In Defense of Brooding

Second Sunday in Lent + March 13, 2022 + Luke 13:31-35 + Pr. Craig Mueller

I’ll admit I don’t have a vast repertoire of emojis that I use in texts or emails. Once I responded to someone in grief by choosing an emoji with tears. Then I realized it was someone laughing so hard they were crying. Red-faced emoji, right?

Emojis try to add some emotion to flat text alone. And there’s quite a spectrum. Not only happy, sad, and mad. There’s tired, star-struck, flushed, yawning, pouting and a couple dozen more. 

But would an emoji look like for lament? Today’s gospel is sometimes called Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem. Sure, Jesus laments that the people of his day that rejected the prophets sent to them, including Jesus himself. Is this lament today God’s heartbreak when we refuse the divine summons? Is this lament today our turning away when God desires to gather us closer and closer into her motherly embrace?

The scriptures are full of lament. And many of us at Holy Trinity are reflecting on lament this Lent. But wait: lament isn’t whining. It is taking our feelings to God. Crying out from the depth of our soul. Where are you God? Why won’t you do something? We lament when life is too hard. Too lonely. Too sad. 

We lament when something is wrong in the world: war, violence, natural disasters. Our hearts break at the images we see from Ukraine. A pregnant woman on a stretcher being rescued from a bombed maternity hospital. An old woman lamenting the lack of food and water as she walks through the rubble of her neighborhood. Bodies lowered into mass graves. Refugees streaming and being welcomed into neighboring countries.

We lament when something is wrong in our social fabric: racism and all forms of prejudice, and exclusion. 

We lament when something is wrong in our bodies—illness and health challenges. We lament when something is wrong in our souls and nothing seems to raise our spirits.

Help is on the way, as they say. And it’s the tender image of Jesus as a mother hen in today’s gospel. I doubt there is an emoji of Jesus with a hen face! But there is a church on the Mount of Olives, on the ground where Jesus wept over Jerusalem, with a mosaic of a mother hen and her chicks. With the image is the poignant verse from today’s gospel: “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings. And you were not willing!” Heartbreaking.

Image of a mosaic of a mother hen with a halo and 7 yellow chicks.

Pardon a little hen talk. What comes to mind for you? I haven’t been in a hen house since I was a kid on my grandparent’s farm. I did see the Music Man on Broadway in January so what comes to mind is the song that portrays a bunch of busybodies, gossiping like a brood of cackling hens. “Pick a little, talk a little, pick a little, talk a little, Cheep cheep cheep, talk a lot, pick a little more.”

Okay. Let’s not use this image for Jesus as Mother Hen. So I consulted “The Happy Chicken Coop” website about brooding hens. “Your hen is squawking whenever you approach her, and she won’t leave her nesting box. What’s wrong, is she ill? Far from it. Chances are she is just broody and wants chicks. She will sit on top of her eggs (and others which she’s stolen) all day long in an attempt to hatch them.”

Maybe Jesus wants to hatch new life from us. A good Easter image. 

But I also love the word “broody” instead of just “moody” (is there an emoji for that?). Clearly, Jesus is brooding. The verb “brood” means to ponder moodily, to lament, to sulk. 

The villain—the fox Herod—is out to get Jesus as he did John the Baptist. Nothing will stop him. Power will do that to you.As we know all too well these days. Perhaps Jesus is brooding over his fate. Brooding over Jerusalem for its stubbornness. Maybe even brooding over the war and evil that are part of the human story from generation to generation.

Remember the creation story. The Spirit of God “broods” over the face of the deep. Broods, moves, hovers over the waters as a mother hen over her young. 

Maybe a mother hen is not the image we would choose for Jesus. Though I’m waiting for a Mother Hen Lutheran Church. For it represents a vulnerable God. It’s not just any mother hen, as one writer notes. But a vulnerable mother bird whose wings are open wide. Ready to receive. Ready to welcome. Ready to shelter. It is the image of a worried mother, a grieving mother with a broken heart. A mother who would put herself in harm’s way to protect her young.

This vulnerable, open-hearted, open hand posture is what we use for the Lord’s Prayer. 

One writer talks about brooding as a spiritual practice. We need to name our laments. We need to sit with our grief and loneliness. Perhaps we need to name our vulnerabilities to each other more than we do. It’s easy to look around and think that everyone is doing okay but me. But in reality, if we knew the physical, mental, and emotional burdens all of us are carrying, it might draw us closer together in the brood, so to speak. And we would be able to look with compassion on one another, as our Mother Hen God looks upon us.

But like lot of things in life, brooding—or lamenting—isn’t an end in itself. Persistent brooding can lead to sickness in a hen. She has to eventually get off her nest to eat and exercise. Too much brooding and she’ll get sick and die.
Too much brooding for us can also be a kind of sickness and paralysis. Eventually we need to leave our nest. To be about the tasks of life. To work for change in the world. To be agents of peace and justice. To share God’s tender, open-hearted embrace with others. 

God draws you close this this day. Laments and broods over the suffering in the world. Embraces you as her tender child. Spreads her wings over you in time of danger. Enfolds you with forgiveness and a new beginning. Feeds you with life-giving food at this table. And then sends you forth from the nest. With new courage and strength for the Lenten journey ahead.