Sacred Texts: 3/16/25 Lection: Luke 13:31-35
31 At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” 32 He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me,[a] ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. 33 Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’ 34 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, and you were not willing! 35 See, your house is left to you.[b] And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when[c] you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’ ”
3/23/25 Annunciation Lection: Luke 1:26-38
26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27 to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”[a] 29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 30 The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” 34 Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”[b] 35 The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born[c] will be holy; he will be called Son of God. 36 And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God.” 38 Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.
Introduction
Good morning! I’m glad to share this Sunday with you all. This is our second Sunday of Lent and our second Sunday Women’s History Month - and it falls just days before our church calendar celebrates the Annunciation, when Mary consents to conceive Jesus.
Today, we reflect on Jesus's longing to gather His people like a mother hen, highlighting God’s protective and liberative love. We also consider Mary’s consent that initiated the Incarnation.
Let’s begin with a prayer, drawing from Psalm 19 and Psalm 91:
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, God, under whose wings we find our refuge.
Women’s History Intro
So, it’s Women’s History month!
I come out of a little patriarchy you might know: it’s called Catholicism. I didn’t see a woman preach until I was in my thirties.
Yet here I am, very much gathered up by and learning from two outstanding women ministers.
Some may be wondering if Women’s History Month is still necessary, and I say, for me, yes,
it still is.
Women’s History Month is still necessary because gender equality is a work in progress.
It is good and necessary to dwell on the contributions of women who have shaped a more inclusive world. Today, we’re going to dwell specifically on the foremothers of Jesus—women who shaped the history of our faith.
Women’s History Month is still necessary because representation matters.
When people see people with the same gender identity as them in male-dominated roles like ministry, they’re more likely to consider that possibility for themselves.
Women’s History Month is still necessary because there are still many inequalities to address, such as wage gaps and underrepresentation in leadership.
In the UCC, while 53.4 percent of active ordained ministers are women, only 43 percent of congregations have called a female senior pastor.
And that’s pretty good progress from where I came from, where there are still zero ordained women.
Other marginalized groups most certainly deserve recognition too, But today, on this second Sunday of Women’s History Month, I am going to celebrate women (and bash the patriarchy a little) from this pulpit!
The Devil of Patriarchy
Last week, Rev. Nicole talked to us about the devils of comfort and convenience.
She spoke of the devil as a “tempter,” or a force that works against us turning toward God.
Today, I am going to talk about the devil of patriarchy.
Now, I have been in ministry long enough to know that words like “devil” and “patriarchy” can be trigger words for some.
So, let’s define patriarchy.
Patriarchy is a word used to describe systems where men have more power and control, and all people are expected to follow strict gender roles.
Now, if you are a man or a boy listening today, I want to be clear that nothing about the word patriarchy means that there is anything bad about you.
You are our beloved guys. Jesus is also our beloved guy.
Patriarchy is just the name for the kind of system we live in. And this system can hurt everyone, including our beloved guys.
One sobering example of how patriarchy hurts guys is that 93.5% of incarcerated humans in this country are men. 93.5%!
So, if you are a man listening to this, when I say the word patriarchy, I’m not talking about you. You are awesome, and you are deeply loved. And patriarchy is a devil we all dance with.
Jesus as a Mother Hen
In our Luke Chapter 13 passage today, Jesus stands in stark contrast to Herod, a patriarch of the Roman Empire.
Herod is named a fox—cunning, self-serving, violent.
Jesus, in contrast, describes himself as a mother hen gathering her chicks under her wings. It is a striking image. We are used to hearing about Jesus as shepherd and Jesus as king, but here, Jesus names himself a mother, seeking to protect her children from the dangers of the world. Note that Jesus doesn’t call Himself a queen eagle or even a lady hawk—but a humble mother hen.
A hen is not a predator.
A hen does not go on the offense to get what she wants.
A hen simply spreads her wings and gathers her children up under a posture of radical, vulnerable love.
