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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
When I was very young, my paternal grandparents still had some chickens on their dairy farm, but other than my helping gather a few eggs out of the chicken coops maybe a couple of times, I have never really been involved with raising birds, unlike some of you, with your chickens, emus, and peacocks. In today’s Gospel Reading, we do not know for sure what kind of birds Jesus had in mind with his figure of speech illustrating His gathering Jerusalem’s children together, but, in the end, not the kind of birds but the behavior of the mother bird towards her brood matters. Considering today’s Gospel Reading this morning, we direct our thoughts to the theme, “The Willing Brood of the Church”.
There is a rich Old Testament background to the figure of speech describing God as a mother bird. For example, last Sunday’s appointed Psalm referred to our finding refuge under the Lord’s wings (Psalm 91:4). Before that, Moses had likened the Lord’s care for Jacob (also known as Israel) to an eagle stirring up its nest, fluttering over its young, spreading out its wings, catching them, and bearing them on its pinions (Deuteronomy 32:11). And, the prophet Isaiah similarly said that, like birds hovering, the Lord of Hosts will protect and deliver Jerusalem, spare and rescue it (Isaiah 35:1). In some ways, Jerusalem even resembles a bird’s such as an eagle’s nest, built on a somewhat inaccessible ledge and guarded with great ferocity (Fisher, #1437, TWOT p.607).
Interestingly enough, no Old Testament passage refers in particular either to a mother bird’s gathering her brood or to her brood’s wandering. Maybe that is where the figure of speech breaks down. Eaglets, for example, supposedly stay in their inaccessible nest until they are old enough to leave it, though they might remain under the care of an adult bird for a while after their first flights. We might imagine eaglets returning to their mother for protection, and there is at least one Old Testament verse that does refer to human children’s taking refuge in the shadow of God’s wings (Psalm 36:7).
In the Gospel Reading, Jesus willed to gather Jerusalem’s children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and Jerusalem’s children were not willing to be gathered. We and all other people are like Jerusalem’s children by nature. On our own, we are hostile to God and flee from Him. We are sinful, and so we sin by thought, word, and deed, in countless sometimes unspeakable ways. Thus, we deserve both death here and now and torment in hell for eternity. Yet, out of God’s great love and mercy, the call of the Gospel comes to all people. We heard it from Jeremiah in today’s Old Testament Reading (Jeremiah 26:8-15), and we heard it from the Lord in today’s Gospel Reading. The call of the Gospel at least enables all people to turn in sorrow from their sin, to trust God to forgive their sin, and to want to stop sinning.
Those who do not so repent but persistently resist the Holy Spirit, do not truly believe in Christ, and remain in their sin without repentance are not forgiven but are hardened, rejected, and condemned. They are hardened, rejected, and condemned not because Jesus did not “effectively will” to save them, but they are hardened, rejected, and condemned because they perversely willed to reject His salvation (Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, XI:39-41). However, when we so repent, then God forgives us. God forgives us all our sin, whatever our sin might be. God forgives us for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
In the Gospel Reading, whatever was or was not going on between Herod and the Pharisees, Jesus makes clear that He is going to keep on casting out demons and performing cures, physical and spiritual, until His course is finished in Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who had been sent to it. The miraculous signs Jesus did showed that Jesus was far more than an ordinary prophet: Jesus was and is God in human flesh. Later, in Jerusalem, Herod had a chance to see Jesus for himself, but Jesus gave Herod no “on-demand” performance of miraculous signs, and Herod returned Jesus to Pilate, who took that return as a finding of no guilt deserving death (Luke 23:6-15). Still, Jesus’s death was, as Jesus said in the Gospel Reading, Divinely necessary, and His death was Divinely necessary for us. Jesus took our sins and the sins of the whole world to the cross, and there He died for us, in our place, the death that we deserved. As we show our trust by seeking shelter in Him, He forgives our sin. He forgives our sin through His Word and Sacraments.
God’s Word and Sacraments are the very means by which He calls us to repentance and faith in the first place. Those who reject or resist that call to repentance and faith no doubt make no or little use of God’s Word and Sacraments or make use of them only for show. The reading and preaching of God’s Word to groups such as this and the application of the Gospel to individuals with water in Holy Baptism, with the pastor’s touch in Holy Absolution, and with bread and wine that are Christ’s Body and Blood in the Sacrament of the Altar—each can and does forgive sins, but each also is unique and has (or should have) a place in each Christian’s life. With the Small Catechism, we believe, teach, and confess that the Holy Spirit calls us by the Gospel, enlightens us with His gifts, and sanctifies and keeps us in the true faith, and, in the same way, He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith (Small Catechism II:6).
As part of that sanctification, that being made holy, we imitate those who have gone before us in the faith, as St. Paul calls us to do in today’s Epistle Reading (Philippians 3:17-4:1). As St. Paul says, our citizenship is in heaven, and we await our Lord’s final coming from there in glory to transform our lowly bodies to be like His glorious body. Until then, we live in the callings that God has given us, doing the good works that He has given for us to do according to those callings. In so doing, we expect the same kind of treatment that our Lord received. As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther wrote, the Lord’s Words in the Gospel Reading about persecuting the messengers of the Gospel will be fulfilled even of us in our time (Luther, To Pastors, Against Usury, AE 61:321).
In a roughly contemporaneous sermon, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther preached about Christ’s comparing Himself to a clucking hen, who, Luther said, more than any other bird or even animal, lovingly and earnestly looks after her chicks, using a different voice and call to lead her chicks, and even letting one fly upon her neck (Luther, ad loc Matthew 23:37, AE 68:248; confer Pieper, II:29 n.57). Luther apparently knew more about chickens and other birds than I do and maybe also than you do. Of course, in the end, how much we know about birds does not matter, but what matters is that we are part of the “The Willing Brood of the Church”: not resisting but willing to be gathered into the Church by the Lord’s gracious call to repent, and in faith receiving His forgiveness through His Word and Sacraments. And so, with another psalm verse, we pray to the Lord, “Let me take refuge under the shelter of Your wings!” (Psalm 61:4; confer 17:8).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +