Jesus has been out teaching and healing when he gets a warning from an unexpected source – some Pharisees warn him that Herod wants to kill him.
But Jesus’ response is to slam Herod as a fox – crafty, sly and evocative of another animal, the serpent, both at the ear of Jesus in the wilderness and Adam and Eve in the Garden. It takes the word of God and twists it, incapable of creating anything on its own. Just like the devil in the wilderness, the Pharisees here are in fact seeking to take Jesus off his mission.
Jesus responds here with the same level of vehemence that he did to Satan himself, slamming both Herod and his center of earthly part harshly as murderers.
And yet he immediately follows this glimpse of his wrath with a deep and evocative picture of his mercy and empathy, painted in a way that is overtly feminized and maternal.
This is a harsh rebuke to the spirit of the age, which seeks a masculine Jesus and calls empathy a sin. Today both Christian and secular leaders speak of empathy as weakness and idolize the strength of the Herods of our current day. The church is called to reject the foxes of today with the same vehemence that Jesus did, but to love others with the same love.
— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, March 16, 2025
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