The Foremothers Who Paved the Way
Now, unlike some of our popular superheroes, Jesus did not emerge out of nowhere.
Let’s look for a moment at our other sacred text - the text of the conception of Jesus, the text of Mary’s consent to that conception. We celebrate the Annunciation on March 25th - because if you do the math in our Church calendar year, that’s nine months from December 25th. Are you following the, um, development timeline? This is a moment of conception that we’ve heard so often that maybe we don’t sit with the scandal of it enough.
Because here’s the truth: When the angel Gabriel came and asked,
maybe Mary could have said no.
But also maybe she could not have said no.
Womanist theologians like Rev. Dr. Renita Weems have asked a necessary question about this text: Did Mary really have the power to say no?
After all, she was a young, unmarried girl in a patriarchy, where girls were given away in marriage without their say as the norm.
We cannot know if Mary had real and full agency, but we must ask the question.
And yet, Luke’s text does not tell us that Mary was ordered or even coerced.
Luke tells us that she questions. She ponders. She is troubled.
And, finally, when Gabriel tells her that nothing is impossible with God, she responds: “Let it be with me according to your word.”
But here’s the deeper truth:
Whether or not Mary had full agency, the real Good News is not just about Mary’s consent—it is about what this passage tells us about who God is.
God does not operate like the patriarchal Roman Empire in this situation.
Where patriarchy would force, God invites.
Where patriarchy would take agency away, God extends agency.
Where patriarchy would demand submission, God worked through relationship.
The God we meet in the moment of Christ’s conception is one who models partnership, co-laboring and co-creation. And the Mary we meet in this moment—her questions, her pondering, her yes - I celebrate all of that this Women’s History Month.
I celebrate her willingness to bear a Christ that patriarchy could never contain.
The Foremothers Who Paved the Way
And, Mary did not emerge out of nowhere either.
She is part of a lineage, a line of women, whose own stories of risk and resilience led to the birth of God into our world.
I love the radical genealogy of Jesus given to us in the first chapter of the gospel of Matthew: women’s names appear in a lineage where women were usually left out.
And not just any women. Women whose very stories push against the norms of patriarchy:
Tamar. Rahab. Ruth. Bathsheba.
Women whose lives were shaped by systems that sought to control them - yet, God worked through their constricted choices, their limited agency, their impossible yeses.
Tamar was a widow cast aside, left without protection or power. She risked everything to reclaim her future and secure her rightful place in the lineage of God’s people.
Rahab was a foreign woman, maybe an innkeeper labeled and dismissed by history as a prostitute, yet she saw what others could not. With boldness and faith, she defied expectations and sheltered God’s people.
Ruth was an outsider, a Moabite widow bound by loss. Instead of seeking security for herself, she chose radical loyalty and love, forging a future that placed her at the heart of Israel’s story.
Bathsheba was taken by a king’s force, her story twisted into one of seduction instead of survival. Yet she endured, grieved, and used her voice to secure the future of her son, Solomon, ensuring a legacy of wisdom and justice.
When the world tried to write these women out of the story, God wrote them back in.
They are the foremothers of Christ.Their presence in Christ’s genealogy reminds us that:
God has never been in the business of upholding patriarchal power. God has always been at work through women who resist, who reclaim their stories, who birth new possibilities into the world. And Jesus—our mother hen—stands, brooding, in their lineage in today’s passage, embodying the very same protective, life-giving love that led to his birth.
Patriarchy is Not Biblical—It is a Human Distortion
So let us proclaim and praise this truth today:
Patriarchy is not from God.
The idea that women are lesser, that they should be silent, that they exist to serve men—these are not divine commands. Because if God had wanted to build a kingdom on male power, God could have sent Gabriel directly to the emperor. If God had wanted a world where men alone spoke for God, Jesus would have chosen only male disciples.
Instead, our Gospel tells us a different story:
It was Mary who bore God into the world.
And it was Mary Magdalene, who was the first to proclaim the resurrection.
