Luke 13:31-35
At that very hour 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.’
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.’ ”
We lie to our children. That is one thing I’ve learned in my brief two years of parenting. Most of them are innocent, harmless lies—if there is such a thing. “There are no more cookies, Clive! Mickey Mouse is going to sleep too. Oh sorry buddy, that toy is broken. Yes, that’s chicken, it’s chicken, just eat it!” Those are some of the more common ones in my household. I’m sure you have, or had, your own in your home. Or maybe you remember some that your parents told you. And if you are sitting here saying,
"Well, I never lied to my kids," or “my parents never lied to me," I hate to break it to you, but you're lying right now and yes they did.
This is not to shame any of us or to make you look at your own parents in a different light. Most of the time, the lies are told out of protection, care, and concern. We don’t want our kids to bear the weight of whatever it is: Spot went to live on a farm or Mommy and Daddy were just talking. This is normal and well-intentioned, no doubt. However, according to the novelist Allison Grant, there are some lies we tell, however well-intentioned, that do more harm than good.
This past week, Allison wrote an op-ed in the New York Times about one of those lies—one she says she’ll never tell her children—and that is about pain. When something will hurt and how much. Now, I am sure you have a story about a time you told a white lie about how much something would hurt and everything turned out fine. Well, that wasn’t the case for Allison.
She was born with one leg shorter than the other, by about three inches. When she was 11, she underwent a complex corrective procedure. Over 13 hours, surgeons drilled holes through her bones and attached a metal frame from the outside of her hip to her toe. For the next two years, the frame helped stretch Allison’s leg those three inches. Before the surgery, when she asked if it was going to hurt, she remembers being told, “Don’t worry, we have ways to manage any unpleasantness.” Reassuring, yes, but it skirted around the truth. Those two years, Allison was in excruciating pain, so much so that morphine, valium, and muscle relaxants were all needed on a regular basis just to mask it a bit.
Reflecting on that experience, Allison writes, “The difference between what I was told and what I experienced shattered my faith in doctors and left me questioning whether I could trust adults at all.
Now, as a parent—and through my years working in health care—I’ve made the conscious decision never to lie to people about pain.” Even with something small, she says, she is realistic about the pain they likely will encounter.
This is not a sermon about parenting or about not lying to kids. I certainly don’t have all that figured out yet. Rather, I hope this lens of honesty on pain and danger helps us see how God, like a good parent, doesn’t lie to us about the danger and pain we’ll face—and how that truth sets us free.
We all want to protect people we love from pain. But what if real love tells the truth, even about the pain? I’d like to think that’s what God did for Jesus. God was honest with Jesus about his life, his ministry, and the suffering, too. God didn’t protect him from Herods or sugarcoat the cross. And yet—Jesus walked ahead to Jerusalem.
That is where we find Jesus in our story today. Teaching and healing from town to town on his way to the holy city when some guys come up and say, “You need to leave right now, Herod wants to kill you!” And Jesus responds with one of the best lines in all the Bible, “Tell that fox that I’ve got work to do, so just try to stop me.”
Don’t you wish you could respond like that? Such confidence, such disregard for danger. Make no mistake—Herod was a very real and present danger who could invoke great pain.
By this point in the story, he’s already thrown John the Baptist, Jesus' cousin, in jail and then beheaded him! But here in this scene, Jesus—the guy who always says, "Be not afraid"—shows all of us exactly what being not afraid looks like. “Sorry, Herod, I gotta keep going. I have work to accomplish, and you won’t stop me.”
Don’t you want that? I mean, how is it that Jesus can face such danger, can be threatened with such pain, and not even flinch? I’d like to think, in part, it’s because God the Father was honest with Jesus, his only Son. That in the many hours of prayer and discernment, God told Jesus everything about the life and work that was before him.
How he would cure people and cast out demons. How he would go to Jerusalem, though foxes would try to stop him. How he would hang on a cross if he chose—but that wouldn’t be the end because God promised resurrection.
God didn’t lie about the pain and the danger. And because Jesus knew what was coming,
he could face it all head-on, unafraid, trusting in the promises God had made him. We might not ever be as fearless as Jesus, because well we aren’t Jesus. But I do think God in Jesus is honest with us, too, about what we will face in our lives. And we hear that in this passage.
There will always be foxes and Herods that are a real danger to us. We will face pain in this life. But here, Jesus makes another promise to us, one that can help us face the foxes. As a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wing, so does Jesus desire to gather and cover you.
Notice I say cover you, not protect you. If you’ve spent any time around chickens, you know that a hen can’t actually protect her chicks from a fox. Those wings don’t do much of anything against razor sharp teeth and fast claws. And so you might think, “well what good is that then?!”
If foxes and danger are inevitable, and a hen can’t truly keep her chicks safe, then what good is thinking of God as a Hen? Of all the animals Jesus could have picked to describe himself, why choose a mother hen?
Because a hen’s love is stronger than any fear a fox instills. She will do all she can to cover her chicks,
even gathering them with her wings while she gives up her own life to the fox. We all have foxes. The grief that lingers long after the funeral. The resentment or silence that frays marriages now barely hanging on by a thread. The words said or left unsaid that strain our friendships and families.
The overwhelming pressure of raising children—how much screen time is too much, how to balance work and home, how to not fail them. The fear that no matter how hard we try, we are not enough.
These foxes creep close, circling, threatening to undo us. But hear this promise: you are not left alone. You are gathered. You are covered. You are sheltered beneath the outstretched wings of Christ, alongside others just as weary as you. And in that love, we don’t find protection from the foxes, but courage. Jesus lays down his life so that we can live—not in fear, but with trust and in the promise of resurrection. The foxes do not get the last word.
We cannot lie our way out of life’s pain, not to ourselves and not to our children.
Allison ends that op-ed piece saying “We should tell our kids when it’s going to hurt. In the long run, it will hurt them a whole lot less.” That’s what God does with us, not to hurt us but to free us from fear and face the pain and danger in this world, trusting also that we do not face the pain alone.
We have each other and we have the love that covers us, love that casts out fear. Amen.
