The Power of a Hen's Love

Thursday of Week 30 in Ordinary Time

Luke 13:31-35

Jerusalem, Jerusalem,

you will kill the prophets and stone those sent to you,

how many times I yearned to gather your children together

as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were unwilling.

Herod the fox

Jesus the hen (not a lion or a tiger or a bear;)

A hen and a fox…is this a fair fight?  What does a hen do to protect her chicks?

What she does is gather them together.  She hides and protects them.  She will get eaten first.  She hopes she will be enough food to cause the fox to take a long nap giving the chicks time to get away.  The hen protects sacrificially.  She lays down her life.

The Pharisees don’t have any useful information for Jesus.  Jesus is on a timetable of his own making.  He is about the business of gathering.  But it is a gathering that strengthens and fortifies.  He gathers a remnant that will somehow ‘get it’ post crucifixion.  On the road to Emmaus the nickel will drop.  They will understand a hen’s love.  They will have eyes to see the resurrection.

It is a good reflection

When do I operate in fox mode?

When do I operate in hen mode?

Do I like the ratio?

Hen mode is life giving…for the long haul. 

May it increase.

Past Tired and Broken

Tuesday of Week 30 in Ordinary Time

Ephesians 5:21-33 (I am taking it to 6:9 for the sake of good context)

 

"It is important to acknowledge that the text presents a vision of household relationships, rooted in an ancient setting, that is considered unjust today...and in the case of slavery completely immoral." 

(Sacra Pagina, Vol 17, 341)

There is no easy way of taking the patriarchal sting out of this text.  The metaphor at work relates the husband to God, and the wife to the human community...but it is metaphorical language.  It just doesn't communicate today.  Most of us can't get past the sting.

The author of Ephesians uses the form, household codes (a standard in Greco-Roman philosophical writing) as a way of setting Christians noticeably apart from non-believers, so it seems that the most fruitful way to discern any timeless value in the text is to look for what is different.  

Today I am going to take my cue from the lines that bookend this pericope.  

Verse 5:21:  Brothers and sisters: Be subordinate to one another out of reverence to Christ.

This is something central to the Christian way of life.  It would have been noticeably different from the culture at large.

Verse 6:9:  And masters, do the same thing to them, stopping the threatening knowing that both they and you have a master in heaven and with him there in so partiality.

The implication of living in relationship with a God who shows no favoritism continues to make ethical demands on human behavior. 

The wife/husband and slave/master metaphor is past tired and broken. It opens the scriptures up to being manipulated into supporting the very thing the Gospel intends to re-imagine. 

But trying to be more like the God in whose image and likeness I am made by cultivating a heart that refuses to begin with distinctions…that is never tired or broken. 

Close Enough to Touch

Monday of Week 30 in Ordinary Time

Ephesian 4:32-5:8

Be kind and forgiving.

Be imitators of God.

Live in love.

It was a day to clean off my desk and surrounding areas.  There is a sacramental relationship between the clarity of my mind and the clutteredness of my desktop!  

While organizing I came across a sticky note where I had written:

The best preparation for loving the world at large,

and loving it wisely,

is to cultivate an intimate friendship 

and affection

towards those who are immediately about us…

         I typed it into my search bar to find out who wrote it. 

                          -Blessed John Henry Newman

Loving the Whole World is too abstract… 

too impossible…

unless it grows out of the real and concrete

particulars of my life.

I have a particular calling

At a particular moment in history

In a particular place

And beginning with particular people

…close enough to touch…

God’s desire for the world

And my small part in that

Begins operating

Particularly

Woe is me!

Wednesday of Week 28 in Ordinary Time

Luke 11:42-46

 

We are trucking right along in Luke’s Gospel.  Jesus is getting heated as he throws woe to you’s around.  Pharisees and scribes are both indicted. Best not to be too quick about distancing ourselves from the nature of their failure…I am most certainly at times both snooty and smarty-pants.

Leadership as service is undetectable in the actions of the Scribes and Pharisees in this polemic argument.  The look at me attitude of the Pharisees and the focus on minutiae that marks the scribes…both mired in the ego.

Begin instead with the Love of God who first loved us into being.  Express that love in care and concern of neighbor (because the only way to respond is by paying it forward).  Justice and mercy are the fruits of that love.

Like yesterday…Jesus gives us a starting point.  If we stick with it we won’t get turned around.  And we won't find that finger out in front of us;)  It is that simple and that tough.

In a spirit of thankfulness

We wash each other’s feet

Uphold each other’s lives

In a spirit of joy and praise

We serve each other now

At the table of the Lord

Always remember

Among yourselves

The greatest one must be the servant

Just as the Lord

Among his own

Has made himself servant of all

            ---Serving You, by Michel Guimont...a favorite for Holy Thursday 

Problematic Veneers

Tuesday of Week 28 in Ordinary Time

Galatians 5:1-6

Luke 11:37-41

 

Between yesterday and today was Luke’s bit about being disciples of light.  Don’t hide the light under a bushel basket.  Steward it well so that others may be blessed by it.  And be careful not to let it get smothered by creeping darkness.  Pay attention!  Aim to be filled up with light.

Today Jesus goes on to describe what having only a veneer of light is like.  It sees only from veneer to veneer, outside to outside.  So ritual washing (resist thinking about hygiene;) of hands, or lack thereof, becomes central.  Jesus is drawing attention to what he sees as over-scrupulosity which feeds wrong-headed and wrong-hearted judgment. 

It's not that the outside isn’t important.  Rather, Jesus is clarifying what is primary.  When our light-infused hearts reach out in acts of love of neighbor there is no need to worry about the outside…it will radiate that same light and love.

Luke is writing to his community and through them to me.  The ideal disciple is the integrated disciple.  Outsides…the concern for outsides…is seductive.  Making outsides primary only takes a bit of inattention on my part.

Integration is hard to hold.

For in Christ Jesus,

neither circumcision nor uncircumcision

counts for anything,

only faith working through love.   Galatians 5:6