There’s a story coming out of
Ukraine which has several versions. It may be true. It may be a compilation of
several stories. It goes like this:
A
line of young Russian soldiers, fully armed, is walking shoulder to shoulder
down a street in a town in Southern Ukraine.
Walking toward them on the same street is a line of Ukrainian women who are old enough to be the grandmothers of the Russian soldiers. As they move closer together, one woman begins speaking to them in Russian. Her words are harsh. Angry. Filled with profanity and curses.
The two lines square off several feet from each other. The one grandmother steps forward and speaks into their faces. She is speaking Russian. She goes down the line and hands each soldier a small handful of sunflower seeds. The sunflower is the national flower of Ukraine.
One might think that she is doing something beautiful. Perhaps she is encouraging them to think of the possibility of beauty in the midst of the ugly bird of war? Maybe reminding them of the future of Ukraine? Or, perhaps she is reminding them of the hope contained in a seed?
Not so. According to the story, the grandmother tells the young men to put the seeds in the pockets of their military uniforms. She tells them to keep the seeds there so, after they die, something beautiful will grow from the soil where their body is buried, for surely, they will die.
The story is that the young men look at each other, turn around and walk in the opposite direction, back to the other men in their battalion.
I don’t know if the story is
true, but that sure sounds like every grandmother I knew when I was growing up.
In my time grandmothers rarely entertained fools gladly.
They were usually not
wanting for an opinion about things – sometimes two opinions about the same
thing. They were often fearless – and fearsome – especially when their brood was
threatened.
Mess up and they would smack
you upside the head – even if you were just a kid from the neighborhood. And
yet, grandmothers were tender and forgiving, able to weave a bad experience
into a valuable life lesson or some moral instruction. No one could make a
boo-boo feel better than a grandmother – even with the dreaded bottle of
Mercurochrome.
They were the keepers and tellers of stories of places far, far
away – all told without reading a book but spoken from the heart. And, Lord, how
they could cook! There was usually one special thing – a dinner dish or a
dessert – that brought almost world-renown to each grandmother.
My grandmother had a chicken coop with a fenced-in yard in the back of the house. Every morning – rain, sleet, snow or shine – she would feed the chickens. I loved to go with her and she would sometimes let me take over scattering the corn in the chicken yard while she went into the coop with her basket to collect the eggs.
(Can I just say, right here and now, that if you’ve never had a fresh egg – I mean, not grocery-store fresh but a really fresh egg, laid by your chicken that morning, fresh from the nest, into the frying pan and onto your plate – you will never stop singing its praises.)
My grandmother’s chickens had
names. I remember but a few. Honey. Raggedy. Old girl. And one named Lucy.
After “I love Lucy” – Lucille Ball – who always made her laugh with her antics.
When my grandmother appeared with corn in her apron, Lucy would get so excited
she would call out to the others. You could almost hear her saying, “Look
everybody. Corn! Hurry up. Woops! Here it comes! Duck!” And then she would run
into the fence or trip over the water pale or another chicken. My grandmother
thought that was hilarious but she also thought it very endearing.
Lucy was the only one who would come to my grandmother when she called her. And, she let my grandmother pet her. After a while, she let me pet her, too, but only after my grandmother had already pet her and let her sneak some extra kernels of corn from her apron pocket.
When Lucy was a baby chick,
she would not gather under the protective wings of her mother the way the other
chicks did. She was always “Ms. Independence” – another trait to endear her to
my grandmother.
But, when my grandmother let her have her first brood of
chicks, Lucy was fiercely protective, insisting that every last one of her
chicks was under her wing. She demanded complete obedience. One cluck from her
and those chicks knew exactly what was expected of them and what to do.
My grandmother would say, “Chickens are just like people. They need food and water and shelter, yes, but they need something else, too. Do you know what that is?”
I would stick up my hand, just like I did in school. “Love,” I would answer.
“Yes, child,” she would say, all of God’s creatures need love because God is love. Never forget that. God is love. Whenever we are in trouble, we can always find safety under God’s wing. And,” she said, “when God clucks, God expects us to come.”
I think of Lucy and my
grandmother’s chickens every time I read this story from Luke’s gospel.
I suspect Jesus must have grown up around chickens. I’m betting either his
mother, Mary, had a chicken coop in the back yard, or perhaps someone in his
neighborhood did.
From those chickens, Jesus must have learned a little something about God and God’s love. I think he figured something out about the shelter of God’s wings. Watching those chickens, Jesus knew what he wanted to be and do and, what was expected of him when God clucks.
And because of Jesus, one cluck from God, and we all know, too. Just like those Ukrainian soldiers who turned around and walked away.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment