Text Study for Luke 13:31-35 (Part Four)

I listened to Ezra Klein’s conversation with Masha Gessen regarding Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine. She suggested that it’s not enough for an autocrat to control what people think. The real control focuses on how people think. I heard something more here. It’s not enough to shape and restrict what people think is practical. What’s necessary for an autocrat is to shape and restrict what people think is possible.

Autocrats seek to dominate and control the imagination of the subject population. If that is accomplished, then the flow of false information goes smoothly. Contradictions and conundrums disappear, not because they are resolved, but simply because they are “impossible.” The predictive power of George Orwell’s 1984 continues to astound me in his understanding of the mechanisms of such autocracy.

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Today I’m reading Luke 13:31-35 as a collision of two imaginaries – that of the “fox” and that of the “hen.” Whether the Pharisees who come to Jesus want to warn him or warn him off is immaterial here. They have accepted the “fox” narrative as the true description of their reality. I think it’s an odd and unfortunate coincidence that a certain cable news network goes by the same name. I’m not making any causal or intentional connections here. It’s just interesting.

In fox-world, the ultimate authority is violent death. The one who controls the machinery of violent death controls the way the world works. Herod Antipas controls that machinery at the relatively local level of his tetrarchy. He does so on behalf of the Roman Imperial state. He is subject to the same regime of violence, coercion, expropriation, and deception as everyone else. He’s just a bit higher up in the food chain.

In fact, it will be just a few years after our text that Antipas is exiled to what is now Spain by the emperor Caligula. Readers of the Lukan account would likely know what was for them recent history. Ancient sources suggested that in fact Caligula ultimately had Antipas executed. Modern historians doubt the accuracy of those reports. Nonetheless, Antipas lived by the Imperial sword and died by it as well. He lived in the Imperial imaginary where violent death trumped all other factors.

Those who warn Jesus live in that same Imperial imaginary. Jesus does not. He puts Herod Antipas in his place by calling him a fox, a “little dog.” I suspect it’s no coincidence that Jesus (and/or the Lukan author) uses this image. Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome, were – according to the myth – raised by a she-wolf as “cubs.” Rome was the big dog who ate first. The little dogs, like Antipas, only got to eat afterwards from what was left behind.

Jesus brings the values and imagination of “hen-world.” These are the values and imagination of the kin(g)dom of God. In hen-world, it is compassion, gentleness, and loving self-sacrifice that define the limits of the possible. Jesus rejects the power of fox-world to define and determine his course and his destiny. Violent death will certainly be part of his journey (see verse 33). But that violent death will not determine the course or conclusion of that journey.

The good news of this text is that hen-world values are Kin(g)dom values. Fox-world values are not. Hen-world reflects God’s desires and longings, God’s plans and goals. Jesus is on the divinely necessary path through fox-world, but he will not live or die there. Instead, he subverts and transforms those values and that world. He overcomes death by dying, and by living he brings new life.

In light of that good news, we can interrogate our own imaginations. What do we believe is possible? Do we limit our vision of the possible to the values of fox-world? Or do we allow Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to expand our vision of the possible to the values of hen-world? The values of fox-world in the end will produce only destruction, despair, and death. The values of hen-world will produce creativity, hope, and life.

I can’t help but think about the current war by Russia in Ukraine. The war has large doses of fox-world values at work. That’s the nature of war. It is violent, brutal, destructive, and evil. That being said, the most notable parts of this war are the ways in which hen-world values are having an impact. I think about the Russian soldiers who have surrendered and then received food, medical care, and a chance to call their parents to tell them they are alive.

I think about the use of humor, both in the rhetoric of leadership and in the actions of the people. The videos of Ukrainian farmers stealing Russian tanks and planes by towing them away with their tractors is both hilarious and astonishing. The creative resistance and assistance demonstrated by the Ukrainian people show a population that has not yet lost its human heart to the inhumanity of war.

I don’t want to valorize any of the conflict. Nor would I suggest that Jesus had violent resistance in mind as a hen-world value. But even in the most brutal situations, hen-world values can leak through and have an out-sized impact. Of course, the values of fox-world are not easily overcome. We have only to see the discrimination based on color in the treatment of those fleeing the war to know that fox-world is alive and well even in the warmest of human hearts.

