“Mother Hen” based on Psalm 118:1-6, 26-29 and Luke…

March 13, 2022
by Sara Baron

There are these contrasts in the Bible, these ways that
what is written is so shocking that we can’t even hear it most of the
time. Human brains are mostly set on autopilot, and we conflate what
we hear with what we already believe to be true. This can make it
hard to hear the Bible as it is, because we end up softening edges
that are actually quite hard!

Specifically, I think it could be easy to hear Jesus
say, “How often have I desired to gather your children together as
a hen gathers her brood under her wings” and think, “aw, that’s
sweet, Jesus loves me and wants to protect me.” Which, I grant
you, is a part of the meaning. But, it overlooks the radicalness of
that meaning.

Debie Thomas starts to explain it this way:

Here’s what I find so startling about the image.
If maternal power, acumen, or success were the characteristics Jesus
wanted to emphasize in his choice of metaphor, he could have used any
number of more appropriate Old Testament images to make his point.
God as enraged she-bear (Hosea 13:8). God as soaring mother
eagle (Deuteronomy 32:11-12). God as laboring woman (Isaiah
42:14). God as mom of a healthy, happy toddler (Psalm 131:2).
God as skilled midwife (Psalm 22:9-10). But those are not the
images he chooses. Instead, on this second Sunday in Lent,
Luke’s gospel invites us to contemplate Jesus as a mother hen whose
chicks don’t want her. Though she stands with her wings wide open,
offering welcome, belonging, and shelter, her children refuse to come
home to her. Her wings — her arms — are empty.
This, in other words, is a mother bereft. A mother in
mourning. A mother struggling with failure and futility.¹

Whoa.

And, I think, since this is about Jerusalem which was
the Jewish center of power and influence (and lack of power and lack
of influence), and because Luke’s gospel was written AFTER the
destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, I don’t think we’re supposed to
miss the contrast between a mother hen reaching out empty wings and
wishing to protect her chicks with…the golden eagle that the Roman
Empire used as a symbol of its imperial power.

This is where we are dealing with God and Jesus upending
our expectations. In a contrast between an eagle and a chicken, we’d
expect God to be the eagle, RIGHT? (We do have that imagery in
Deuteronomy, as Debie mentioned.) But, no. Here we have a contrast
between a strong predator and a vulnerable prey, and we’re told that
Jesus is like the prey- and WORSE, like the prey trying with all her
might to protect her even more vulnerable young and failing to do so.

This sort of turns my stomach.

I see in my head Ukrainian and Ethiopian mothers holding
their babies while bombs drop around them.

But, that also clarifies the image for me. If bombs are
dropping on mothers hovering over their babies to try to keep them
alive, and the choice is to see God in the bombs or in the mothers,
then the choice is easy – God is the one hovering trying to
protect, even when God can’t protect.

It still turns my stomach though.

And I can see why people might prefer to think of God in
the power of the bomb rather than the powerlessness of the mother. I
think we’d expect the eagle, not the mother hen. But, that’s not the
God we worship.

I don’t think it can be ignored that Luke is using this
passage to foreshadow Jesus’s death and resurrection. The Jesus
seminar believes this whole passage to be a creation of Luke, a way
he was trying to make sense of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection.

The Pharisees are warning Jesus that if he doesn’t
change his ministry, he’ll get killed. This is true. But Jesus
responds that he isn’t done doing the work he needs to do. They want
him to be afraid, and have that fear change his path. Jesus seems to
understand, but he holds strong in the face of the fear. He knows
his own vulnerability, he understands it, but he doesn’t let it
change his path. A mother hen is vulnerable, but she still stretches
out her wings for the MORE vulnerable chicks.

The mother hen metaphor fits terrifyingly well with the
reality of Jesus’s impending death. Debie Thomas writes, “Yes,
Jesus mocks Herod by calling him a fox. But he never argues
that the fox isn’t dangerous. He never promises his children
immunity from harm. I mean, let’s face it — if a determined
fox wants to kill a brood of downy chicks, he will find a way to do
so. What Jesus the mother hen offers is not the absence of
danger, but the fullness of his unguarded, open-hearted, wholly
vulnerable self in the face of all that threatens and scares us.”²

This, of course, suggests that the sort of strength God
offers, the sort of strength God asks for from us, isn’t the golden
eagle or bomb kind. It is the vulnerable kind.

