You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Those who are concerned about gender-inclusive language and imagery in the Bible often face a slog finding maternal or feminine terms. There is Spirit language that can skew feminine. Late Isaiah has a startling passage in which the restored Jerusalem is likened to a nursing mother, in quite graphic language. Paul writes about having been like a nurse or governess to a community he has been mentoring. But references are few and far between. So some people go nuts with this remark of Jesus’ about Jerusalem: “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings…”
This is hardly a maternal scene, though. Jesus may desire to gather the children of Jerusalem like a hen gathers her brood, but he’s just noted their penchant for killing God’s messengers, and what follows this lovely, nurturing image is a stark negative: “…and you were not willing!”
If Jesus is expressing maternal feelings here, they are those of a mother who’s been rejected by her offspring (much as he brushed off his own mother when she tried to persuade him to stop all this foolishness and come home?). This is a thwarted mother, whose invitations to loving embrace have been rejected, who knows her beloved children are more than capable of turning on her. Hardly the nurturing feminine imagery we are looking for.
Yet, a thwarted mother is not a bad image to convey God’s experience with a faithless people, and a good deal less jarring than the way the prophet Hosea depicts God, as a cuckolded husband. Most of us can relate to times when we pushed away our mothers or fathers and tried to go our own way. I still wince at how mean and “I can do it myself!” I was to my parents the day they drove me to college. Sometimes it’s the only way we can attain independence.
Whatever the context in which that phrase is uttered, the image has life for us: Jesus’ desire that God’s people would consent to be brooded over, to be gathered under God’s almighty wings. In that image, we are little fledglings, not fully able to take care of or protect ourselves. We like to think we’re big and tough and self-sufficient, but look at us from God’s perspective: we are barely hatched, trying to figure out how to move in a straight line. And Jesus desires to gather us in community, and hold us in his love.
Puts a whole new spin on Easter chicks, doesn’t it?
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Showing posts with label Jerusalem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jerusalem. Show all posts
3-10-22 - Stoning the Prophets
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Jesus’ observation on the outskirts of Jerusalem – often depicted as taking place on a hillside overlooking the city – is seen by many as a compassionate lament for the great city which had been for many centuries the center of Israel’s religious life. Maybe it’s that repetition of “Jerusalem,” and the hen thing, that make it sound that way.
But when we look at what he actually says, and what’s going on at the time, we can detect a more forceful, thwarted, even angry tone. Jesus is passing judgment on the ancient city, which he says has always excelled in missing the point, often violently so. After noting – with sarcasm? – that “it is impossible for a prophet to be killed away from Jerusalem,” he goes on:
“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! See, your house is left to you.”
Israel’s history was replete with stories of prophets whose dire warnings of judgment to come went unheeded, who were rebuked, imprisoned, tortured and sometimes killed by the powers against whom they ranted. Prophets were considered holy men who spoke for God – unless their message was too harsh or unpopular, or perhaps conflicted with the message of another self-acclaimed prophet. Who’s to know who to believe? People will generally stay with the one whose message is most palatable, much in the way Americans can now choose which media from which to get their news, and what friends’ opinions are likely to show up on their Facebook feeds. We didn’t invent the closed feedback loop.
It’s awfully hard to know who is a true prophet until after the fact. But we have been given a fullness of revelation in Jesus Christ, and it’s not so hard to know him. Some who knew him in the flesh ultimately turned away from him, rejecting, betraying, even condemning him. What would we have done? Would we have recognized him as a true prophet or rejected him as one more disappointment, one more person out of touch with how the world really is, one more would-be prophet distorting God’s word? Go back and read the words of Jesus in the Gospels this week. What is he really saying? Do we accept his hard teachings, or dismiss him?
Jesus may have been uttering judgment upon Jerusalem, so soon to repeat its pattern of death-dealing, but we would be foolish if we thought this lament doesn’t apply to us too. Jerusalem was and is a place with a particular history and customs, but in the Bible it is also a symbolic place where God and humankind meet. The Book of Revelation speaks of the “new Jerusalem, coming down from heaven like a bride adorned for her husband.” Jerusalem represents the hope of reconciliation, of fidelity and obedience, of that mystical place where God himself will dwell, “and they shall be God’s people and God himself shall be with them.” (Revelation 21:1-4)
We can choose which Jerusalem we will be – the one that kills its prophets and stones its messengers, or the new Jerusalem where heaven and earth can truly meet. That is a place of courageous truth-telling and peace-making.
Jesus’ observation on the outskirts of Jerusalem – often depicted as taking place on a hillside overlooking the city – is seen by many as a compassionate lament for the great city which had been for many centuries the center of Israel’s religious life. Maybe it’s that repetition of “Jerusalem,” and the hen thing, that make it sound that way.
But when we look at what he actually says, and what’s going on at the time, we can detect a more forceful, thwarted, even angry tone. Jesus is passing judgment on the ancient city, which he says has always excelled in missing the point, often violently so. After noting – with sarcasm? – that “it is impossible for a prophet to be killed away from Jerusalem,” he goes on:
“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! See, your house is left to you.”
Israel’s history was replete with stories of prophets whose dire warnings of judgment to come went unheeded, who were rebuked, imprisoned, tortured and sometimes killed by the powers against whom they ranted. Prophets were considered holy men who spoke for God – unless their message was too harsh or unpopular, or perhaps conflicted with the message of another self-acclaimed prophet. Who’s to know who to believe? People will generally stay with the one whose message is most palatable, much in the way Americans can now choose which media from which to get their news, and what friends’ opinions are likely to show up on their Facebook feeds. We didn’t invent the closed feedback loop.
It’s awfully hard to know who is a true prophet until after the fact. But we have been given a fullness of revelation in Jesus Christ, and it’s not so hard to know him. Some who knew him in the flesh ultimately turned away from him, rejecting, betraying, even condemning him. What would we have done? Would we have recognized him as a true prophet or rejected him as one more disappointment, one more person out of touch with how the world really is, one more would-be prophet distorting God’s word? Go back and read the words of Jesus in the Gospels this week. What is he really saying? Do we accept his hard teachings, or dismiss him?
Jesus may have been uttering judgment upon Jerusalem, so soon to repeat its pattern of death-dealing, but we would be foolish if we thought this lament doesn’t apply to us too. Jerusalem was and is a place with a particular history and customs, but in the Bible it is also a symbolic place where God and humankind meet. The Book of Revelation speaks of the “new Jerusalem, coming down from heaven like a bride adorned for her husband.” Jerusalem represents the hope of reconciliation, of fidelity and obedience, of that mystical place where God himself will dwell, “and they shall be God’s people and God himself shall be with them.” (Revelation 21:1-4)
We can choose which Jerusalem we will be – the one that kills its prophets and stones its messengers, or the new Jerusalem where heaven and earth can truly meet. That is a place of courageous truth-telling and peace-making.
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