In Sunday’s Gospel lesson from Luke 13 Jesus tells the pharisees to “Go tell that fox…” in reference to Herod. Herod doesn’t like Jesus and would like him gone, the pharisees also don’t like Jesus and also want him gone. Their interests lie in the same direction. The interesting thing is the Pharisees and Herd also do not like each other. They are unified only in their mutual hatred towards Christ. The pharisees bring word to Jesus of a kind of pretended concern “be careful Jesus, Herod wants to kill you… you should probably shut-up and stop doing the things you’re doing and go into hiding…”
Those in power here, both the pharisees and Herod, are afraid of the power of Jesus. And the best policy for those who rule in fear is to exercise dominion and control over others by spreading fear. Spread the worry and bring the upstarts to heel in being anxious about tomorrow’s troubles.
“Go tell that fox” I think is a double attack: Jesus is calling Herod a fox and if the pharisees are serving as his messengers then it means they’re foxes too —they run with the Fox and have themselves become vulpine. “Scurry back to your den of foxes and tell the big fox he can come and kill me in Jerusalem when I get there… let’s say Friday of Passover, 3 pm? On a hill outside the city? Bring lanterns, I hear its gonna get real dark real quick.”
But “fox” carries a special place in the insult category on the Bible. It does not mean simply “sly” or “a scavenger” though those things are rightly associated. Foxes throughout Scripture are a nuissance which devours the things that are supposed to bring life.
In Judges 15:4 Samson ties torches to the tails of foxes and lets them loose in the grain fields of the Philistines (enemies and oppressors of Israel). The nuisances are sent to ravage the places that were meant to bring life.
In Songs 2:15 the Bride asks the Groom to catch the “foxes that threaten to ruin the vineyard “of their tryst; the things that will ruin their loving union.
In Ezekiel 13 the false prophets are likened to foxes. Just as foxes comb through the edges of farms looking for a free chicken or egg, so also the false prophets peddle their tricks to the weak and gullible in order to score a full belly.
But most poignantly, and I think (for reasons I won’t go into here) the image that Jesus has in the fore of his mind when he calls Herod (and by association the Pharisees) a fox comes from Lamentations 5. Fallen Jerusalem is mourned in its destruction, Zion has fallen, its people taken into exile, and the rubble of what used to be it’s city now becomes the haunt of foxes. That’s the picture of Israel in Jesus’ day. A land run by foxes who remain to pick-up the scraps left behind by gentile overlords. That’s what Jesus is saying Herod and the Pharisees do: they feed on the sloppy seconds of Roman and Greek overlords.
There’s personal import for us as we walk through Lent: where are our foxes? The things in our lives that ruin what is supposed to life-giving and fruitful? Where do we need Christ to be our glorious Bride-groom and catch the foxes for us which, if not caught, will turn our vineyard of love and hope, and faith into a desolate track, a wasteland? This lent, go and be like Samson, go and be like Jesus, go and tell the foxes in your life that Christ has called you catch the foxes and do not let them nibble-away at the deep places in your life where God wants to see you fruitful. Go and tell that fox, whatever it may be, in you that the Father has called you to labor in His Vineyard, that You have a course to run to win the prize, and that you are called to be fruitful.