for pagan worship. The Jewish men were forced to behave and dress like the Greeks. The worship of the LORD was almost lost. And God’s people cried out to the LORD again. And Judas Maccabaeus was able to overthrow the Greek rule during the Maccabean revolt and never again would the Jewish people be tempted by paganism. So, everything should be great now right?
Fast forward to Jesus’ time. Never again would the Israelites turn to other gods. But rather than trust in the LORD and his promises, they began to trust in their ability to keep his law. That's when the religious parties began to develop; the scribes, the Sadducees, the Pharisees.
They thought they were being faithful to God, but they'd actually become his enemies again. The letter of the law was all that mattered, not the spirit of the law, or the One behind the law. And in the process of trying to keep the law perfectly, they were actually breaking it. They had forgotten that the whole point of the law was love for one's neighbor. For them it became just the opposite of love. Stone the adulteress! Avoid the leper! Don't touch the wounded traveler! Cast the sinner from the dining hall! There was no concern for sharing God's love and forgiveness, no desire to bring the lost and erring to repentance. Keep myself pure. Condemn the rest to hell. That was their way of doing things.
Perhaps now God would write them off. Perhaps now he would abandon them. Perhaps now he would say “You have gone too far.” We know better… because it is at this point in our story that Jesus enters in. Just days before his passion… Jesus lets rip on the teachers of the law and Pharisees and gives them Seven straight “Woe to you’s,” calling them snakes… and a brood of Vipers. But interestingly… after this tirade he gives us this famous quote:
Matthew 23:37-39
37 "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. 38 Look, your house is left to you desolate. 39 For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'"
It sounds like Jesus' heart is breaking over Jerusalem's stubbornness. Will they ever be willing? First, they trust others instead of God and fall away, then they grow lax in their worship and fall away, now they replace God with rules to follow… and fall away.
I bet you could hear it in Jesus’ voice. A bit of disappointment. A hint of frustration. A sorrow… so deep. When will they come back to me? That picture… that image of Jesus longing for us to come to him and rely on him as young chicks rely on their momma… that is what the chicken has to teach us about Jesus today.
Sure it may seem easy to mock Israel for all the times it had fallen, but who among us hasn’t fallen victim to some of the same things. Perhaps we find ourselves like Israel when it relied on the grace of the Assyrian king instead of relying on God. We fail to trust him with our lives… instead we look to money… or look to possessions… or look to our own position of power and we believe these things will provide for us. We believe that these things will never fail us. And we fall a little further away from God. And Jesus cries, “Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem.”
Perhaps we are like Israel when it grew lax in its religious practices. We don’t read the bible, we don’t pray every day, we stop giving to the church because times are tough, we stop going to church because (insert excuse here). We stop having that close… personal relationship with God that we once had… and we fall a little further away from God. And Jesus cries, “Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem.”
Perhaps we are like Israel when it fell into a legalistic religion. We believe there is only one right way, we believe that if it isn’t done the right way then it shouldn’t be done at all. We make everyone else live up to the high standards that even we can’t live up to and we put requirements on people who come to our church to worship God. We try so hard to make it right… that we make it all wrong… and we fall a little further away from God. And Jesus cries, “Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem.”
37 "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.”
In this time of Lent, in this time of preparation for Easter… the chicken has a message for us. We can rely on God. We can trust in God. We can place our faith in God. He is waiting… for all of us… to return to the safe folds of his outreached wings.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