We can and should interrogate our own imaginations through the lens of this text. When it comes to our own White supremacy in American Christianity, this is a matter, first of all, of imagination. Is it possible to imagine a society where skin tone is not determinative of one’s worth as a person and a people? I know that many of us White people cannot yet imagine such a society, no matter how many times we quote a small clip from Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream Speech.”

Why do we resist the positive power of a new imagination? Because we were so familiar and comfortable with the old model. It’s time for an oldie but a goodie. How many Lutherans does it take to change a light bulb? It takes ten: one to change the bulb, and nine to reminisce about how much they liked and miss the old bulb. As my CPE supervisor often said, people believe that bad breath is better than no breath at all. Better the Devil you know…etc.

A new imaginary means that some things about the old imaginary weren’t working. We often experience that as some sort of judgment or failing. I’ve worked with congregations who fervently resisted and resented hearing about the successes and innovations of other congregations. People feared that such new imagination would cast a shadow on the existing imagination and make people feel bad. I wish I was exaggerating.

The first step in bringing about constructive change is identifying a good reason for the change. Otherwise, making a change is irrational – literally, without a reason. The best reason to make a change is because what we’re doing now isn’t working. Someone, typically someone in leadership, is tasked with saying out loud that things as they are aren’t working as they should. That’s no way to win popularity contests. I speak from experience.

The alternative, of course, is Einstein’s “definition” of insanity – doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Identifying things that don’t work is the first and necessary step to a new imagination. The things that work may not seem that important at first. After all, Einstein was bothered by the fact that the orbit of Mercury didn’t seem to obey with precision Newton’s law of gravity. That wasn’t going to change life for most people, but it was the beginning of a revolution in thought.

What are the things about fox-world imagination that aren’t working – in the world, in our society, in our community, in our congregation? That’s a question worth asking and allowing listeners to think about and answer for themselves. Fear and coercion, violence and death, hierarchy and privilege – these things are not making life better for any but a very few people at the peak of the power pyramid. If that’s good enough for most folks, then there’s no reason to seek a different world.

But we know that’s not good enough – certainly not good enough in the Church of Jesus Christ. Perhaps we can imagine together the newest ways we’re being called to bring hen-world values to bear in our congregations, neighborhoods, and communities.

The first response will be that we don’t have enough resources, time, energy, and resolve to even take care of ourselves much less to spread our wings and gather in others. That’s fox-world thinking. When there’s not enough pie to go around, don’t make the slices smaller. Figure out how to create a bigger pie! For the church, that will mean new partners and platforms, new ways of seeing the world and being seen by the world.

I would refer you to an RNS article reporting an interview with ECUSA Bishop Michael Curry. It’s not only our imagination as church people that’s at stake here, according to the survey upon which the article was based. It is the imagination that people outside the church have of us. “When asked how well Christians represent the values and teachings of Jesus,” the article reports, “many religiously unaffiliated respondents said ‘not at all’ (29%), while only 2% said Christians represent Jesus’ values and teachings ‘a lot.’”

Those outside the church see us Christians as largely living in fox-world, when we see ourselves as largely living in hen-world. It’s time for a bit more imaginative thinking and doing on our part.

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Text Study for Luke 13:31-35 (Part Three)

“He said to them…’Look, I am casting out demons and performing healings today and tomorrow, and the third day I am reaching the goal. Nevertheless, it is necessary for me today and tomorrow, and the next day to keep on going, because it is inconceivable for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem’” Luke 13:32-33, my translation).

What about the “divine necessity” in the Lukan account? Perhaps the Lukan author is a theological (pre)determinist. Or it could be, as some commentators suggest, that the Lukan author has been influenced by Greco-Roman conceptions of an impersonal and inexorable “fate.” Does the Lukan author have a theology of irresistible Divine Providence or something like that? What are we to make of all this talk in the Lukan account about things that Jesus “must” do?

The Lukan account contains at least forty instances of the Greek verb, dei, “it is necessary.” Cosgrove writes that at least thirteen of these instances are “ordinary” – “one can hardly construe them in terms of any kind of divine necessity or fatalistic compulsion” (pages 172-173). These “ordinary” usages in the Lukan account, Cosgrove argues, “provide a control in Luke-Acts against too quickly reading predestinarian or fatalistic overtones into the Lukan dei” (page 173).

