The Chicken
We are visual people. It doesn't take more than 5 seconds to recognize that. Younger generations will spend hours scrolling on their phones, looking at pictures and videos. Some would rather have their news delivered succinctly at 5 o’clock on the local station. I can’t tell you the number of times the only way I have been able to learn something is by seeing it. So what if we did this with scripture?
I am grateful to learn from the incredibly gifted professor at Duke Divinity School, Christine Parton Burkett, through the Episcopal Preaching Foundation. For her, scripture is not just words on a page but an Art Gallery of interpretation. Each piece of art, whether created 500 years ago or last year, highlights a different part of these holy texts. Time and Time again, I have attended her workshop on Peter’s Denial(Matthew 26:69-75, Mark 14:66-72, Luke 22:54-62, and John 18:15-27). This story appears in all four Gospels, making it quite familiar. However, through this art gallery, we get new insights and realize things that were never possible with just the words on the page.
For example, German Artist Sieger Köder depicts Peter’s pivotal moment with this larger-than-life red chicken encompassing the whole painting. Peter is merely offset in the bottom right corner, just small enough to be the size of the chicken’s head. Peter is almost wrapped up in the hen’s basket.
Now, when I hear Peter “Woman, I do not know him;” “Man, I am not;” and “Man, I do not know what you are talking about!” (Luke 22:57-8, 60), I am focused more on Peter and what he is doing to his dear friend. But Sieger Köder obviously sees the chicken as pivotal to this story. And then, because of this image, I get this thought from Luke 13:34, which we heard a couple of weeks ago: “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.”
The Chicken is both the symbol of Peter’s denial and a reminder of God’s love.
Without Sieger Köder’s work, I would not have seen the profound connection of the Chicken. Few words can describe the shift, but it makes me see Peter’s Denial in a new light. The symbol of the pain can be the vehicle to resurrection.