Mother

Mother
#3 in Images of Jesus
Dr. D. William McIvor
March 7, 2004 — Second Sunday in Lent

Today we look at a third image of Jesus in our Lenten sermon series, namely the image of “mother.” I’ll tell you a funny story about how this sermon title changed from what was announced in last Sunday’s bulletin to what it is today. Last week’s bulletin said the sermon this week was called “Man of Sorrows” but the title is actually “Mother.” That’s a big change and in a moment I’ll tell you how that happened.

First, I’ll say a few words about the text and what a strange text it is. We have the Pharisees, normally the bad guys in the gospels, apparently doing a nice thing by warning Jesus that Herod is trying to kill him.[1] Jesus responds by calling Herod a fox, a classic, ancient name for a crafty and violent person, and says, “You tell Herod I said so!” In other words, he gets in Herod’s face about it.

Then Jesus says, “I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow … ” By saying this Jesus dismisses the relevance of Herod’s threatened violence. That Herod wanted to kill Jesus is simply irrelevant to the story because God is in control, not Herod nor anyone else.

Then Jesus says “ … and on the third day I finish my work.” We cannot help but hear in that phrase echoes of crucifixion and resurrection. “On the third day.” In the end violence will come upon Jesus (crucifixion) but in the ultimate end the violence against Jesus does not have the final say (resurrection).[2] God has the final say.

Then in the text Jesus cries over Jerusalem, lamenting that so often people have not turned to God even though God turns to them. Luke putting these words here is a little out of place because Jesus hasn’t reached Jerusalem yet and it seems strange to have him speaking to the city before he gets there. But the point Luke makes is that Jerusalem is where Jesus is going, where he will fulfill his purpose and reach his destiny, where the critical events will occur. So even before he gets to the Holy City, Jesus weeps for people to be drawn to him. Let’s read it in Luke 13.

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 wings, 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.’”

So how did I get from originally calling this sermon “Man of Sorrows” to calling it “Mother”? Well, it’s a funny story. Not funny like “ha-ha” but funny like how stupid can I be?

Several weeks ago when I started studying for this Lenten series, I knew I wanted its theme to be “Images of Jesus.” So as I was reading the texts over and over “listening” for the image that best came to mind from each text, the image that jumped out from this passage was a sad Jesus, a sorrowing Jesus. So in my notes I wrote down “Man of Sorrows,” a time-honored title for our Lord.

The funny thing is that I know better. This text is not about the man of sorrows. From Jesus’ own lips comes the image the he is a mother hen who wants to gather her chicks beneath her wings. Mother is the controlling image in this text and Jesus said so himself. I know that. But thinking of God only in male-specific terms is so ingrained that even when the text is very clear, it’s easy to remain stuck in old habits of thought. That’s why we need to see fresh images of Jesus with fresh eyes.

I’m reminded of when I first saw “Christa.” Some of you have perhaps seen or seen pictures of this statue called “Christa.” It’s actually not a statue but a four-foot high, bronze crucifix sculpted by the well-known artist Edwina Sandys who just happens to be the granddaughter of Winston Churchill. The crucifix hangs in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. The figure that hangs on the cross of this crucifix is naked and very specifically female.

When you see “Christa,” especially when you see it in person, it shocks. It’s meant to shock. It’s intended to shock us out of routine, lazy, habitual ways of thinking about God so we can learn more, see more, understand more, and trust more the real God and the way the real God works in our world and in our lives. And the real God sometimes needs to be thought of in a female image and specifically in terms of today’s text, in the image of mother.

I ended last week’s sermon by saying that we must be crossbearers, that we need to live by the cross. One of the things that living by the cross means is taking care of each other. Mothers do that. Jesus was crucified to take care of us and the crucifixion can be seen as a mother sacrificing her life for the sake of her children. So let that image give us fresh eyes today to see what more it can show us about God.

My first thought today is that a motherly love beckons us towards God. Jesus compares himself to a mother hen who takes care for her chicks. The chicks often refuse and Jesus laments the sadness of it. Would that they saw, would that we see the motherly love of God and be drawn to her. But we ignore this divine beckoning. So Jesus weeps over us like he did over Jerusalem because sadly we often break the heart of God. Yet like a mother, God still loves us.

I miss Erma Bombeck. Erma died in 1996 but for more than 30 years this author, columnist, and humorist was sort of America’s Mom. She could put in words what we all feel about family life but can’t quite express. One time she wrote about a mother’s favorite child. She said, “Every mother has a favorite child. She cannot help it. She is only human. I have mine, the child for whom I feel a special closeness, with whom I share a love that no one else could possibly understand.

“My favorite child is the one who was too sick to eat ice cream at his birthday party, who had measles at Christmas, who wore leg braces to bed because he toed in. Who had a fever in the middle of the night, the asthma attack, the child in my arms at the emergency ward.

“My favorite child spent Christmas alone away from the family, was stranded after the game with a gas tank on E, lost the money for his class ring. My favorite child is the one who messed up the piano recital, misspelled “committee” in a spelling bee, ran the wrong way with the football and had his bike stolen because he was careless.

“My favorite child is the one I punished for lying, grounded for insensitivity to other people’s feelings, and informed he was a royal pain to the entire family. My favorite child slammed doors in frustration, cried when she didn’t think I saw her, withdrew and said she would not talk to me.

“My favorite child always needed a haircut, had hair that wouldn’t curl, had no date for Saturday night and a car that cost $600 to fix. My favorite child was selfish, immature, bad-tempered and self-centered. He was vulnerable, lonely, unsure of what he was doing in this world — quite wonderful.