And yet, generation after generation, the wider Church has tried to minimize the voices and roles of women. Sure, God may have become flesh in male form, but the very structure of our faith was built on women’s consent, women’s bodies, women’s labor and women’s words. Patriarchy is not from God.
Flocking to our Mother Hen
Jesus longs to gather us all under His wings, but just like the people of God in our passage today, sometimes we are scattered, factioned and divided.
Mary, too, was invited to be gathered into God’s reconciling work. And before she said yes, she questioned. She pondered. She took time to think, to wonder, to weigh the costs.
And that’s a good model for us.
I know something about weighing the cost of consenting to be gathered—sometimes uncomfortably—under Christ’s wings. I grew up comfortably Catholic. Most of my family still is. It’s a beautiful faith—and a patriarchy. Both/and.
When I was six, my older brother was invited to be an altar boy.
Excited, I asked when it would be my turn. The priest smiled and said, Have the humility to serve where God calls you, my child. But what was I to do when God was calling this girl child into ministry? Like Mary, I was perplexed. How can this be, God? I am just a good little Catholic girl. Like Mary, I pondered. I considered being a nun—the only place I saw women in religious leadership.
I weighed my deep desire to be a mother, which also felt like a calling. And, because I was 18, I assumed maybe God had dialed the wrong number—because I did not yet know how persistent God can be.
For the next decade, I wrestled. I weighed the cost of stepping away from a church that had firm answers for every question. The cost within my family. My marriage. My community.And yet, with each step away, I threw myself into lay ministry, convincing myself this must be what God meant. I tried to have the humility to serve where God called me.
Because the roots of patriarchy run deep.
And then, one Sunday at our Episcopal Church, a lady priest got up, preached, and presided over Holy Communion—like it was the most normal thing in the world.
For me, it was like the sun breaking through after a long, cloudy time. Seeing her doing what she was called to do, shifted what I believed was possible. And now—here I am, sixty-four credits of seminary and counting. Graduation and ordination on the horizon, God willing.
And if you ask me my favorite part of seminary, my answer remains the same: learning to read our holy scripture from the margins.
From the perspective of those the world forgets, but whom God remembers.
The women whose names were left out, the outcasts who became prophets, the foreigners who carried the faith forward.
Reading from the margins means noticing Hagar in the wilderness, the first to name God.
It means hearing the Syrophoenician woman challenge Jesus—and change the course of his ministry. It is in these stories that I have found my true place in ministry.
I have found, as that priest once said, the humility to serve where I was called—not in a seat of dominance, but at the margins, where God has always been moving, speaking, and gathering people in.
So today, the questions scripture gives us today are these: Will we consent to God? Will we let ourselves be gathered?
Will we reject the systems that try to tell us power is domination, when we know true power is love?
Will we reject spaces that say only men can lead here?
Will we unlearn the idea that vulnerability is weakness?
Will we, like Mary, bring our full selves—our questions, our uncertainties, even our decades of discernment—and still say yes?
Because Jesus still longs to gather us into a world where everyone is valued and beloved.
And for us here, maybe our yes is to do the hard work of both labor and delivery, of both resistance and forgiveness when our resistance actually helps people change their hearts.
May our gathering here be a testament to the God who has room to gather us all under Her wings. May our gathering be an act of holy defiance against every devil that seeks to divide us. Or, as Mary said it best, Let it be with us according to God’s word.
Amen.
1) What does Jesus calling himself a mother hen reveal to you about God?2) What does it look like to say “yes” to being gathered—both personally and as a community?We’ll come back together in a few moments.
I invite you to take a deep breath.
We have spoken. We have listened. We have reflected on what it means to be gathered under the wings of Christ.
And now, let’s take a moment simply to rest in that lovingly feathered gathering.
I offer the words of Emily Dickenson: Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.
Let’s hold a few moments of silence together, allowing space for the Spirit to stir, for wisdom to settle, for God to embrace us snugly.
May this silence be a holy pause—a moment of consent, a moment of being gathered in.
Let’s rest in it together.
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