The Fox and the Hen

Luke 13:31-35

Lent 2

Luke 13:31-35

³¹ At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” ³² He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. ³³ Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’

³⁴ Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! ³⁵ See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

The Sermon

Come and sit with me and lament with me for a while, not the way people lament things now, where someone issues a whine, or a complaint, or a difficulty, and then whoever is within earshot treats it like a puzzle to be solved and resolved, at which point the whine is silenced, the complaint has been heard and rectified, the difficulty has been easily swept away.

That’s fine if that’s what it is. But sometimes a lament is just a lament, and it’s not meant for you to try to solve a problem. (Spouses for whom this is a new insight, please jot it down.)

A long time ago I read a small item where a woman was remembering the young son she had lost, who had died some time earlier. She had just bought her groceries, and wheeled them out to the car, and between opening up the trunk and putting the groceries in, she became lost in thought, just stood there, motionless, her private pain written all over her face.

And some well-meaning stranger, maybe someone who had just read some inspirational pamphlet, came by and saw the look on the woman’s face and said, “Smile—it can’t be that bad!”

A friend of mine was doing some hospital chaplaincy and was sitting with an elderly woman who had just lost her husband; the family pastor arrived and, by way of comforting the widow, kept saying, “Don’t be sad, Mary; don’t be sad…”

That’s your advice for a grieving widow—don’t be sad? My chaplain friend thought of some advice for the preacher, which fortunately did not make it out of her throat.

So let us sit and lament for a while, because when Jesus laments, surely no one on earth has the gall to offer some lame, trite solution and then wash their hands of it. When Jesus laments, we sit down on the floor with him and don’t say a word.

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

The scholarly consensus is that of the four gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—the last written was John; he was speaking to a church that had already existed possibly for almost a century by the time he wrote.

At least a couple of decades before that, two writers working entirely independent of one another, Matthew and Luke, wrote their gospels. They had at their disposal two main sources: the first of the four gospels to be written, Mark; and another one which has vanished from history. Scholars call this hypothetical gospel—known to Matthew and Luke—“Q”.

Mark made no mention of this quotation of Jesus, but both Matthew and Luke found it meaningful and powerful enough in Q’s gospel that they passed it on practically word for word:

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets...

It was just a few chapters earlier in Luke’s gospel that Jesus had finished all of the introductory things that revealed who he was, and how he was the embodiment of God’s tangible love for humankind, and “when the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem” (9:51).

It may be that neither the Pharisees nor the disciples understood the significance of that, but Jesus knew that his role as teacher, healer, shepherd, and savior would culminate on a cross in the capital city.

And Luke put these words right in front of the Jerusalem lament:

Some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’

And he said the word three times, like the rooster crowing three times, like the tolling of a bell, like the passing of three days:

“It is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing…”

Let’s be clear about one thing, says Luke: any fox with a set of claws can kill a mother hen any time. But Jesus is marching to the cross on our behalf. And mortal threats will not distract him from that mission.

There’s nothing special about Herod’s intention to kill Jesus. His desire to do it, and his ability to do it, are nothing special. A prophet can be killed by much more effective means than Herod and his thugs.

A prophet, a mother hen, can be killed by the apathy of those who couldn’t care less about what God wants to do for them;

or by the determination of those in power who would have something to lose if all God’s people really would start to love one another just as he loved us.

A prophet can be killed by being abandoned to his fate by his most loyal disciple; or by the fulfillment of God’s promises in Old Testament prophecy; or simply by the culmination of his earthly ministry; by the will of the God who created all the universe in love, and who loved the world so much that God gave God’s only son.

So you tell that fox for me, there are a lot more important reasons that this prophet will die than some run-of-the-mill farm pest coming after a mother hen.

And nothing will stop his progress toward Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem.

Nothing will keep the mother hen from the unstoppable walk to Jerusalem—not the threats of the fox; not the apathy of the brood of her young. He will continue on to the cross, whether you and I show any dedication to him or not. He is going to die for you and me and everyone else.

No matter what happens on the way to Jerusalem, or what we do about it, or what we believe about it, or how we feel about it, it is his intention, and God’s will, to save us all.