No Fear of the Fox / Luke 13:31-35 / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday March 16th 2025 / Season of Lent / Mount Olive Lutheran Church

Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday March 16th 2025: Season of Lent / Luke 13:31–35 “No Fear of the Fox”

At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to [Jesus], “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill You.” And He said to them, “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish My course. Nevertheless, I must go on My way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.’ O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! Behold, your house is forsaken. And I tell you, you will not see Me until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’”

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in Your sight O Lord. Amen.

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Good Christian Friends is there any reason you wouldn’t listen to a warning: especially one about a danger of fatality, a danger of death? Do you take special care to pay attention to warnings like that? Jesus doesn’t seem to worry about the warning directed to Him in our Gospel reading from Saint Luke today. Why?  

Normally the Pharisees aren’t very helpful but today we hear how the Pharisees came and said to Jesus, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” Sometimes it was the Pharisees who had picked up stones to kill Jesus but not in today’s Gospel Reading. Under pressure King Herod Antipas had put John the Baptiser to death for speaking out against Herod’s sham marriage[1] ... so it wasn’t that Herod wouldn’t call for someone’s death, wouldn’t write the death warrant, it was very much a possibility: why then was Jesus not worried? Did you catch it in Jesus’ response to their warning? Jesus says to them, “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish My course. Nevertheless, I must go on My way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.’” Jesus knew where He was going to die and it wasn’t going to be in Galilee.

King Herod Antipas’ jurisdiction covered Galilee but didn’t extend to the city of Jerusalem and Jesus knew that it was at Jerusalem that He would face death. That was the city where the prophet Jeremiah in our Old Testament reading faced death and where countless other prophets faced death too, this is why Jesus laments, “It cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.’ O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!”

Later during Holy Week, in the week before His death upon the Cross of His crucifixion, upon arriving in Jerusalem Jesus told The Parable of the Tenants which illustrates this:

“Hear another parable,” Jesus says to the crowd, “There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants, and went into another country. When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit. And the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other servants, more than the first. And they did the same to them. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.’ And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.”[2]

The vineyard is Jerusalem. Jeremiah is one of a countless string of servants sent to the vineyard by the master of the house. The master of the house is God the Father. The son the master of the house sends is Jesus the Son of God. Jesus is the son sent to the vineyard that they are to respect but who they instead murder in hopes of having the inheritance for themselves. Jesus knew all of this, this is why on the one hand He would tell the parable of the Wicked Tenants in the Vineyard and it is also on the other hand the reason why He disregards the warning of the Pharisees in today’s Gospel reading.

He had come to “the vineyard” of the parable many times throughout His incarnation and lived, as early as eight days after His birth that first Christmas Jesus had been brought to the heart of Jerusalem to be presented at the Temple, and yet this time He went there to His death. This is what Moses and Elijah were talking with Jesus about on the Mount of Transfiguration. When Jesus’ feet started their way down the mountainside He knew that they wouldn’t be stopped by anyone or anything until they were nailed to the wood of His Good Friday Cross and Herod that skittish “fox” who cast his lot in with the wickedness of the World would not get in Jesus’ way. Jesus would certainly endure suffering and hardship as He worked His way to His death there in that place but He had no fear of that fox Herod. This is why Jesus regards the warnings of the Pharisees in today’s Gospel Reading as well meaning but misguided and ultimately false.

