Oh, Mother, how wide your wings are!

Readings:  Luke 13:31-35 and Acts 9:32-43

In the Gospel reading, Jesus is nearing the city of Jerusalem.  For him it is the city of God where all who are in need can come and receive what they need for life.  But for the religious and political leaders of the city it is their special place to protect from others, and they are willing to kill anyone who threatens their hold on it.  In this reading Jesus utters the famous image of God as a mother hen wanting to gather all her chicks under her wings, and the leaders of the people not letting God’s children in. 

Acts 9 is one of the great pivotal chapters in the Bible – in this case showing the early church in a moment of great transition.  Up to this time the boundaries have been clear.  The Christian community, for its part, is exclusively Jewish followers of Jesus.  And the Jewish leadership, for its part, sees the followers of Jesus as heretics undermining true faith in God and is willing to kill them.

In chapter 9 everything starts to shift.  In the first half of the chapter Saul, leading the Jewish campaign against the Christians, is stopped in his tracks and himself becomes a follower of Jesus.  In the second half of the chapter – todays’ today, Peter, a leader of the Christians, begins spending time on the boundary between Jews and Gentiles, and when he sees God doing the same healing and saving work among Gentiles as among the Jews, he knows he has to rethink the whole boundary thing. 

In this reading, Aeneas is a Greek name.  Tabitha is a Jewish name, but the fact she is also known as Dorcas (a Greek name) suggests she has associated freely with both communities.  And Simon the Tanner?  Among Jews, tanners were ritually unclean, so it says a lot that Peter stayed at his house for a while.

 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!  
How often have I desired to gather your children together
as a hen gathers her brood under her wings,

Listen!

Do you hear it?  The rustling of feathers? 

Do you feel it?  God’s wings settling over us and around us? 

It’s not a bad image.  Not a bad way of understanding what we’re doing here.  What happens here, and why we come here.

We come here in all kinds of states.  Carrying all kinds of things – sometimes, happy gifts and blessings we’re happy to share, and sometimes, heavy baggage we’re not quite sure what to do with.

Sometimes you share it with me when you arrive and before worship starts.  Have I heard that someone is in the hospital, or home from it?  That someone, or someone’s brother or mother has died, and can we pray for them?  That it’s someone else’s 85^th birthday, or 60^th anniversary – which of course we want to announce and celebrate with them.  And so we do.

We come here happy and grateful, tired and bruised, hopeful and empty and discouraged and sometimes just wondering.  And we want to share what we have.  Under the safe and spreading canopy of God’s wings, we share one another’s joy – like the birth a few weeks ago of a daughter to Mark and Jenny.  And we share one another’s sorrow – like the losses suffered over the winter by Ed and Marg, by the Walters family, and so many others we have mentioned in our prayers.

Of course, the struggles we face and the sorrows we carry are not always as easy to share here on a Sunday morning as are the happy things.  But then there’s the other little spaces made for us under God’s wing, like the Quilt Club where hearts are stitched together as much as quilts.  Or the NOW group with its long story of personal pastoral care.  The requests that are shared with the Prayer Chain, that we’re trying to revitalize, by the way.  And what’s shared among close friends and confidantes over coffee and over the phone and in confidence – knowing not only that it won’t be spread around, but also that sharing with  one or two helps ease the burden and make the weight of whatever it is, that much more manageable.

In all these ways we are gathered in and cared for.  Welcomed and not turned away.  Not alone, but part of a living, breathing brood all equal and equally under the outstretched wings of a kind and caring God, a mother-hen God, the kind of mother and grandmother God we all long for.

“Mother, oh Mother, how wide your wings are.  Thank you, God.”

Thinking of our reading this morning, I wonder if Dorcas felt this?  And if this is maybe one of the reasons – maybe THE reason, she joined the church in the city of Joppa where she lived.

In the story about her, there’s no mention of husband or children, no mention of household at all in an age when people were known by their household connections and it was their family that was their security and identity.  The story mentions only “the saints and widows” as her companions in her dying.  So was she unmarried?  Was she herself a widow?  And was the Christian church a welcome home and a much-needed family for her?  A haven?  A place of comfort, care and acceptance?

How many come to church today not because of the programs or the faith or the minister or anything else, but mostly for a home, for connection and for support?  How many around us today are looking for just that?  Looking for a place among others under the warm and welcoming wing of a kind and loving God?

And Dorcas was not just needy.  She also had a lot to offer.  A lot she brought to the table.  A lot to give and to share.  She was handy, a seamstress, was known for all the tunics and cloaks and other clothing she made.  And not only made, but gave away.  “She was devoted to good works and charity” is the way they spoke of her.

Sounds a lot like the Quilt Club with the hundreds of beautiful lap quilts they’ve made and given away to different agencies and people in the city who need them and need the comfort they bring.  “Mother, oh Mother, how wide your wings are, and how far they spread.”

Dorcas too gave what she made to all kinds of people.  How else are we to understand the variety of names she is known by?  To the Jews, she is “Tabitha” – a Jewish name meaning “Gazelle.”  To the Greeks she is known as “Dorcas” – the Greek name also for “Gazelle.”  Like a gazelle she must have been fast and free in all she did and all she gave for others, and she was charitable, generous and known to people of all sorts in the city.

Much like what I see here.  How many different names, how many different identities, how many different good and charitable connections do you and other members of this church have?  You are members of Fifty and are part of what this church does.  But you are also Lions and Masons and members of the Men’s Club.  You give time and energy to agencies like City Kidz and Wesley Urban Minstries.  You reach out on your own to care for children and palliative care patients and families in need.  You go on mission trips to all kinds of places where people are in need of someone to extend God’s wings to them, to cover them as well and let them know they’re not alone.

Mother, oh Mother-hen God, how wide your wings are!  And when it comes to family – the Christian family we are, is there any limit to who might next prove to be our brother and sister, or to whom we might next find some way to prove ourselves brother and sister?  Be surprised to find ourselves as brother and sister to?

And … is it woe to us when we aren’t part of the spreading and the gathering in?  Woe to us, and just see how desolate our house becomes when by what we do or don’t do, or by what we are or aren’t willing to become, we keep others out?  Don’t make room and a space for them?  Put up barriers and make them feel uncomfortable about being here?

Our new mission statement is “to know and to share God’s love for all.”  And I wonder, any time we say it out loud, any time we think about it, any time we put it into practice in some new way, do the feathers of God’s wings maybe ruffle in the breeze just a bit as the wings start to stretch?

As we get ready for the Case for Kids Walk this year, either making donations or making plans to walk against child poverty. 

As the Faith Development Committee wrestles with ways to can reach out and provide helpful spiritual resources for families in our care, whose children can’t always be in Sunday school.  And whether there is anything we can offer now that this year we aren’t able to offer Summer Day Camp. 

And as Council starts to discuss at their meeting tomorrow night just what we are being called to by God in the new presence of homeless persons in our community – one of whom wandered into the church last week while some of our members were getting things set up for the Sale.

I don’t know.  Do you feel God’s wings that are spread and settled over us, starting to spread just a little bit more, making room for more of God’s children to come in, and into God’s care?  To know themselves, like us, to be welcomed and cared for under the wings of a kind and loving God?

Oh Jerusalem, how I have longed to gather your children as a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wing.

And, oh mother, of mother-God, how wide your wings are!  And how wide they will be!

Thanks be to God.

And the people said Amen, as God spread her wings wide, and the breeze of the ruffling feathers lifted the spirits of all her dear brood just enough.