As a Hen Gathers her Brood | A Sermon on Motherhood and God
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin on the Sixth Sunday of Easter (B), May 9, 2021 (Mother’s Day).
Acts 10:44-48, 1 John 5:1-6, John 15:9-17
This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends (John 15:13).
Halfway down the western slope of the Mount of Olives is a small, teardrop-shaped church –the Church of Dominus Flevit. It stands on the ground where Jesus wept over the future fate of Jerusalem, as he made his entry on the first Palm Sunday.
Anyone who enters this Holy space is rewarded with a panoramic view of Old City Jerusalem, making it easier to imagine the scene as Jesus looked down on the city. The Temple would have been in full view behind the city wall and beyond that the grand palace. And in the houses and streets below would have been the children, women, and men of Jerusalem, unaware of the fate that was to befall the Holy City within just forty years time.
Jesus was not unaware, of course. And because of that, because of the knowledge of what was to come for those he loved so well, so intimately, he wept.
And so, the Church of Dominus Flevit stands in recognition of Jesus’ broken heart. And isn’t that something. That Jesus’ heart would be broken for Jersualem, broken for all of us, even before his body was broken on the cross. No one has greater love than this.
There’s something else about this particular Church, this sacred memory made visible, that is quite curious and lovely. At the foot of the altar there is a mosaic of a chicken, a hen, gathering her chicks under her wings. Of course, this recalls Jesus’ words, 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! (Matthew 23:37).
There are many ways to picture Jesus, many ways to image God. A shepherd, staff in hand looking out over the flock. A father running toward his prodigal son. A shining vision in white calling you to look away. A broken body on the street calling you to look closer. A set of footprints in the sand. Even a lion, like Aslan, or a gate, a bridegroom, a servant.
What about a mother hen? And not just any mother hen, but one whose wings are held wide open, ready and willing to receive and to protect her children from harm, to shelter them, to love them as best she knows how. A mother hen whose wide-open-wings remain empty because her children are no longer containable, they are wild and free. And, they have chosen not to come home to her. This is the image of a worried mother, a mother grieving perhaps, a mother who would give her very life to protect her young. This is the image chosen by Jesus for the moment, the moment of his broken heart.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus extends final words to his disciples, saying as the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love (John 15:9).
Abide. There’s that word again. Passive, yet also active –Jesus reaching for us, arms wide open, and yet we must come close, submitting ourselves again and again to the truth of His love.
And what is this love with which the Father has loved Him, and He has loved us; what is this love that we are called to practice with one another?
It is a life laid down. It is arms open wide.
Arms fighting against the instinct to never let us go in the first place - so that we might be wild and free. Arms that always remain open, inviting us home where we might be protected from pain. In the case of Jesus, arms from which we are never truly out of reach.
The imagery of God as Father is commonplace in our tradition and brings with it unique strengths and complexities that we can, and should, struggle with. The image of God as Mother is also well-rooted in Biblical imagery. And like any metaphor or image for God, it too brings unique strengths and complexities – because we rightfully perhaps attach it to our experiences, our own frame of reference.
And motherhood is not straightforward, to put it mildly. Some come by motherhood quite accidentally. Some quite purposefully. Some struggle to conceive, to carry. Some don’t wish to be mothers at all. Some would give anything for the opportunity. Some find that God has placed their child in another womb, while others find that they were not meant to mother their child beyond birth. Some are mothers to children who are no longer this side of heaven. Some fathers are called to be mothers. It’s complicated.
And yet, there is a certain universal vulnerability that cannot be denied where mothering is embraced, because at the heart of motherhood is love. And, because of that -because of love- motherhood can’t be protected from pain.
And this is what I think Jesus is about, Jesus who wept for Jerusalem. Jesus who commands us love one another.
Debie Thomas writes,
What Jesus the mother hen offers is not the absence of danger, but the fullness of his unguarded, open-hearted, vulnerable self in the face of all that threatens and scares us. What he gives is his own body, his own life. Wings spread open, heart exposed, shade and warmth and shelter at the ready. What he promises –at great risk to himself—is the making of his very being into a place of refuge and return [1].
Mother, as it turns out, is less a noun and more a verb. Less a point of arrival and more a way of being. And this type of mothering is not limited to our own children, or even children more generally, nor is it limited to those who are mothers in any way society defines that role. No, this type of mothering is something else entirely.
Because, to think of God as mother is not to recall our own mother or to look to our own mothering –because it is God who is perfect love, not us. We all fall short of God’s glory.
To think of God as mother, to consider Jesus as mother hen, is perhaps to reflect on what it is we are aiming for in love, and not even with our own children, but with all children.
And, we are all of us -each and every one -children of God.
Perhaps we are meant to ask what type of love is this, that both sets free and welcomes home? What type of love is this that offers the vulnerability of its body and courageously stands its ground against the risk? What type of love is this that longs for us, waits for us, weeps for us, dies for us –over and over again? What type of love is this?
There is none greater.
To think of God, of Jesus, like this is perhaps to ask ourselves what this type of love looks like in our lives. How might we offer it? How might we receive it? How might we draw close to its source –to the very heart of love which is God –so that His desire, his way, his love, might become our own?
This is a demanding, vulnerable sort of love that is never easy, but always worth it.
A love that is, by its nature, a never-ending letting go.
And yet, in the words of Anna Poulson,
When and only when we have the courage to . . . to let ourselves go and to surrender, then we find ourselves cradled in the hands of another, of the Father whose hands flung stars into space [and of the Mother who knit us together in the womb], of the Son whose hands were nailed to a tree, of the Spirit on whose hands we will find names [the names of all God’s children -past, present, and future] . . . mine, yours, beautifully engraved by the God who will never forget us, by the one who will never truly let us go. [2]
Amen.
*image is “Mosaic in Dominus Flevit Church,” Fallaner, WikiCommons.
[1] Debie Thomas, “The Way of the Hen,” Journey with Jesus (10 March 2019), https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2119-the-way-of-the-hen.
[2] Service from St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, Lent Pilgrimage 4: Alone and Together, BBC Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b072hs5x.