At least fifteen instances of the verb, by Cosgrove’s count, refer to proofs from prophecy regarding Jesus’ mission and identity. Eleven instances refer to the necessity of Jesus’ passion in Luke-Acts. The verb “is therefore a typical Lukan vehicle for describing the necessity that God’s plan, as expressed in Scripture, be fulfilled” (page 174).

The Lukan account, however, has an additional element according to Cosgrove. “Whereas in Matthew or Paul, for example, an Old Testament text is construed as prophetic ex post facto as a stamp of divine endorsement,” Cosgrove writes, “Luke introduces Scripture prophecy not only after its fulfillment (as a proof) but also narratively before. In the latter case,” he continues, “it functions both as a proof of divine endorsement and as an imperative to be obeyed” (page 174).

In other words, the Lukan account portrays Jesus not only as “fulfilling” Scripture but also as “obeying Scripture.” Cosgrove argues that “Luke exploits Jesus’ messianic self-consciousness with regard to Scripture fulfillment in a way that is at best only implicit in Matthew (or Mark)” (page 175). We know that especially in Luke differences with the other Synoptics can make all the difference.

The Lukan account portrays certain actions and paths as necessary for Jesus if he is to be the Beloved Son of God. To do otherwise is to violate, and ultimately reject, that identity and vocation. Cosgrove (page 175) notes the example in Luke 19, the story of Zacchaeus. Jesus says it is necessary for him to stay at Zacchaeus’ house in order to fulfill what it means to be the Son of Man. “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). If Jesus had not gone to Zacchaeus’ house that day, he would not have been the Divinely called Son of Man.

Cosgrove suggests that this understanding of Divine necessity is carried through in the ways that Paul’s mission is reported in Acts. “The dei of Luke-Acts characteristically carries this two-fold edge of divine attestation and divine summons to obedience,” Cosgrove proposes, “and Paul’s own conversion (commission) is best understood in terms of these very elements” (page 176).

This Divine necessity does not, however, entail a kind of rigid determinism of action, according to Cosgrove. Instead, this Divine necessity leaves room for and even requires (!) improvisational responses on the parts of Jesus and Paul in Luke-Acts. “Not only does Luke present the mission of Jesus or Paul as obedience to the divine mandate of Scripture,” Cosgrove writes, “he highlights their creative initiative in bringing about the fulfillment of their own particular Scriptural ‘assignments’” (page 179, my emphasis).

This makes me reflect on my own experiences of “call” into particular places for ordained ministry. Early in my ministry, I expected to get a clear sense of where to go and when to go. And, for the most part, I got that sense through the unfolding of circumstances and the discernment of the Spirit. That sense of specific clarity, however, became less and less pronounced as I got older and more experienced. I had expected more clarity, not less. For a while I found that puzzling and more than a bit troubling.

It took time for me to realize that I could fulfill my “call” in a variety of settings and circumstances. It seemed to me that the Holy Spirit had less of an opinion about precisely where I should serve and much more of an opinion about the kind of servant I was called to be. If I pursued my vocation with integrity and trust, I could serve that vocation almost anywhere. What was “necessary” was faithful response more than a particular course of action.

I’m not prescribing a particular theology of call for anyone. I’m just reporting my experience in light of Cosgrove’s interpretation of our text. The notion of “creative initiative” as a possible and proper response to the work of the Holy Spirit makes a great deal of sense to me. In fact, I might have fulfilled my vocation in work completely outside of the organized and institutional Church, if that had really presented itself to me.

That would require that others would have a similar “creative initiative” understanding of responding to the Holy Spirit. By and large, I have not found that to be the case when people think about ordained ministry. At one point I applied for several “secular” jobs for which I was qualified and in which I could have functioned well and faithfully. One interviewer in particular regarded me as unqualified because I was a pastor, and “once a pastor always a pastor.” So much for “creative initiative” in that position!

Cosgrove argues that in the Lukan account, Jesus “virtually engineers his own passion” (page 179). He points to the Nazareth sermon and particularly to Jesus’ conscious fulfillment of the Isaiah passages he read. Remember that it is Jesus who causes the trouble at Nazareth, in spite of the fact that he was well-received initially. “Jesus is no passive pawn of divine necessity in Luke’s Gospel,” Cosgrove writes, “he is the executor of that necessity.”

Cosgrove lists some of the ways that Jesus “executes” that necessity. He goes willingly to be tested by the Diabolical One. He instigates the conflict in Nazareth. He sets his face toward Jerusalem in Luke 9:51. He chooses the moment of his death in Luke 23:46. Jesus organizes the entry into Jerusalem to ensure the charges of desiring to be a king. He even appears to permit Judas to be overpowered by Satan and to hand Jesus over (could Judas have exercised “creative initiative” and done otherwise?). Paul exercises a similar degree of “creative initiative” throughout the latter half of Acts.

“The God of Luke-Acts is not only the creator and sustainer of the world,” Cosgrove suggests, “but one by whom history is overturned, even overpowered, by surprise attack and cleverness. And when tensions emerge within the Lukan presentation,” he continues, “they are a result of Luke’s kerygmatic, as opposed to systematic, treatment of God’s relation to history” (page 183). In other words, God is both the sovereign author of history and able to intervene in the most surprising ways within that history.

Cosgrove argues that the use of “dei” in Luke-Acts is at least three-sided. The gospel history is first of all rooted firmly in God’s plan. The divine necessity functions, second as a summons to obedience. Third, God is the one who guarantees this necessity, even if that requires upending the normal order of things through miraculous intervention. The Lukan author is not a systematic theologian. Divine necessity is always in service of the Gospel story, not the other way around.

As a result, divine necessity has a fourth and overriding dimension in the Lukan account. Cosgrove argues that “the logic of divine dei in Luke-Acts involves a dramatic-comedic understanding of salvation history as a stage set time and again for divine intervention, so that the spotlight of history continuously turns to God’s saving miracle. To this extent,” Cosgrove concludes, “Luke-Acts functions as a doxology to the God of surprise and reversal” (page 190).

In Acts, Cosgrove suggests, that surprise and reversal is extended to the life of the Church. “The miracle of God’s presence in the ministry of Jesus,” he observes, “is extended to the ministry of the church” (page 190). History may seem to have a sort of inevitability to it. The Herods of this world seem too often and too easily to get their way, as if it’s all a set piece, determined in advance. Normal history looks at Jesus and concludes that he can’t “win” and didn’t “win.”

Yet, think about the experience of those disciples on the road to Emmaus. They were sure it was over, a done deal, kaput, finito. “We had hoped…” they murmured wistfully. Then Jesus opens the Scriptures to them, how it was necessary for all the events to transpire as they did in order for the Kin(g)dom to come and the Gospel to be proclaimed.

In the Church these days, we live with a great sense of inevitability, I fear. We are sure the Church is failing, at least in the West, and no one can do anything to stop it. I am guilty of that sense of resignation far too often. That may well be true, but that doesn’t mean that God is failing. Here in Luke 13, we get a glimpse of Divine necessity that calls for faith, hope, and love in the face of what seems inevitable but may not be.

What “creative initiatives” does the Spirit call forth from us in this time and place so that we may be true to our vocation as partners in the Gospel project?

References and Resources

Cosgrove, Charles H. “The Divine Δεῖ in Luke-Acts: Investigations into the Lukan Understanding of God’s Providence.” Novum Testamentum, vol. 26, no. 2, Brill, 1984, pp. 168–90, https://doi.org/10.2307/1560636.

Jones, Robert P. White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity. Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

WEINERT, FRANCIS D. “Luke, the Temple and Jesus’ Saying about Jerusalem’s Abandoned House (Luke 13:34-35).” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 1, Catholic Biblical Association, 1982, pp. 68–76, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43716183.

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Text Study for Luke 13:31-35 (Part Two)

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem! The killer of prophets and the stoner of those sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children the way a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you wouldn’t have it! Behold, your house is lost to you.” (Luke 13:34-35a, my translation). Francis Weinert closely examines these words to interpret what Jesus means in this cryptic saying.

For a long time in scholarship, the thought was that the Lukan author was rejecting the Temple. “Luke, it has been said, is critical of the Temple institution,” Weinert notes, “he [the Lukan author] sees it as rejected, destined only to be destroyed and replaced by a superior form of worship” (page 69). Among those holding this view, according to Weinert are Conzelmann, Ellis, and Haenchen. Weinert argues that is perspective “distorts the Lucan data and should be abandoned.”

