REASSURANCE REJECTED

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.” —Matthew 23:37

We would struggle to find an image more comforting than that of a mother hen nestling her chicks under her. It is a picture filled with warmth, care, and commitment. It is a less common image of our relationship with God, but one that Jesus employed in lamenting the resistance of the people of Jerusalem to the ways and care of God.

Jesus portrayed the relationship between God and His people as characterized by God’s care for them in contrast with the people’s stubborn rejection of that care.

This lament is similar to the scene described in the Gospel of Luke, where Jesus paused in the midst of His triumphal entry into the city (see Luke 19:41–44).

The story is memorialized today in a small church about halfway down the western slope of the Mount of Olives. The church—named Dominus Flevit, meaning “the Lord wept”—was built in the 1950s in the shape of a teardrop. When one is seated inside the church, the arched window at the front of the church is frosted glass except for a wide “letterbox” panel that offers a panoramic view over the Old City of Jerusalem, with its high stone walls, steeples, spires, and domes. That church is a poignant place to reflect on those moments of care, rejection, lament, and judgment in the ministry of Jesus, and His demonstration of God’s continuing love and care for the city and its people both by His presence and in His words of lament.

But Jesus was also warning the people that their continuing rejection of God’s care and His messengers would leave them exposed to oppressors and conquerors. Jesus’ warnings were delivered with tears, with a mothering heart that was breaking for the children of that city.