The Chicken Christ
The Gospel that morning was Luke 13:31-35.
We love an underdog, don’t we? Whilst we are all – rightly and obviously – appalled and horrified by the ongoing war in Ukraine, I think we all have to admit that one of the major reasons this invasion by Putin has caught our attention in the way his previous war crimes have not, is down to the canniness of Ukraine’s president Zelensky.
Zelensky’s cabinet have outright stated that social media is part of their war-effort, and it is clear that the Ukrainian people are winning the war of hearts and minds of the world in the virtual realm, even if they are suffering immense losses on the very physical ground. The Ukrainian people, and to a major extent, their president too, have been portrayed exactly as that underdog we all love; they are a besieged nation, and Zelensky is a clever, witty, scrappy young pup, bravely holding out and leading his people from the front line in the face of Putin’s snarling, cruel, deskbound Siberian fox.
I know you will join me in praying for this awful situation on our European doorstep; praying for a swift – and peaceful – end to this evil war and for mercy and justice to prevail. We desperately want this underdog story to end in de-escalation and for the Russian army to return to Moscow with its bushy tail between its legs.
If you’ve ever wondered about a Christian response to the kind of aggression being shown by Putin today, this morning’s Gospel offers us some insights – but, be warned – it is not an easy listen.
It starts – unnervingly enough – in a very similar situation to that being played out in Ukraine. We have a ruler – in this case, Herod – feeling so threatened by an upstart and the way he appeals to the people, that he sets out to kill him. His soldiers are amassing; the people have seen them encroaching the borders, and they come to warn Christ so he can flee, or prepare to defend himself.
We have the perfect set up for our underdog story. Christ even refers to Herod as a fox in the face of his own scrappy young pup.
Except – Christ isn’t a young pup. He’s not even a dog in this fight. Instead, in the only animal image Christ uses to describe himself in the Gospels, he is a chicken.
He’s not an underdog. He’s not – in great Biblical tradition – the mighty Lion of Judah, and nor is he the powerful Eagle, on whose wings his people will soar. He’s a chicken; a mother hen, and his audience must surely have seen he was referring to his powerlessness in the face of a snarling, angry fox.
Christ is a weak, feeble chicken, longing to protect her brood, but knowing full-well, as any chicken facing a fox must, that she will lose, and be killed, and the chicks will scatter.
This is not an underdog story; there are no weasel-words to get him out of the situation, no scorpion-dance to confuse and beguile his attacker, and no zebra-herd in which to run and hide and let the weaker, smaller animal get picked off. No. This is instead a slaughter, a sacrifice, with only the hen’s meagre body, to offer up in exchange for the lives of her chicks.
We must surely, in the face of such an image, stop and rethink. When was the last time you saw God depicted as a chicken? We hate this image of a weak, feeble God. It is blasphemous.
It is offensive that our God is so weak that he does not, will not, cannot fight back. It is outrageous that he does not become the lion and attack. It is incomprehensible that he goes willingly to his death for his flock, knowing even yet that his death will cause his flock to scatter and fall away.
It is an offensive image of God. And yet… this image is the one that Christ chooses to claim as his own as he sets off on his journey to Jerusalem, where he knows he will be crucified.
That road on which he journeys, to the axe and chopping-block of Jerusalem is, understandably, the road less travelled. It is a narrow path, overgrown with weeds. It is anathema to the world. Small wonder, then, that the fox’s power seems more appealing, more able to protect, more safe than this Chicken-Christ. Even though the fox clearly only has his own interests at heart, if we kow-tow to the world, and keep our heads down, we might, for now, stay safe, out-of-sight.
The fox is powerful and cunning. The hen – our God – is vulnerable. Our God shows us a different road, a different way. Christ does not deal with worldly power on the world’s terms. The hen does not fight, does not flee, does not open her mouth. Christ is radically, actively passive. He chooses to lose.
We know where that choice leads for him.
With God, it has always been this way.
In creating the world, God surrendered his power to give power and freedom to his creation, to give power and freedom to us.
In inhabiting the world, God surrendered his power to live with us, among us.
In saving the world, God surrendered his power to die as one of us.
And now, this Lent, once again that hen is on her journey to save us, to die for us.
Christ invites us all, whoever we are, to journey there with him, through this season of Lent. To accompany Christ on the journey towards death. To challenge the story of the world, of the lust for power, and to instead choose vulnerability and powerlessness. It is not an easy path; it was never that way, but this is Christ’s call to us – to choose to lose, and in doing so, change the world. To choose not to be the fox, or even the underdog. To choose to be the hen.
Amen
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