(The 2nd Sunday of Lent)

Images of animals are common in fables and fairy stories. They’re not so common in the New Testament. Sheep and Shepherd’s appear now and then, but in today’s Gospel we have two in the space of a few short verses. Two very contrasting images – Herod the fox and Jesus, the mother hen.

Fox and hen are ancient foes, as many a tale tells us.

They often start like this…. “Once upon a time there was a little Red Hen, who lived on a farm all by herself. An old Fox, crafty and sly, had a den in the rocks, on a hill near her house. …” – You may have told tha kind of story to your own children – certainly many parents have.

Are you familiar with the story? If not, there is a version of it at the end of this article…

Fox and hen – cunning evil fox, gentle little clever hen. That’s the pattern. It must ever have been so! For Luke cleverly juxtaposes the two images. Herod, the fox, the creature who eats chicken for supper. Jesus, the mother hen, who desperately loves her silly chicks and does everything she can to protect them.

First the fox: this Herod is not the same Herod who massacred the innocents. This Herod is his son. This Herod only makes a few short appearances in Luke’s gospel, yet he has a pivotal place in it. Luke’s purpose in writing his Gospel is to answer just one question. And it is Herod the fox who asks the question in Luke Chapter 9 – “Who is this man about whom I hear such things?” And, says Luke, … Herod tried to see Jesus.

Luke the evangelist reminds us of the aim and purpose of evangelism -to invite just that question and to encourage that quest.

And Herod is still wondering who Jesus is when towards the end of the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is brought before him at his trial.

We used to give our ancient Kings interesting and descriptive names Edward the Confessor, Ethelred the Unready. This Herod could be given a similar name. Herod the ambivalent, or Herod the undecided. For although he wanted to know more about Jesus he was never ready to act one way or the other. And in Luke 23, he sends Jesus back to Pilate for a final life or death decision.

Luke compares Herod, the cunning fox who stayed in power by careful political manoeuvring, with Jesus. Herod used Jerusalem as his power base, Jesus wept over Jerusalem. Jesus says that he longs for Jerusalem as a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings in times of trouble.

This is not an image that we focus on so often…. Christ as lamb of God, or as the lion of Judah, resonate with our faith. Jesus the mother hen seems faintly ridiculous – why is that?

We know that God is neither masculine nor feminine – but God cannot be called “it” for the Bible reminds us time and again that God has a personality. Most often male imagery is used to speak about God, but by no means every time. … In our short Gospel reading, God is compared to a mother hen and the feminine image is important. God broods over Jerusalem with a depth of self-sacrificial love. He longs for their safety and eternal security and will do anything to give life to his children.

Perhaps this image of God, of Jesus, as the mother hen seems ridiculous because hens are seemingly brainless, clucking birds They are angular funny birds. It does seem … just ridiculous to compare God to a hen! But perhaps that is the point after all. For the hen destined for the pot is no more or no less helpless than the lamb led to slaughter.

The prophet Isaiah reminds us that the “man of sorrows” had no form or comeliness that we should admire him. Isaiah suggested that if we had seen him suffering we would have hid our faces in embarrassment – “we hid as it were our faces from him.”

Yes, hens are silly little things. But there is a story told of a fast moving grass fire and of a hen caught out in the open with her chicks. As the flames approached the hen could see that she and her brood would never out run the danger and so she gathered her chicks under her wings and settles down as tight to the ground as she can. The flames rapidly passed over the place where she sat and moved on across the grassland. As the ground cooled around her roasted body there was movement under her wings and the young chicks pushed their way out into the open and began to forage for scraps in the scarred landscape.

Luke compares Jesus, the mother hen who would die to protect her chicks, with the political authority of the day, Herod, the Fox, who held onto power by ruthless cunning.

We worship a God who describes himself to us in the person of Jesus, who broods over us, longing for good for us, longing for our security and peace. In our prayers, and as we say the creed together we express our confident trust in that ‘mother-hen’ kind of love that God has for us.

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The Fox and the Little Red Hen

Once upon a time there was a little Red Hen, who lived on a farm all by herself. An old Fox, crafty and sly, had a den in the rocks, on a hill near her house. Many and many a night this old Fox used to lie awake and think to himself how good that little Red Hen would taste if he could once get her in his big kettle and boil her for dinner. But he couldn’t catch the little Red Hen, because she was too wise for him. Every time she went out to market she locked the door of the house behind her, and as soon as she came in again she locked the door behind her and put the key in her apron pocket, where she kept her scissors and a sugar cookie.

At last the old Fox thought up a way to catch the little Red Hen. Early in the morning he said to his old mother, “Have the kettle boiling when I come home tonight, for I’ll be bringing the little Red Hen for supper.” Then he took a big bag and slung it over his shoulder, and walked till he came to the little Red Hen’s house. The little Red Hen was just coming out of her door to pick up a few sticks for kindling wood. So the old Fox hid behind the wood-pile, and as soon as she bent down to get a stick, into the house he slipped, and scurried behind the door. In a minute the little Red Hen came quickly in, and shut the door and locked it. “I’m glad I’m safely in,” she said.

“Can’t I, though!” said the Fox. And what do you think he did? He stood on the floor underneath the little Red Hen and twirled round in a circle after his own tail. And as he spun, and spun, and spun, faster, and faster, and faster, the poor little Red Hen got so dizzy watching him that she couldn’t hold on to the perch. She dropped off, and the old Fox picked her up and put her in his bag, slung the bag over his shoulder, and started for home, where the kettle was boiling.

He had a very long way to go, up hill, and the little Red Hen was still so dizzy that she didn’t know where she was. But when the dizziness began to go off, she whisked her little scissors out of her apron pocket, and snip! she cut a little hole in the bag; then she poked her head out and saw where she was, and as soon as they came to a good spot she cut the hole bigger and jumped out herself. There was a great big stone lying there, and the little Red Hen picked it up and put it in the bag as quick as a wink.

Then she ran as fast as she could till she came to her own little farm-house, and she went in and locked the door with the big key. The old Fox went on carrying the stone and never knew the difference. My, but it bumped him well! He was pretty tired when he got home. But he was so pleased to think of the supper he was going to have that he did not mind that at all. As soon as his mother opened the door he said, “Is the kettle boiling?”

“Yes,” said his mother; “have you got the little Red Hen?”

“I have,” said the old Fox. “When I open the bag you hold the cover off the kettle and I’ll shake the bag so that the Hen will fall in, and then you pop the cover on, before she can jump out.”

“All right,” said his mean old mother; and she stood close by the boiling kettle, ready to put the cover on.

The Fox lifted the big, heavy bag up till it was over the open kettle, and gave it a shake. Splash! thump! splash! In went the stone and out came the boiling water, all over the old Fox and the old Fox’s mother! And they were scalded to death. But the little Red Hen lived happily ever after, in her own little farmhouse.