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May 19 , 2004 - Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels April 3, 2004 We are called to protect the powerless from the greedy Scott Dalgarno "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem � How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!" With what Christians call Holy Week beginning tomorrow let us consider the image above that Jesus gave us for himself as he faced his coming death; that of a chicken. Yes, that's right, a chicken - a mother hen whose only concern is for the safety of her children. Who hasn't heard the fairly common story about the day that the hen house burned down. The farm family sorts through the wreckage, and they come upon one hen lying dead near what had been the door of the hen house. Her top feathers are singed by the fire's heat, her neck limp. Someone bends down to pick up the dead hen, but as he does so, he feels movement. The hen's four chicks come scurrying out from beneath her burnt body. Wow! The chicks survive because they have been insulated by the shelter of the hen's wings. They have been saved even as she died to protect them. That's the Biblical image of Jesus' sacrificial love. Jesus' name for his adversary, Herod, is interesting too. He calls Herod "that fox." Foxes versus chickens. Hmm? While the mother hen image is moving and comforting, when it comes to dealing with the foxes of our world wouldn't it be nice to have a little better defense than a mother hen? But the Bible tells us that Jesus refused to fight fire with fire. When Herod and his bullies came after Jesus and his brood, he did not produce any weapons to stop them. He just put himself between them and the chicks, all fluffed up and hunkered down. "Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end." Now we might want to just leave it at that, a very comforting image of God gathering us under her wings, loving us whatever the price. But Christians cannot simply leave it at that. That is because the Biblical call to follow Christ is not only a call to be comforted and cared for. Christians are called to be as Christ. Like Jesus, we who are Christians are called to give of ourselves for those who are vulnerable, those who are hurting, those who are lost. Like Jesus, we too are called to put our bodies between the greedy and the powerless of this world. Jesus knew that the disciples would eventually have to die the same way he did. Jesus told them as much. Mel Gibson's movie is, therefore, just the beginning of the story. The cross, the Bible makes abundantly clear, was not unique to Jesus. Crucifixion is precisely what the world does to people who, like Jesus, want to follow him by standing up for the weak. "Greater love hath no one than that he lay his life down for another." My vote for the modern person most like Jesus in this regard is a Swedish Lutheran named Raoul Wallenberg. Wallenberg was raised with every advantage. He was a young man when World War II began. Sweden stayed neutral in that war. Therefore, Wallenberg was able to travel freely in Europe. He left his wholesale business to help refugees who had fled to Sweden. Soon he was asked to go to Hungary to help get as many Jews as possible out of that country before the Nazis took it over. Adolf Eichmann (the fox in this story) made it his first priority to put every Jew in Europe to death. He managed to send half a million to Auschwitz from the rural areas of Hungary, but some 230,000 remained trapped in Budapest. Wallenberg set up safe houses in that city putting them under the direct protection of Sweden. He had no real power; no more than a mother hen. What he did was to make as good a show as he could and fluff up his feathers. The Swedish passports he designed for Jews were the most impressive passports in all of Europe, decorated with seals, stamps, and an embossed reproduction of the Royal Swedish crown. He set up children's shelters, clinics, nurseries, and soup kitchens by the dozen. In the last days of the war with allied bombs falling on the city Eichmann continued to work hard to kill as many of the remaining Jews as he could. When the rail line to Auschwitz was severed he personally oversaw the forced march of Hungarian Jews out of the country. Now Wallenberg went into overdrive riding tirelessly up and down that road, distributing food and medicine and clothing to the masses. Once when one of his Budapest safe houses was stormed by night he was right there at the door screaming, "This is Swedish protected territory! If you want to take them you will have to shoot me first." All the time he stood alone, relying only upon his personal authority, with nothing to back him up but his own bluster and strength of character. In the last days of the war, with the security of Hungary's remaining Jews assured he disappeared, probably into a Russian Gulag; one of the final victims of a war that claimed 50 million lives. His legacy: 144,000 Hungarian Jews survived. "Greater love hath no one than that he lay down his life for his friends." Scott Dalgarno is pastor of Ashland's First Presbyterian Church DailyTidings.com Home Page Valley&State | Backpage | O&E | Sports | Archives | Weather | Classifieds Columnists | Faith&Beliefs | Obituaries | Revels | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2004 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams