Fr Paul Gooley reads from the Gospel of Luke (13: 31-35), in which Jesus says, “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, and you were not willing”.

This gospel is full on about the destiny of Jesus.

Firstly, there is the reminder of John the Baptist’s death at the hands of Herod Antipas, and Jesus’ hostile comment on the killer of his herald and cousin – that fox. The Greek word for fox also is the word for jackal – and foxes do not occur in Israel but jackals do. A jackal is a notorious scavenger, wild and uncouth, with none of the attractions of a fox.

More important is the sense that Jesus controls and faces his destiny. The time is approaching for him to accomplish the purpose of his Father; he faces it, but in his own time, and when he is ready.

More agonising is Jesus’s lament over Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is the pivot of Luke’s two books; they begin in Jerusalem in the very centre, the Temple. The Infancy Story ends in Jerusalem also, as does the Gospel. The resurrection appearances are in Jerusalem, and from Jerusalem the gospel spreads.

In Jerusalem begins the last act of the Book of Acts, when Paul is arrested there.

And yet three times Jesus laments the fate of Jerusalem and her unwillingness to respond: here, as he enters the city and as the women of Jerusalem weep for him (9.41-44). He must have had a real affection for the city as the dwelling-place of his Father on earth. – and such affection is touchingly expressed in the image of the mothering hen and her chicks.