Jesus is fearless, in the face of fear Jesus is faultless, in the face of the fear of death Jesus shows perfect courage. Are you afraid of your death? If not your death are you afraid of the death of someone close to you? Your wife? Your husband? Your children? Your grandchildren? Does death worry you? Do you stay up at night tossing and turning over what it might be like or about what will happen when you’re gone, about how your absence may cause hardships to others, how you’re being gone may bring financial instability or lack of care? As baptised Christians we are called not to fear death but to see death as a defeated enemy, the iron nails of the cross that pinned our Lord to the wood of the cross and hastened His mortal death defanged death of its true bite. Jesus was truly dead upon the cross but death couldn’t keep His innocent blood down, couldn’t keep His innocent body from coming back up from the grave:  And so as a Christian we have the promise of the resurrection of our body wrapped up in the resurrection of His body. Dear ones as Christians we don’t rush headlong into our deaths, we don’t hasten our death; we leave the moment of our death for when it comes, trusting that when it comes we will remain safely in the hands of God.[3]

And so free from the fear of death we are called to be free to live. Free to live not as citizens of the World but as citizens of Heaven from which we now await Jesus’ return in glory.[4] Free to live a life trusting that our Lord Jesus who conquered death “will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body [on The Day of our resurrection from the dead], by the power that enables Him even to subject all things to Himself.”[5] We are called to live like this because as Saint Paul teaches in his letter to the Christians of Philippi, “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”[6] Every knee includes the knee of that fox King Herod, and every tongue includes the tongue of that fox King Herod. It includes your knee and the knees of all those who seek your life for your faith in Jesus, it includes your tongue and the tongue of everyone who would see you dead for your faith in Jesus. You will bow, you will confess with joy, without fear, in reverence and in love while they will face That Day without such faith and in great and dreadful terror.

In truth the Pharisees would have been better off warning King Herod of who it was who was on His way to Jerusalem and not the other way around. Dipping back into the Parable of the Wicked Tenants in the Vineyard how does the parable end? Do you remember? Jesus asks:

“When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They said to [Jesus], “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.”[7]

A judgment is coming; in fact judgment comes every day. In His patience and mercy the Lord does give time for us to repent[8] and so we hear in our Old Testament the prophet Jeremiah on the way to his death say to the people, “Now therefore mend your ways and your deeds, and obey the voice of the LORD your God, and the LORD will relent of the disaster that He has pronounced against you.” God has sent prophets and preachers to say this to any and all who will listen from the beginning right down to this day and until The Last Day. Take head, listen, turn from your sin to the Son of God for He has healing and forgiveness in His hand, there is none who can provide what He freely gives, none but those He sends to you for that purpose.[9] Any attempt to throw Jesus off the cliff, to stone Him, to silence Him, to erase Him, to murder Him will fail; your sinful heart cannot accomplish such a thing. If you want Him to take away all His gifts and protections that He provides, if you want nothing from Him He may give you what you want. If you would rather face your fears alone, would rather face death alone, would rather take your life into your own hands be warned you are in danger, take refuge under His almighty wings and do not seek to cover yourself,[10] remember what Jesus says as He looks out over Jerusalem “How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” Pray that you have a willing heart, that God would create such a willing heart in your chest,[11] and that this heart of faith washed in the innocent blood of Jesus would beat with the love of God towards its creator and towards your brothers and sisters in Christ and all men and women created in the image of God. Pray that your heart will be subject to Jesus above all things and subject to nothing else, especially not to fear or the fear of death.

Dear ones with all of this in mind I leave you to reflect on these words we heard from Saint Paul today, “whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”[12]

Today we receive the Lord in His Word and in His Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion saying ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’ while we look forward to The Day of His glorious return on The Last Day when we will, in our resurrected bodies, bend the knee and confess with great joy, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’ On That Day the fear of death will have passed away with death itself never to touch our hearts or minds or our bodies ever again. Amen.    

Let us pray: Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Amen.

[1] Matthew 14:1-12, King Herod Antipas hand entered into a sham marriage with his brother Philip the Tetrarch’s wife Herodias when Philip was still living.
[2] Matthew 21:33–39
[3] John 10:28–30
[4] Philippians 3:20
[5] Philippians 3:21
[6] Philippians 2:10–11
[7] Matthew 21:40–41
[8] 2 Peter 3:9
[9] John 20:23
[10] Malachi 4:2
[11] Psalm 51:10
[12] Philippians 3:7–11

Photo credit: detail of fox in the road from pexels.