JESUS AS A HEN

Here's why...

As Jesus approached the city of Jerusalem, He wept—not with political fury, but with divine sorrow. Looking out over the capital of Israel, the religious heart of God’s covenant people, He delivered one of the most poignant and misunderstood statements in the Gospels:

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you—how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.” (Matthew 23:37 / Luke 13:34)

This line is more than a lament; it is a parable in miniature—one of Jesus’ most radical and subversive. At first glance, the image of a hen may seem sentimental or tender, but in context, it is a direct challenge to everything Jerusalem represented: political power, religious elitism, and the human appetite for dominance masquerading as divine order.

By comparing Himself to a mother hen, Jesus rejected every image of power that the world esteems. He did not liken Himself to a lion, a military commander, or even a protective rooster. Instead, He adopted the posture of one of the most vulnerable animals in the barnyard—a creature with no hardly any defenses, no fangs, no armor—only wings. In the ancient world, such imagery would have been jarring. A hen was neither majestic nor masculine, and certainly not the symbol of a conquering king. And yet, this is the metaphor Christ chose to describe His longing to protect His people.

The audience He addressed was not foreign, nor pagan, but the religious elite—the scribes, the Pharisees, and the ruling class of Jerusalem who claimed to represent the will of God. These were the same men He had just finished rebuking, pronouncing a series of woes upon them for their hypocrisy, their greed, and their abuse of spiritual authority. His lament over Jerusalem follows directly after His condemnation of those who built monuments to the prophets while embodying the same violence that killed them. The phrase “you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you” was not mere rhetoric—it was a direct indictment of a long legacy of bloodshed committed in the name of holiness.

The contrast Jesus makes is profound. While the leaders of Jerusalem relied on law, coercion, and fear to maintain their grip on the people, He offered something entirely different. He did not command submission with threats or demand loyalty through fear. He extended an invitation—to be gathered, to be sheltered, to be covered by His mercy. Like a hen shielding her chicks from the storm or the predator, Jesus longed to draw His people in and take the brunt of the world’s violence upon Himself. It was an image not of domination, but of sacrificial love.

And yet, they were not willing.

This rejection wasn’t a failure of His mission—it was the fulfillment of what He already knew would happen. The people, longing for a Messiah in the image of Caesar, could not see salvation in the form of a man offering wings instead of weapons. They expected the Kingdom of God to arrive like a Roman legion—strong, intimidating, and unyielding. Instead, it came like a mother bird, defenseless in the world’s eyes but unwavering in devotion to her young.

What followed was a prophetic warning: “Your house is left to you desolate.” This, too, was no metaphor. Within a generation, the prophecy was fulfilled. In 70 A.D., Roman forces leveled Jerusalem. The temple—the heart of Jewish identity and worship—was reduced to rubble. The very structures the Pharisees fought to protect were destroyed, not by the Messiah they rejected, but by the empire they had failed to resist. They refused the shelter of the hen’s wings, and so they faced the sword of Caesar without cover.

This analogy —just a single verse—encapsulates the fundamental conflict between the Kingdom of God and the kingdoms of man. Human power operates through control, fear, and force. It silences prophets, elevates hierarchy, and demands conformity. But God’s Kingdom is altogether different. It approaches in weakness, speaks through love, and saves through surrender. It does not conquer by crushing enemies—it redeems by absorbing their blows.

The hen does not win by out-fighting the fox. She wins by laying herself down and daring the fox to strike her instead of her children. In that act of love, the illusion of power is exposed for what it is: cruelty masquerading as security.

This is Jesus at His most maternal, most prophetic, and most dangerous to the powers that be. His words were not sentimental. They were a declaration of war against the violence of empire, the corruption of religion, and the fear that governs both.

And He is still calling.

Today, the world once again runs toward systems of power, toward the same beast that destroyed Jerusalem, enslaved nations, and dressed tyranny in the robes of law and order. Once again, many are unwilling to be gathered. But His wings are still open.

The question remains: will we come under them—or will we be left desolate?