Our Gospel this morning starts off with an unusual warning that the Pharisees give to Jesus. We usually expect them to be conniving and conspiring to trip Jesus up or set him up to come across as a fraud. We hear of plots and plans to silence Jesus. Jesus was threat to them on many different levels: He was constantly challenging them as having put the burden of the law above loving others. It’s the Pharisees who question him when he heals on the sabbath, or the disciples do something to seems to violate the spirit of the law. When you think of allies to Jesus, the Pharisees are probably at the back of the line.
Yet, here it is, they warn him to “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” Herod has, at least briefly, supplanted the Pharisees as objects of scorn. I’ve thought about this and am not sure why Luke puts it the way he does. Was it that the Pharisees were taken with Jesus at some level: perhaps the healings and exorcisms were worth following Jesus, albeit from afar? Or maybe there was some real compassion, for Herod, while Jewish, was still a pawn for the Romans. It may have been something like “well he’s not the savior we’re looking for but at least he’s a pretend Jewish savior.
I don’t know. But they clearly stepped up. I wonder if that surprised Jesus. Maybe. But I also wonder if the Pharisees are surprised by Jesus’ response. Often, we forget that the Pharisees aren’t bad people. I think there is a tendency to lump them in with all the bad guys in history. They were like Isis, we might think. Or maybe just misguided fools or have their heads around a misguided attempt to keep in control of their faith. But if we look beyond our preconceived ideas, we find something else. Josephus, the historian of antiquity, actually presents Pharisees in a positive light. Even Luke shares many stories of how Jesus is invited by the Pharisees to many dinner parties. Sure, they often degenerated into power contests between Jesus and them, but it’s not a difficult stretch to see how the Pharisees found Jesus as a more intriguing figure than a threatening one.
I like the idea that the Pharisees weren’t bad guys. I mean, let’s be real here. The Pharisees were experts at this religion thing. They obeyed the law as well as anyone can. They memorized Scripture in their spare time and upheld even the most difficult law. They were even innovators, separating themselves from the other religious party that held sway in ancient Palestine, the Sadducees. The main difference between both religious groups is that the Pharisees believed in what the Sadducess felt was a religious innovation: the resurrection. Of course, I have always remembered this difference between the two because they didn’t believe in the resurrection, they were sad you see.
But it helps me when I see that the Pharisees were not angry atheists or trying to change an historical understanding of their faith. The Pharisees may have counted Jesus as one of their own, which I again find fascinating. But they did share something with Jesus that may have led to them to warn Jesus about Herod. They were all captive to the empire, Rome.
Ironically, we have more in common with the oppressed minority of which Jesus was part than we may imagine. That’s important to know, because as Rachel Held Evans reminds us: “It’s easy for modern-day readers to forget that the Bible was written by oppressed religious minorities living under the heels of powerful nation-states known for their extravagant wealth and violence. For the authors of the Old Testament, it was the Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek, and Persian Empires. For the authors of the New Testament, it was, of course, the massive Roman Empire. These various superpowers, which inflicted centuries of suffering upon the Jews and other conquered populations, became collectively known among the people of God as Babylon. One of the most important questions facing the people who gave us the Bible was: How do we resist Babylon, both as an exterior force that opposes the ways of God and an interior pull that tempts us with imitation and assimilation? They answered with volumes of stories, poems, prophecies, and admonitions grappling with their identity as an exiled people, their anger at the forces that scattered and oppressed them, God’s role in their exile and deliverance, and the ultimate hope that one day “Babylon, the jewel of kingdoms, the pride and glory of the Babylonians, will be overthrown by God” (Isaiah 13:19).
It is in this sense that much of Scripture qualifies as resistance literature. It defies the empire by subverting the notion that history will be written by the wealthy, powerful, and cruel, insisting instead that the God of the oppressed will have the final word. As Pastor Rob Bell observed, “This is what we read, again and again in the pages of the Bible—fearless, pointed, courageous, subversive, poetic, sometimes sarcastic, other times angry, heartfelt, razor-sharp critique of people, nations, systems, and empires endlessly accumulating more at the expense of everybody they’re stepping on along the way.”
And that’s exactly what Jesus is doing: resisting the power of the Empire. “Tell that Fox”, he says to the Pharisees when they warn him that Herod desires his death. He knows his life hangs in the balance and he refuses to bow to the power of the Empire. You can’t sit on Herod’s throne at the same time you hold on to the cross. Jesus knew that. He calls us to remember the same is true of us. We can serve God or empire, but not both.
It’s fascinating that the temptations Jesus faced from the satan in the wilderness are not being fleshed out in Jerusalem. There is seductive power in following empire and there is self-emptying humility in taking up our own cross and following where Jesus has led. This is the very reason why it is easy to make our faith into some sort of free ticket into heaven. Get saved and it doesn’t matter if you follow the empire or Jesus, some tell us.
The Kingdom of God is different than the Kingdom of the empire. And to live into the values of the Kingdom of God isn’t something that comes to us naturally. There just seems to be so much to gain from seeking power, fame and wealth by any methods either available to us or through crushing those who stand in our way.
We started our Lenten journey just a week and a half ago yet let’s admit to feeling as if we have been in a very long Lent- for two years we have suffered a lot of losses- loss of joy, loss of lives, loss of civility and now the loss of peace. It seems to be the perfect time to echo the words of the prophet and cry “how long O Lord, how long?”
Perhaps listening to the prophetic word of God is exactly the way we respond to a world that seems to be careening off course. “It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination,” wrote Brueggemann in his book, The Prophetic Imagination, “to keep on conjuring and proposing futures alternative to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one.” Evans, Rachel Held. Inspired (series_title) (p. 119). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
At this point it is easy to keep all of this at arm’s length from where we live and what we face. Yet it doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to see that we face similar temptations. Jesus knew that Jerusalem was the place where God was manifestly present but also the place where prophets go to die. Despite that knowledge Jesus responds by using a metaphor that is deeply personal and loving.
Go and tell that Fox, Jesus begins but then after confronting the empire, he reveals his heart of love toward those who succumb to the temptations that power brings. “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.” The people that control the power structure do not know what to make of prophets, so they characteristically try to silence them. Jesus knew this but, as in the wilderness, does not fall prey to the temptation to point out to the powers that be that God’s kingdom will not sit silently. After all, even though the powers of this world try, poets cannot be silenced.
But as the Gospel story unfolds, let me interject a simple request: not yet. There’s too much to consider still during this Lent. I am not talking about giving up chocolate or fasting on Fridays. I am suggesting that Lent is an opportunity to examine our hearts, to see where Jesus is quietly and politely asked to take a back seat and, please sir, don’t make a scene. But acknowledging that is just part of the journey. It will reach a crescendo until the right time where we face the truth and reality that we were there when they crucified the Lord. Every time we supplant the Kingdom of God with the power of the empire, another nail is driven through his wrists. And he allows it, over and over and over again. But quietly amidst the sound of nails piercing the flesh of Jesus, we will hear, imperceptibly at first, an invitation to allow God to hold us close, like a hen gathers her brood under her wings.
There is an end to all of the struggles and temptations and the way we tend to buckle under the empty promises of Empire. But not yet. I encourage you to face your own demons, your own temptations to strike out on your own and get what you might think belongs to you. Because unless we do that, we will continue to live a life of delusion, empty of God’s power and love. But if we risk this journey, we will embrace and be embraced by a God who so desperately desires to shelter us from the storms and use us to share God’s love to those who have not yet come to terms with that God will one day gather us all like that beautiful hen gathering her brood under her wings.
Wonderings of a Deconstructed Priest
Found Jesus along the road of grief