Br. Jamie Nelson

Luke 13:31-35

Foxes and hens are prone to have very different agendas when they cross paths. While the fox’s agenda prioritizes capturing and eating a delicious chicken dinner, the hen’s agenda is quite the opposite: for her and her chicks to avoid becoming that dinner.

In today’s gospel passage from Luke, Jesus references a fox and hen who, true to form, have very different agendas. When we enter the scene, Jesus and his followers have been traveling throughout the towns and villages of Galilee, healing wounded bodies and spirits and proclaiming the good news of God’s kingdom.

Then some religious leaders arrive to warn Jesus that Herod wants to kill him. Jesus responds in no uncertain terms. He calls Herod a fox, an animal with a reputation for devious and violent behavior. Herod has earned that reputation: he no doubt sees Jesus as a threat to the stability of his precarious political power under Roman rule and plans to ruthlessly eliminate Jesus just as he has already done by killing a similar threat, John the Baptist.[1]

Yet Jesus is unbowed by the news that Herod is scheming on his life. Jesus indicates here a sense that it’s not yet his time, that his journey will ultimately take him to Jerusalem, to suffering and death. As he says, “it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem” (Luke 13:33b).

Then Jesus compares himself to a mother hen who desires to protect her chicks by offering them shelter under her wings. Imagine that – all of us here, cozy and safe, tucked up together under Jesus’s outstretched feathers.

Here Jesus is using an image of divine protection that would have been familiar to his Jewish audience, for the Hebrew scriptures are rich with the image of sheltering under God’s wings for protection. Each night at Compline, we chant the words of Psalm 91:

“He shall cover you with his pinions,
and you shall find refuge under his wings;
his faithfulness shall be a shield and buckler.” (v. 4)

The hen represents a mother figure who embodies protection through her love and self-sacrifice, rather than using violence or abusing authority. We don’t have to expand our imaginations too far for the image of Jesus as a mother hen to shift into Jesus on the cross, arms outstretched in self-sacrificial love.

While we live in a different time, Herod’s style of politics still shows up today. We see its echoes when leaders seek to protect their status rather than serving the common good, to sow division rather than connection through our shared humanity.

Jesus desires to gather us together and offer us shelter and refuge, but accepting the offer is not always easy. It requires openness, hope, and trust that there is a different way, that the ways of Herod and his imitators are not the only options in our lives. Jesus offers us glimpses of the ways of the Kingdom of Heaven, and we will spend our lifetimes learning what that means.

The fox and hen in this story demonstrate different agendas, divergent ways of being. Herod, a corrupt and violent man whose political authority depended on Rome’s favor, chooses the way of domination and fear. Jesus rejects that way of being and chooses instead to follow the path of love that leads towards resurrection and new life. Let us follow him there, proclaiming, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Luke 13:35b).

[1] Luke 9:9