who do you say i am?

In a passage about the church, Frederick Buechner writes about 12 step groups and says that they are far closer to what Jesus would have intended for the christian community to “be like”.  He says:  “The church often bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the dysfunctional family.  There is the authoritarian presence of the minster – the professional who knows all of the answers and calls most of the shots – whom few ever challenge either because they don’t dare to or because they feel it would do no good if they did.  There is the outward camaraderie and inward loneliness of the congregation.  There are the unspoken rules and hidden agendas, the doubts and disagreements that for propriety’s sake are kept more or less under cover.  There are people with all sorts of enthusiasms and creativities which are not often enough made use of or even recognized because the tendency is not to rock the boat but to keep on doing things the way they have been done.”

(from Telling Secrets by Frederick Buechner)

In the story of Jesus we may see a different model.  This week in our passage he uses the image of a hen to point our way toward God.  What if he had used a wolf?  A bear?  A lioness?  How does the image shape your understanding of who Jesus says he is?