Weinert’s perspective has been adopted by many contemporary Lukan scholars. The passage that gives the most support to the anti-Temple thesis is before us this week – Luke 13:34-35. Weinert sees it as central to any argument about the Lukan evaluation of the Temple and Jesus. He compares the usage of the verses in Luke and Matthew to make his point (this material does not appear in the Markan composition). Most important for his argument, he proposes that the text does not indicate a permanent abandonment of Jerusalem or the Temple in the Lukan view.

“Here, Jesus’ saying about Jerusalem’s house emerges primarily as a prophetic lament,” Weinert concludes, “rather than as a judgment of inevitable doom” (page 74). Moreover, based on the vocabulary and usage of the Lukan author, the word for “house” here “does not primarily refer to the Temple. Rather,” Weinert continues, “it designates Israel’s Judean leadership and those who fall under their authority” (page 76). In other words, the reference to Jerusalem’s “house” refers to “some personal, collective entity, and not a specific place or building such as the Temple.

Most commentators think that Luke 13:31-33 and 34-35 were not originally combined in Jesus’ actual discourse. These sayings were combined, in all likelihood, by the Lukan author, since they don’t appear together in the Matthean account. This combination, for the Lukan author, creates “a prophetic declaration by Jesus to his opposition in Israel,” Weinert argues, “which for Luke is embodied mainly in its leadership” (page 76, my emphasis).

Weinert concludes his argument with these words. “In Luke’s hands this oracle becomes a prophetic lament which Jesus addresses to Israel’s leaders in Judah, from whom he expects no more warm a welcome than he has received from those in Galilee. Jesus declares that the situation between himself, the leaders of Jerusalem, and those who are under their authority will be left undisturbed for a while, but not indefinitely” (page 76). Jesus’ lament is about the people in charge rather than about a place or a population.

Weinert’s argument strikes me as convincing. But why does the Lukan author put this in connection with the ridicule of Herod Antipas as an inconsequential cog in the Roman machine? Frank Dicken argues that the Lukan author actually sees the various Herods and Herodians in the Lukan account as a “composite character.” The Lukan author refers to three different people in the account (including Acts) as “Herod.” This could have caused confusion for at least some of the Lukan readers and damaged the author’s attempt to render an orderly account of things.

Dicken suggests that the Lukan readers could assume that “Herod” was one character in the account, just as “Pharoah” is rendered as one character in the OT stories but may have been more than one person. The same is true, he argues of “Nebuchadnezzar” in Daniel. If this composite character argument works in the Lukan account, and I think it does, then Dicken leads us to wonder what such a characterization adds to the narrative.

He suggests that “composite characters serve in stereotyped roles in order to provide the reader with an example to follow, an enemy to distrust, a foil over against the protagonist(s), etc.” In the Lukan account, Dicken proposes that the Herod character “represents an actualization of Satan’s desire to impede the spread of the good news through his rejection of the gospel message and through political persecution.”

No matter how often Herod is portrayed as expressing curiosity about Jesus, he (they) is deeply implicated in Jesus’ trial and execution in the Lukan account. Herod is one of those powers that Satan possesses and manages (and promises to Jesus in the Wilderness Testing). Herod might have responded positively to Jesus’ preaching but in the end does not. “Luke’s Roman rulers represent a spectrum of responses to such preaching,” Dicken writes, “from belief to outright hostility, with composite ‘Herod’ serving in the stereotyped role of persecutor par excellence at the negative end of this spectrum.”

If Dicken is correct, then the connection between foxy Herod and the lament over Jerusalem is clarified. Jerusalem, why have you hitched your political wagon to such a bunch of losers? If that spiritually and morally bankrupt administration is the best you can do and the most you can want, then have at it! Jesus urgently desires that God’s people would choose the better course, but for now it seems that they will not. Thus, what they get is an “empty house (dynasty)” filled with “empty suits.”

Christian churches are often in danger of betting on the wrong horse when it comes to secular authorities and administrations. It is astonishing to watch how the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox church turns theological summersaults in order to maintain a favored position within the current autocratic system of Putinocracy. These theological gymnastics have led to a fracturing of the Orthodox communion and charges of heresy and the presence of the anti-Christ being thrown from one Metropolitan to another.

Dr. Chuck Currie (@RevChuckCurrie) put it this way on a recent tweet. “The Russian Orthodox Church provides theological cover for Vladimir Putin in much the same way white evangelical Christians provide theological cover for Donald Trump. If your Christian faith leads to Putin or Trump, you aren’t following Jesus.”

You can substitute whichever autocratic nationalist you prefer and insert whichever theological tradition has been most recently prostituted. For example, Luther and Lutherans have much to repent and repair still with Jewish communities around the world for the ways in which our founder and tradition were used to underwrite and cover the Nazis (for as long as some of us were useful).

Watching this “Christian nationalism” from a distance reminds us of the ways in which the White Church in America has hitched its political wagon to White American supremacy and exceptionalism. We should all spend time with Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States by Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry. They document the ways in which White Christian nationalism has been and continues to be the ideological and political underpinning for large segments of American Christian belief and practice.

Robert Jones makes similar points in his excellent book, White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity. “White Christian churches have not just been complacent; they have not only been complicit; rather,” Jones writes, “as the dominant cultural power in America, they have been responsible for constructing and sustaining a project to protect white supremacy and resist black equality. This project has framed the entire American story” (page 6).

It may be that Jesus is lamenting the commitment on the part of the Jerusalem elites to survival at any cost, even if that means getting into bed with the Herods and the Romans. Such a marriage of convenience can only ever be temporary in a universe created and ruled by the God of justice and mercy. If that is the anchoring upon which those elites choose to depend, that’s all they will be left with in the end.

I find that to be a helpful interpretive template for our text and our time. If we White Christians have anchored ourselves to White Supremacy and American exceptionalism as the place on which we will stand, that’s all we’re going to have for ourselves. If this is the case, it is no wonder that people are abandoning Christian churches as places of empty talk and hollow morality.

“The historical record of lived Christianity in America reveals that Christian theology and institutions have been the central cultural tent pole holding up the very idea of white supremacy,” writes Robert P. Jones. “And the genetic imprint of this legacy remains present and measurable in contemporary white Christianity, not only among evangelicals in the South,” Jones continues, “but also among mainline Protestants in the Midwest and Catholics in the Northeast” (page 6). And Jones has the sociological and survey data receipts to prove it.

Therefore, whoever makes up the “Jerusalem elite” in our system must carefully and relentlessly examine with whom we make our political and cultural beds. The temptation to put all our reliance on such political and cultural arrangements and accommodations will leave us theologically vacuous and morally bankrupt. When that happens, the destruction of our own temples will not be far behind.

Fortunately, the day comes when those who remain can cry out, Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord!”

References and Resources

Jones, Robert P. White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity. Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

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Text Study for Luke 13:31-35 (Part One)

“When the Diabolical One completed all the testing, he departed from [Jesus] until the right moment” (Luke 4:13, my translation). Welcome, friends, to one of those “right moments.” So, Jesus, you turned down the opportunity to rule all the nations of the world, eh? Let’s see how that works out for you when even a petty and puppeted pretender to power places you under threat. How’s that wilderness testing looking to you now, huh?

“In that very hour,” the Lukan author writes, “some Pharisees approached, saying to him, “Get out of here and go, because Herod wants to kill you!” (Luke 13:31, my translation). Commentators debate at length about the intention and motivation of these Pharisees as they warn Jesus. In much of the Lukan account, Herod ranges from curious about Jesus to positively disposed toward him. In that light, the Pharisaic warning seems like a duplicitous attempt at manipulation.

On the other hand, the Pharisees are not painted uniformly in the Lukan account with the “villain” brush. Jesus spends time in the homes of Pharisees and engages in collegial debates with them. Jesus is not complimentary to them, and they often reply in kind. But the relationship is ambiguous. There may well have been Pharisees who, at the very least, didn’t want to see yet another Jewish public figure hanging from a Roman cross to shame the nation once again.

In addition, it is likely that none of Jesus’ adversaries operates with unmixed motives here. Herod Antipas could certainly be fascinated by a local holy man, such as John the Baptist, and still decide that he was more trouble than he was worth. The Pharisees could certainly hold a need for Jewish solidarity and a desire for Jesus to be silenced in the same strategic basket. The human exercise of power is rarely a clear and clean transaction.

