Mama’s Table
Luke 13: 31-35
Rev. John P. Wesley
February 28, 2010
One morning in Sunday School a teacher asked a little girl who she was drawing. Without looking up from her picture she replied, “God.”
The teacher, thinking she had an opportunity to teach, told the little girl no one knows what God looks like.
She replied, again without looking up, “They will know as soon as I finish this picture.”
When it comes to knowing what God looks like, a lot of us feel as bewildered as these children. Is God tall or short, big or small? Is God male or female, black or brown or white? Does God have a wonderful, winning smile or a frown deeply imbedded in his face? What does God look like?
William P. Young wrote a novel a couple of years ago that stirred up a lot of interest and controversy. It was entitled “The Shack.” In the story God is present in the form of the holy trinity. But how the author depicts God sparked a lot of conversation. You see, God the Father is a black woman who loves to cook. And Jesus is a Middle Eastern laborer constantly fixing things and the Holy Spirit is a whimsical Asian woman whose name means wind. When the main character goes to a shack out in the woods to nurse the pain and guilt of his daughter’s murder many years before, he meets this threesome in the shack.
The story reads, “Thoughts tumbled over each other as Mack struggled to figure out what to do. Was one of these people God? … Since there were three of them, maybe this was a Trinity sort of thing. But two women and a man and none of them white? Then again, why had he naturally assumed that God would be white? He knew his mind was rambling, so he focused on the one question he most wanted answered.
“Then,” Mack struggled to ask, “which one of you is God?”
“I am,” said all three in unison. Mack looked from one to the next, and even though he couldn’t begin to grasp what he was seeing and hearing, he somehow believed them.”
The image people carry of God is important. It informs their understanding of who God is and how God is to be worshipped and served. One of the claims of our faith is that there is only one God. We affirm the ancient Shema still quoted in the Jewish synagogue, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one,” (Mark 12:29b). Sometimes it is difficult for people outside of Christianity to really believe that we worship only one God. The idea of God as Father, son and Holy Spirit appear to divide God into three different beings. But at the heart of Jesus’ faith, at the heart of our faith, is the confession that there is but one God. The images of God that rise out of the Trinity, are only three of many different images of God to be found in the bible. None of these images draws a complete picture of God. Each gives us a new way of seeing God, a new way of understanding something about God’s nature.
A lot of the images of God found in scripture are male. And many depict a fierceness and strength that is frightening and intimidating. The prophets often spoke of God as a great warrior king or a strict, impartial judge. Sometimes God was called a refiner’s fire or like the thunder echoing through the mountains. In so many of the images we have of God in scripture there is a sense of God’s otherness, of the “thou” nature of God that is beyond human wisdom or understanding. But Jesus uses an image of God in our text today that is neither male, nor flattering. When a group of Pharisees come to warn Jesus of the plan of Herodians to arrest and kill him, Jesus appears to draw a picture of a mother hen and then says, “That’s God.”
Just like a mother hen wants to gather her chicks when danger is near, God has opened her wings to invite Israel to find security beneath her. But the sad part of the story is that the mother hen’s chicks have run away.
As Jesus prepares for his passion and death, he is mindful of what God looks like. God looks like a mother hen brooding over her chicks. The rebellion of the chicks hasn’t done anything to alter God’s desire to reach out and save. The nature of this mother hen God is to reach out and gather us in.
James Weldon Johnson imagined God as a mother in the opening chapter of creation. In his well known poem he wrote:
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Up from the bed of the river |
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God scooped the clay; |
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And by the bank of the river |
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He kneeled Him down; |
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And there the great God Almighty |
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Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky, |
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Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night, |
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Who rounded the earth in the middle of His hand; |
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This Great God, |
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Like a mammy bending over her baby, |
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Kneeled down in the dust |
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Toiling over a lump of clay |
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Till He shaped it in His own image; |
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Then into it He blew the breath of life, |
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And man became a living soul. |
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Amen. Amen.
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My sermon on Ash Wednesday lifted up the word mercy. One of the forms of this word derives from a word that means womb and carries the idea of a mother who becomes linked to the child she carries and delivers into the world. She cannot help but gather that child in and care for its needs. Even so God, offers this nurture and care capable of sustaining life in us. Jesus indicates this mother hen of a God is able to sustain something in us that is more than physical life. The threats of death Jesus’ faces aren’t able to turn him from following God’s direction in his life. He believes the wings spread by this mother hen are able to save what is most precious to God, able to save his life. The cross may seem a repudiation of Jesus’ trust in God, but the resurrection became the great affirmation that God is able to keep all that is placed within God’s care.
God is a gathering God, an inviting God who wants to bring us together beneath the security and protection of God’s grace and mercy. One of the words used of the early church was the assembly. It literally meant “the gathered ones.” Just as a mother would prepare a large meal and invite her family to come in and sit down, the early church saw itself gathered about the table of the Lord to celebrate this God who was strong enough to defy Caesar, but loving enough to make a place of love and mercy where they were welcomed.
It’s an old country song that many recognize as a Merle Haggard classic. Its tune is a mournful one, telling us a hard luck story is coming.
The first thing I remember knowing,
Was a lonesome whistle blowing,
And a young un’s dream of growing up to ride;
On a freight train leaving town,
Not knowing where I’m bound,
No-one could change my mind but Mama tried.
This country ballad goes on to bemoan the fact that this young man would turn twenty one in prison doing life without parole. No one could steer him right, but Mama tried.
It seems this country ballad could have been sung to those who rejected Jesus so long ago. Just like a big mother hen, God tried to turn the hearts and minds of the people away from their selfish, destructive pursuits, but they would not, Jesus said. And that ancient rejection remains a present reality. Each of us, invited to find life in Christ, invited to give ourselves to the one who loves us like a mother hen, are likely to run away. Maybe we run away because we don’t feel worthy of God’s love. Maybe we run away because we feel too ashamed of the things we have not been able to change within us. Maybe we scatter because we are uncomfortable being in community with certain kinds of people we label unacceptable. Maybe we scatter because we believe the fox is a lot more powerful than the love of a mother hen. There are a lot of reasons chicks have scattered. It seems our nature to scatter.
But God isn’t in the scattering business. God is in the gathering business. Like a mother setting the table and inviting all her children to come, God issues an open invitation.
Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked anything.
Truth Lord, but I have marred them; Let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, sayest Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
God’s invitation is to sit down and eat. We are invited to sit and rest, to abide beneath the shelter of God’s eternal care. We are invited to bring our worries and concerns, our mistakes and failures and find our place in God’s kingdom. We are invited by a longing, seeking, searching God who has a place prepared for us. We are invited to move beyond our fears of the fox, beyond our shame and guilt. We who have scattered are invited to be gathered into the arms of love, grace, forgiveness and mercy.
Mama’s table is set. And there’s a place for each one of us. Find your seat and eat!