That’s the world-turned-upside-down-by-faith bit. What
on earth is vulnerable strength? (Except maybe everything?) Isn’t
that just strength in weakness? Yeah. It probably is. That’s the
God being unexpected thing. Vulnerable strength is a mother hen,
with wings open, ready to protect any chick willing to huddle under
them, when even she herself may be swept away, but if she is, the
chicks may be able to live.

To get good at vulnerability as strength though,
probably doesn’t require having to practice at the threat of life
level. To be ready to do that sort of vulnerability requires
practice with the so-called easy stuff, to build up our vulnerability
muscles. Vulnerability is saying, “I’m scared,” or “I’m sad,”
rather than putting on a mask of impenetrability and pushing through.
Vulnerability is saying, “I don’t know,” and taking the risk
someone might think we’re ill-informed, or “I can’t” when someone
might find you weak (or not trying hard enough.) Vulnerability is
allowing ourselves to see other people’s pain without looking away or
running to a quick fix. (This. Is. Hard.)

Vulnerability is staying with our own pain, rather than
pushing it away, or pushing it down, running to a quick fix, or
trying to push it off on someone else. (#blame).

For many Christians, the “incarnation” is the
ultimate example of vulnerability. The idea is that God who is GOD,
the creator of all that is, takes on human vulnerability, pain, and
mortality in the form of Jesus, and in doing so moves from
invulnerable to vulnerable to be with us.

Truth be told, I have never resonated with that even
when theologians I otherwise adore say so. A friend of mine, for
whom incarnation is one of the most important parts of his faith,
laughed at me once about that and said, “but aren’t you a
panentheist?” (Translation: don’t you believe that God is
EVERYWHERE, in EVERYTHING, and all that is exists within the Divine?)
Well, yes, I am. He said, so doesn’t that make the incarnation sort
of… redundant for you?

That was a helpful ah ha moment, because, for me it is.
(If you are a person who derives great meaning from incarnation,
please know that you are in the majority, and I’m the odd one out,
but I’m going to keep talking because sometimes others are also “odd
ones out” and like to know they aren’t alone.)

I believe God already has all the vulnerability in the
world – literally. God is with ALL those who are struggling, in
EVERY way. I believe in a vulnerable God.

Which is to say that I believe vulnerability is sacred.

And, because I try to practice it regularly, I believe
vulnerability is really, really hard work. Especially when one is
trying to practice vulnerability for the sake of honesty and
connection, and modeling that none of us are impenetrable – but
trying to do that without causing undo harm to others. The balance
is not easy to find, and I am quite capable of having “vulnerability
hangovers” (a term I believe was coined by Brene Brown). That is,
while I’m pushing vulnerability today, but I’m acknowledging that
it can also be wielded as a tool in some cases, and that’s not what
we’re going for here. We’re dealing with weakness and vulnerability,
not to use them as tools to manipulate others, or gain power over
others.

Rather, if God is vulnerable, then we are not excused
from our own vulnerability, nor asked to pretend it away. I think
this is why Ash Wednesday starts Lent by asking us to remember that
we are mortal, so that we can remember to live our lives with
intention. When we are vulnerable, we remember how tender we are,
how easily hurt, how close things that could harm us are, and we open
ourselves to those who are hurt, or harmed, or displaced, or
attacked. And when our hearts break open to allow others in, we are
moved – once again – to create a world that is more just and
equitable so that the MOST vulnerable are no longer forced take the
pain the most powerful avoid.

That, I think, is the power of vulnerability: the power
to break our hearts open which moves us to create a better world.

May God help us, all.

Amen

1Debie
Thomas, “I Have Longed” Lectionary Essay for March 13, 2022,
https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/3341-i-have-longed

2Ibid.

Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
Pronouns: she/her/hers
http://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

March 13, 2022

Uncategorized

“Love in Community” based on Romans 13:8-14 and Matthew…

September 6, 2020
by Sara Baron

There is a truly great Facebook group for “Young Clergy Women
International,” and this summer one of the members said, “Hey,
I’m single and live alone, and I’m really lonely in this pandemic. I
know the grass is always greener, would those of you who live with
people tell me what is really annoying about that right now?” Let
me say, there were A LOT of responses, including people living alone
saying it helped them to know and people living with others saying it
helped them not feel so bad about being annoyed.

A few years ago now, I came across a rather radical idea: churches
are places of spiritual growth not IN SPITE OF disagreements,
pettiness, and annoyances with each other, but because of them. Now,
every church I’ve ever met would prefer to be seen as made up
entirely of agreeable people who are never petty nor annoyed with
each other. It feels like better advertising. After all, churches
want to be expressions of God’s love in the world, and it seems like
it would be best to AT LEAST like each other.

And yet, and forgive me if you didn’t know this yet, sometimes people
are annoying. To be fair, often the things other people do that
annoy us say a lot more about us than about them, but the point
remains – being in community means being in relationship with
people who will annoy you, people you will disagree with, and quite
often the work that people find important, you won’t. This applies
to the people we live within the pandemic, and the people we go to
church with. There is no perfect church. They are all comprised of
people.

This radical idea, though, was this is the POINT. Because if
spirituality is just about “God and me” it is really easy to
think you are doing well, growing, becoming sanctified. However, if
you are active in faith community, then it becomes imperative that
you get better at loving REAL PEOPLE in order to know you are growing
spiritually. If you aren’t occassionally annoyed, and getting
practice being loving about it, you aren’t growing (says this
theory.)

I love this idea. It is in our humanity, our brokenness, our
disagreements, even our pettiness, that we grow – and this is the
POINT of community, not one of its weaknesses.

In the past year, the most spiritually helpful idea I’ve come across
came from Brené Brown
suggesting that we assume that “other people are doing their best.”
That is, this is the idea that has most helped me to be more loving,
more patient, and more kind. This does NOT MEAN that someone else’s
best is OK – sometimes it is not, and cases of abuse are clearly in
this category – but in terms of my response to others, it is
helpful. I’d also like to note here that while churches are full of
annoyances and disagreements by necessity, there are REAL harms done
by faith communities that need to be taken seriously. Many of those
involve rejecting God’s beloveds, and/or functioning as an arm of the
status quo when it comes to racism, sexism, heterosexuality,
transphobia, ableism, and other hierarchies. The work of the church
includes CHANGING so that those harms don’t keep happening. Yet, it
also involves knowing that we are going to have to keep working on
each of those things, and never become complicit.

Paul suggests that we owe one another nothing but love, and I suspect
this is a far more radical idea that it appears at first. The
Ancient Roman economy, just like ours, was based on debt. People
made money by having money and loaning it out for interest. People
who were poor lost money by being without money. And much of the
world was motivated by trying to pay off debt.

To step out of that system, to owe no one anything, kept the rich
from getting richer. However, I think it also required the support
of community. Because most people wouldn’t have been able to take
care of themselves without acquiring debt, unless the community was
working together. So, that suggests that being debt-free meant
participating in the sort of the community that exemplified the
kindom – with people mutually caring for each other.

Then, it makes sense that all that is owed is “love to one another”
because such a community has to have deep bonds of love. And the
reminders of what good community behavior look like follow in Paul’s
instructions.

The gospel lesson from Matthew comes to similar points – we need to
have ways of caring for our community in order to be well,
relationships matter, God based community looks different, and we
grow in faith hand in hand with others.

Another way to think about this can be found in a quote by Ann
Voskamp, “Shame
dies when stories are told in safe places.” Churches
are meant to be those safe places, and for now our Bridging the
Distance Groups are intentionally trying to create those spaces. The
world uses our shame to control us, to get us to buy things, to
convince us to be or live certain ways. But God is interested in our
full and abundant lives, free to be and to LOVE. So God is
interested in making spaces for us to share our stories, and let go
of our shame.

Interestingly, like foregoing debt, foregoing shame requires
community support and enables kindom building. It also tends to help
us be less petty and deal better with annoyance 😉

So, wherever two or three Jesus followers are gathered, may we learn
to make safe space. And, in the meantime, may we learn to do it in
alternative ways 😉

Amen

Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
Pronouns: she/her/hers
http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 6, 2020