Hen & Chicks picture facilitated by Mark Havel of Cross of Grace Lutheran Church, New Palestine, Indiana, USA. Photographer unknown.   Thanks for sharing.

About Hens and Parades

It has amazed me gratefully that the lectionary frequently turns up scripture texts that are exactly what the preacher needs to speak truth and Good News to a current situation.  This year’s lectionary journey through Luke's Gospel provided two such occasions.

Here are the texts and their parallels in the other Gospels:

1.      Luke 13:31-35 (// Matthew 23:37-39. “The Lament over Jerusalem”

2.      Luke 19:29-39  (//Matthew 21:1-11; Mark 11:1-11; John 12:12-19. “Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem”

It's not a detailed exegesis of these two Gospel stories I'll provide.  That’s not the point of this reflection.  The point is that for me Gospel stories can be surprisingly timely  gifts of truth for faithful discipleship and for sensing the presence of God in particular contexts

.

First pericope:  Hens

“At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to [Jesus], “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. … 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!” 

I am conscious that in the Western world and especially in the USA and Israel “killing and stoning” prophets and messengers of truth is a thriving industry. It has become dangerous to call for liberation and justice for Palestinians, even to describe their suffering. The desire of too much of the political elite is to silence the prophets and imprison or banish even the most humble messengers of justice and peace.

 Israel's lobbyists have done a thorough job of promoting the widely debunked IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) definition of antisemitism—a definition that explicitly includes criticism of Israel.  It stifles free speech and academic freedom, promotes anti-Palestinian racism, and narrowly defines Jewish identity as inherently Zionist.

Antisemitism is deemed to be the root of all criticism of the State of Israel and its war on Palestine.  And because such criticism makes some Jewish people uncomfortable, therefore the critics must be antisemites.

There are two problems with this diagnosis. First, Arabs, many of whom are Palestinians, are semites too. And the reality is steadily coming into focus that Arabs/Palestinians have become major targets of antisemitism, specifically virulent anti-Palestinianism and anti-Arabism.  All can readily agree that antisemitism – properly defined – is an evil.  It is, however, negative racist generalizations about both Jews/Israelis and Palestinian/Arabs that must be suppressed. Neither form of antisemitism is acceptable and must be held in contempt. But neither family of semites is above being held to account for its crimes against humanity and its breach of international laws and conventions.

Second, if any criticism of the State of Israel is antisemitism that must be stopped, does that mean that the deadly war Israel is waging against Palestinians and taking over their ancestral lands and annihilating all that is included in Palestinian culture is above criticism?  Do international laws no longer apply to Israel’s crimes that the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court and diverse international human rights organization have described as genocide, apartheid, displacement of refugees, depriving refugees of the necessities of life, illegal occupation, and much more?  Criminal actions against Palestinians cannot be tolerated any more than antisemitic behaviour against Jews and Palestinians/Arabs.  There can be no hierarchy of evils. Evil is evil.

In this segment of scripture, Luke reports that some progressive Pharisees -Jewish leaders – sympathetic to Jesus alert him to the danger of the Roman governor Herod Antipas the governor for Rome. Jesus knew of the wily and devious Herod and called him “the fox” – the fox that kills the innocent hen and chicks for supper. The fox knows that Jesus’ persistently good works and his indefatigable compassion for the marginalized astound and excite the crowd. If Herod can’t disperse the multitude, then he’d use force to teach them a cruel lesson.   When Palestinians crowds gather to peacefully protest illegal occupation, the Israeli fox has routinely responded with tear gas, bullets, and collective punishment.

Too many Western nation legislators influenced by the powerful Israeli lobby, are anxious to share in dispersing the crowds, silencing the prophets, and imprisoning the messengers so that today’s carnage in Palestine can proceed with impunity. 

But Jesus’ Way is to gather people and embrace them with courageous compassion and fierce love for the hope-filled crowd. The love that he shares is like that of the hen spreading its wings over the chicks to protect them.

That is an apt metaphor for the divine grace.  In relation to the horror in Palestine, that grace is now manifested as courageous students advocate for a ceasefire, as lawyers uphold the right of return, as citizens call for an embargo on weapons. It is filmmakers showing what Israel’s illegal military occupation of the Westbank traumatizes Palestinians, especially children.  It is people of faith demonstrating to protest and demand politicians to stop providing murderous weapons of war to Israeli terrorist forces.  It is international courts declaring judgements on the illegal occupier of Palestinian territories.  Where people call for truth, justice, and peace in Palestine, there the divine hen is spreading its wings over the oppressed family.

These and many other courageous and creative human actions are the winged grace of God spread over oppressed and suffering people.  This is the Way of Jesus, of course, taught to him by the Tanakh – the Hebrew scriptures, his Bible.  The false national idolatrous god of fury, violence, lies, destruction, and dispossession may rule in Palestine for now, but the Holy One forbids it to last. The Covenant rooted in liberation and the Commandments (Torah) enhancing life in community will be restored "on the third day".   

Second pericope: Parades

“Then they brought the colt to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord [Adonai]! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven.” Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout

out.”

Again, in this passage, cautious progressive Pharisees raise their concern with Jesus about the unruly crowd and the danger of a Roman armed response.  But Jesus is not inclined to muzzle the crowd.  The reign of God is being welcomed – even in Rome’s time of armed subjugation and oppression.

Just last Saturday, I gathered with a couple of thousand others on Ottawa’s Parliament Hill.  We assembled there because we wanted to call for the government of Canada to stop the horrors:  stop the flow of arms to Israel, ensure that humanitarian necessities are allowed into Gaza. 

We proclaimed our conviction that liberation and healing will come to the children and parents who have survived the ferocious unprecedented bombing, the countless wounded will be treated,  the grieving multitudes who have lost 60,000 + of their compatriots and family members will be consoled, and to all Palestinians now in danger of being forcibly removed from their ancestral land and displaced to who knows where will stay in their ancestral lands. We proclaimed that the 100 years' war against Palestine must come to an end with shared use of the land with justice and peace.

I realized that that huge crowd, of which I was part, was but a small part of the wings of God, our fiercely loving heavenly hen, spreading protection and safety over her subjugated human family. And that in hundreds – thousands? – of other towns and cities around the world other advocates of justice and peace were the beating heart of our Hen’s ubiquitous caring with wings reaching out in love to the traumatized Palestinian people in Gaza, the Occupied Territories, Jerusalem. 

God’s unstoppable heart was and is yearning for justice to replace criminality, food to stave off death by famine, medical necessities to treat the wounds. Peaceful demonstrations and testimony are the Hen’s wings for safety, mending, and living.

Thank God for the witness of scripture to illuminate for us the Ways and work of Jesus.  As faithful people act with the light of the scriptures, our one global family is blessed by Good News activists, by the courageous witness of prophets like the rapporteurs of the United Nations, by judges in International courts, by wise ones who discern in others the gifts of the Spirit to nurture peace, and by the heroes who don’t fear to challenge amoral and criminal politicians and military leaders. 

May all that work be completed on that “third day” when the graves open for new life to burst forth.  Easter blessings for all.