How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.
– Luke 13:34
Dear People of St. David’s,
During this first week of Lent, I encouraged our middle and high school students here at St. David’s to look for the ways that we unexpectedly see God’s love and provision within the midst of wilderness. I think many of us often view Lent as a morose and sullen time: give something up, think about your sins, repent, fear God’s judgment, etc. Lent is of course a time for healthy self-examination. At its core though, Lent is a time in which we remember that self-examination is always enfolded and grounded in God’s abounding mercy. The collect this Sunday reminds us that it is God’s glory “always to have mercy.” One way we might more deeply see God’s mercy this Lent is to reflect on the maternal imagery and metaphors used for God within our scriptures and see the ways that God loves us like a mother.
The reading from Luke 13 this Sunday reminds us of God’s mercy and love through Jesus’ use of maternal metaphor. Talking to the Pharisees, who are warning Jesus that Herod wants him killed, Jesus laments over Jerusalem exclaiming, “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.” This is one of my favorite metaphors in scripture. In the first century the hen was one of the essential metaphors for motherhood. Even today, anyone who has raised chickens and owns hens know that hens don’t play when it comes to protecting their chicks! Hens are known for being highly protective, shielding their chicks from possible threats with their wings. They are also known for clucking to lovingly instruct and guide their chicks. What an amazing maternal metaphor for Jesus! Like a mother hen, Jesus seeks to shield and guide us with his goodness, mercy, and grace.
We are of course used to fatherly and male metaphors for God used throughout scripture. These metaphors of God as a loving father are beautiful as well (I think especially of the Father in the parable of the prodigal son). It is important for us to remember that the Christian tradition affirms that “God is Spirit” (John 4:24) and, by definition, God is beyond any sort of human anthropocentric gender binary. God is not literally a father or mother, he or she, these are metaphors necessitated by human language that our scriptures make use of to help us conceptualize in human ways God’s love and mercy! How might it shape our vision of God to see God as our loving Mother this Lent (see also Hosea 11:3-4; Hosea 13:8; Deuteronomy 32:18; Isaiah 66:13; Isaiah 49:15)? Perhaps for anyone who has had a hard relationship with an earthly father, it helps us see and feel a newfound tenderness to God’s love and mercy that has been hard to find in fatherly metaphors. As you move through wilderness this Lent, I encourage you to join me in seeing God as a loving mother who seeks to show us unending mercy as she gathers us under her wings.
Elliot VanHoy
Pastoral Associate
Editor’s Note: The image above is credited below. For some additional modern icons of Jesus as a Mother Hen, please see this one by Lauren Wright Pittman or this one by Kelly Latimore.
Photo credit: George Martell/TheGoodCatholicLife.com of a mosaic found in Jerusalem. Blue filter added. The image comes with the following explanation: “The mosaic depicts the Lord as a mother hen and the inscription reads in Latin “Jerusalem Jerusalem Quoties Volui Congregare Filios Tuos, Quemadmodum Gallina Congregat Pullos Suos Sub Alas, Et Noluisti” or in English, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, How Often Would I Have Gathered Together Thy Children, As The Hen Doth Gather Her Chickens Under Her Wings, And Thou Wouldest Not?” The Chapel of Domus Flevit (or “The Lord wept”) marks the site where Jesus wept before raising Lazarus from the dead.” This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/)
Published on March 13, 2025