“All mothers have their favorite child. It is always the same one: the one who needs you at the moment. Who needs you for whatever reason — to cling to, to shout at, to hurt, to hug, to flatter, to reverse charges to, to unload on — but mostly just to be there.”[3]

Hear this: God’s favorite child in all the world is you. You need the motherly love of God and God is there for you.

So a motherly love beckons us towards God and my second thought this morning is that this beckoning love will not be stopped. The motherly love of God will win out.

A man named Edwin Friedman was the founding rabbi of the Bethesda Jewish Congregation which since the early 1970s has shared the facility of the Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, Maryland. Dr. Friedman was also an acclaimed family therapist and a few years before his death in 1996 he wrote a book called Friedman’s Fables. One of the fables is called “The Bridge.”

At the beginning of the fable we meet a man who has begun a new journey at midlife, this time with great purpose and the hope that he is traveling toward his true life’s destiny. Finally, he thinks, my life is beginning to make sense and I can make a difference in the world. But just as he begins to gain momentum on his journey, he runs into a stranger coming straight toward him across a bridge. The stranger has a rope tied around his waist, and when he meets our focused friend, he asks him to stop and to take hold of the other end of the rope. A bit taken back, our friend complies, and before he knows what is happening, the stranger jumps off the bridge, dangling dangerously between bridge and water. Crying out from the end of the rope, the stranger begs the man at the top to hold onto him, for the stranger’s life is now totally in his hands.

What a dilemma. What do you think he did? What would you do? If he lets go of the rope, he would feel guilty for ending another person’s life. But if he stays and hangs on, he risks missing the purpose of his own life. Mulling it over, he came up with a compromise.

“Hey!” he yelled to the man at the bottom of the rope. “I tell you what. I will hold on for a few moments — enough time to allow YOU to pull yourself up. Just wrap the rope around your waist, shortening it bit by bit. Then you can save yourself — with my support.”

The man at the end of the rope reacted with fury and panic, insisting that the man on the bridge was responsible for saving his life.

“You cannot mean what you say,” the hanging man shrieked. “You would not be so selfish. I am your responsibility. What could be so important that you would let someone die? Do not do this to me.”

The man at the top waited a moment. There was no change in the tension of the rope.

“I accept your choice,” he said at last, and freed his hands. Then he resumed his journey toward the purpose of his life.[4]

Now when I read this fable I was, quite frankly, horrified. How could any self-respecting person let go of the rope? The fable still chews on me when I think about it. But is that not what a good fable is suppose to do? And is not the fable of the bridge a good way to get at today’s text?

For a word that jumps out of the text is the word must. Jesus said, “I must be on my way … ” Jesus must be on his way to Jerusalem. Jesus must be on his way to the cross. None of this is negotiable. Nothing and nobody can dissuade him, not crafty, foxy, Herod, not the Pharisees, not even the hurting, scared, needy people hanging off the edges of Jerusalem — those strangers trying to stop Jesus from his way — begging him to save them, to fix them, to heal them.[5] Jesus must be on his way. We want him to stop and take care of us. But he must go his way. It is the way to the cross and if Jesus doesn’t suffer the violence, then the violence cannot be overcome. This is God’s way. It’s not the way we expect or like. But it is the way of a mother’s love and it will not be stopped.

So the text portrays two different ways with two different animals. There’s Herod, the fox, dangerous and predatory. Then there’s the hen who instinctively draws her young under her wing when danger threatens.[6] Jesus says, “I am a mother hen and that is God’s way.”

We want our way to be God’s way and sometimes we’ll do almost anything trying to get Jesus following us. But he won’t. He will go the cross. He must go to the cross. For that is the way God gathers her brood beneath her wings. And if we are to go Jesus’ way, we must also gather all God’s children, no matter who or where they are. Being crossbearers means being caregivers just like a mother.

A small boy sat with his mother in church one Sunday, listening to a sermon entitled “What Is a Christian?” The minister punctuated his preaching at key intervals by asking, “what is a Christian?” Each time, he pounded his fist for emphasis.

After this went on for awhile, the boy whispered to his mother, “Momma, do you know? Do you know what a Christian is?”

As the minister was wrapping up, he once again thundered, “what is a Christian?” and pounded especially hard on the pulpit. At that point the little boy jumped up and cried, “Tell him, Momma, tell him.”[7]

A mother knows what a Christian is because the motherly love of God beckons us and it is a love that will not be stopped.

[1] Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Sacra Pagina Series 3 (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1991) 221. However, Johnson argues convincingly that we must take the Pharisees’ actions as hostile or we betray the narrative integrity of Luke.

[2] “Ironically this ministry contains a violence of Jesus against the demons. He is casting them out. For now, the power goes from Jesus against his enemies and not vice versa. But then, the saying makes a hard turn — ‘on the third day … ’ While some readers have wondered whether on the third day, in analogy to the beginning of 13:33, means ‘and then,’ it is nearly impossible not to hear echoes of the crucifixion and resurrection. Thus, Jesus admits that violence will indeed come against him, that political enemies will kill him, even if it is not Herod who gets the honor. Then, in a final twist, the phrase ‘on the third day’ evokes the resurrection. The violence against Jesus does not have the final say.” Lewis R. Donelson, “Exegesis,” Lectionary Homiletics 12.4 (2001): 9.

[3] Michael Hodgin, ed., The Pastor’s Story File 19.4 (2003): 2.

[4] Edwin H. Friedman, Friedman’s Fables (New York: Guilford Press, 1990) 13.

[5] An image from Susan R. Andrews, “Are You a Fox or a Hen?,” Lectionary Homiletics 12.4 (2001): 15. Dr. Andrews’ sermon first introduced me to this fable.

[6] R. Alan Culpepper, “The Gospel of Luke” The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. IX (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995) 282-283.

[7] Michael Hodgin, ed., The Pastor’s Story File 2.5 (1986): 7.