Today's passage almost has the feel of Aesop's fables with barnyard animals playing a starring role. In the short space of five verses, we find pictures of both a fox and a hen. Herod is called a fox. Jesus says he feels like a mother hen. And the people in Jerusalem are all the little chicks running around in great danger.

There is an old proverb that warns, "The fox is in charge of the henhouse." We might use that expression when we put the oil companies in charge of making sure we don't have price gouging during an oil crisis. There's a fox in charge of the hen house.

Jesus describes Herod as a "fox," a fascinating choi…