"Comfort, O Comfort My People"

This past week I’ve been down south golfing with seminary classmates and seeing my dad and my two best friends from high school. While having breakfast with my dad this morning, he shared that one of my mom’s best friends died last month (my mom died on Feb. 6 years ago). I remember this family from when I was a small child. It got me thinking. While I was thoroughly enjoying my country ham and grits, cable news was on, and a mostly older, but racially diverse crowd was enjoying their eggs and rye toast. Road construction and traffic was in the background—as always in suburban Charlotte. It was your typical southern “greasy spoon” breakfast joint. And for a moment all those other distractions—the news, jobs, the economy, traffic, change—weren’t important. Vivian, probably with a cigarette in hand, is enjoying the heavenly wedding banquet with my mom.

The Good News in this Sunday’s Gospel is a beautiful, comforting image. Jesus compares himself to a “mother hen gathering her chicks under her wings” (Luke 13:31-35). SO MUCH distracts us from what truly endures, that is already there to be enjoyed. I don’t know how to describe it other than to say, it’s our relationship with God that endures eternally—relationship, with Christ, and others. That’s the heart of the Mother Hen image in my opinion. Meanwhile, the “distractions” also serve to divide us. That’s why Jesus wants to “gather us in” in the first place. At breakfast, I thought about how all the people in that restaurant were probably just as “distracted” as I have been by the cares of the world. And for a moment none of those things mattered in the grand scheme of things. The Mother Hen’s relationship with me hasn’t changed, because it’s eternal. I have changed, but it hasn’t. The world has changed, but it hasn’t. And for a moment, I felt relief from all that other noise, and what I felt was comfort.  

Peace,

Pr. Christian