In the Winter of 1938/39 the English artist, Stanley Spencer (1892-1959) set out to paint forty pictures of Jesus in the wilderness. He knew well the scriptures that tell us Jesus went there for forty days and nights and that at the end he was tempted. But the gospels are silent about what Jesus did the other days. Spencer fills that out for us in his creative, spiritual imagination. Of the forty paintings he intended, only eight were completed. Here is Jesus with the hen and her chicks.
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! You murder the prophets and stone those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would never have it! Matthew 23:37.
The image is vivid. Jesus is on the ground with the hen. Young roosters are in the background. His body forms a kind of protective wall around the vulnerable bird and her chicks. He sits with his head in his hand looking down tenderly on the scene. The hen has three chicks. One is pecking the ground. One peeks out from under its mother's wing and a third looks out from under Jesus' tunic. Notice the sleeves of Jesus are billowed open — forming a kind of tunnel or point of entry.
But what strikes me most is that there is a fourth bird — a little sparrow or wren flying into the scene. There is a circle of soft light around it. Maybe these other verses come to your mind at once:
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father's knowing it. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not fear, you are more valuable than sparrows. Matthew 10:29-31
But there's more, isn't there? The little sparrow is zooming in and Jesus is not brushing it away. He will welcome it, glad for its presence. There's no in and out with Jesus. No inclusion and exclusion. No shut doors.
Something very crude and exclusive has found a fresh way into our nation. Something very ugly has been unleashed recently. We think of ourselves as the great melting pot. Really? We are indeed a nation of immigrants, but every group that comes here is at first hated and then, after having found their way in (often through great suffering) they become the new haters.
Before Pope John Paul II asked for every parish to enshrine the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, I had a lovely space in my church where I placed a framed copy of the Guadalupe tilma and a fine hand printed copy of her litany. You could light a candle there. A beautifully carved box received petitions. When I visited an elderly parishioner I said, "Have you seen the new image of Our Lady of Guadalupe we've put up in church?" She answered with a dismissive waving of her hand, "O I don't even go back there; she's for the Mexicans." What a pity. You'd think she'd have known better, having supposedly heard the gospel for many years and her own people having long ago been immigrants to this country.
There's not a little of this kind of thinking, much of it having taken nasty, menacing and even deadly turns. Hate crimes are on the increase across the land. Politicians portend violence if things don't go their way. Christian Nationalists thinks white people were the first ones here. They, and others who think as they do, show up at rallies with bibles in hand and loaded guns strapped to their hips.
Anyway, in this painting here Stanley Spencer (who was a field orderly during the most horrific fighting in the First World War) has given us a gift to contemplate for the expansion of our hearts. Contemplation is not nuns and monks flying around the chapel in ecstasy. Contemplation is seeing the sacred quality in the most unexpected places. "Otherism" is not allowed. Jesus-God has made a circle of protective and comfortable welcoming love around all of us — as has the mother hen with her chicks and the inclusion-seeking sparrow coming in for a landing. How can a Christian not understand these things?
