“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.”‘” — from Luke 13:31-37

Oh, the impetuous abandon of youth. Early thirties is hardly enough living to have gained the fullest measure of rational realism. One sermon in the home town (that didn’t go all that well) and he takes the show on the road. I can’t deny the magnetic quality of his unstoppable zeal. How can a petty king get in the way of this compelling business of casting out demons and performing cures.

But what can a thirty year old know? I know that, given life expectancies at the time, Jesus was well into the latter part of life for a man of Galilee or Judea. But is that not the problem? Think of a society of people so young. Run by people so young!  Those with resources to live beyond forty were kings and plutocrats—who had probably gorged themselves on fatted calves enough to harden the arteries of their brains as well as their hearts. The rest of that patriarchal society had to be a bunch of eager, impulsive twenty- and thirty-somethings. What was the first-century equivalent of a society of Facebookers and Twitterheads?  Texting out the first pericope that pops to mind.

The few elders that didn’t belong to the upper echelons of society, with clearer minds from feeding on locusts and wild plants, might live long enough to become prophets, I suppose. Men and women with enough memory and wisdom to suggest that in the long run justice and peace might accomplish more than avarice and war.  That patient waiting might trump the leap of faith.  Just the kind of people who thirty-year-olds find deathly annoying.

What is left for elders to do? We see the inevitable. We issue the warnings that fall on stopped ears. We point to the fox, stalking in the distance–for eyes turned another way. So we do our best to gather the chicks under our wings. We know that a hen’s feathery back is no defense against fox teeth. But maybe, devouring us, the fox may be sated and leave a chick or two to grow old in our place—or at least to cast out demons and perform cures until another fox goes after her.