In this post, however, I want to focus on the threat itself, regardless of its source or credibility. We see here the threat of violence used as an administrative tool. Whoever is the source of the threat, that one wishes to use the threat of violence to manage power and change behavior. That is a reality common to human experience, including human church experience.

I spent time in the past working with conflicted congregations. One of the most common features of congregational conflict was anonymous communication. A leader in the conflict would note, with great sincerity and an attempt at pseudo-intimacy, that people had been talking about the pastor or the situation or the conflict or the other “side” or all of the above.

The anonymous communication always carried a camouflaged threat of some kind. Often, there was the concern that if things didn’t change in the right way, then the pastor would have to be removed. The threat that offerings would be withheld and/or that people would attend another congregation was often part of the package. Rumors and gossip about the pastor’s behavior, family, or finances were not out of bounds. The same sorts of destructive allegations about other congregational members sometimes surfaced.

Most of the time, these allegations were unfounded. Often, they were pure fantasy or delusion. Sometimes they were complete and intentional fabrications. The intention was rarely to state a truth. Rather, the intention was to curb unwanted behavior and to manage the other “side.” Rumor and gossip were used as methods of social control in violent and coercive ways. “Stop doing what you’re doing, because Herod wants to kill you!”

I wonder if Herod’s minions were collecting a file on Jesus as he moved through Galilee and toward Jerusalem. Our anti-racism book group is going to discuss the documentary, I Am Not Your Negro, this week and next. The documentary notes Baldwin’s FBI file and then quotes a bit from it. The file in total contains 1,884 pages of information observations, and conclusions. Baldwin was stalked, harassed, and censored by the FBI. His phone was tapped, and he was followed by agents posing as ordinary people.

The purpose of collecting such information on Baldwin was to equip the United States Government to intimidate and manipulate Baldwin, should the opportunity present itself. He was associated with Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nina Symone, Lorraine Hansberry, the Black Panthers, the SDS, and various so-called “communist fronts.” Thus, he was regarded as a potential “asset” as well as a threat. The collection of information on Baldwin was part of an attempt to manipulate, intimidate, and coerce him and other leaders in the Civil Rights and Black Power movements.

We see similar efforts at information control and fabrication as we watch the Russian propaganda machine at work. Our American electoral system and numerous government agencies have been deceived, deterred, and derailed by Russian disinformation. At times, people in power in the country have been used by Russia and used Russia for their own purposes and power. Twenty-first century examples of “Herod wants to kill you” abound in this space.

When the threat of violence is not sufficient, then power structures move on to the real thing. I must think about the uses of threats, intimidation, and lynching as ways to intimidate, coerce, control, and exploit Black Americans from 1865 to the present day. “Racial terror lynching was a tool used to enforce Jim Crow laws and racial segregation,” writes Bryan Stevenson in the report, Lynching in America, “a tactic for maintaining racial control by victimizing the entire African American community, not merely punishment of an alleged perpetrator for a crime.”

This use of the threat and then employment of violence to control a subject population is one of the ways in which lynching and crucifixion are quite similar. “The crucifixion of Jesus by the Romans in Jerusalem and the lynching of blacks by whites in the United States are so amazingly similar,” James Cone writes in The Cross and the Lynching Tree, “that one wonders what blocks American Christian imagination from seeing the connection” (page 31).

With threat of violence in the text, we see the shadow of the cross falling upon Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem. Today we have a preview of the “right moment” for the Diabolical One.

Jesus replies to the Pharisees, “You go and tell that fox…” It’s hard to know how to play that particular line in the drama. Does Jesus speak the words with steel in his voice, a growl curling from his lips? Perhaps. Or does he laugh with derision at the thought that one of Caesar’s lap dogs might intimidate him with a little yip of warning through secondhand channels? I lean toward playing the line that way.

I don’t think Jesus minimizes the risk or the danger. All we have to do is read the rest of the text with its language about Jerusalem as the executioner of prophets. But Herod is not going to deter Jesus from his path. Jesus will not be intimidated or manipulated, or coerced from his mission. Rumors of disapproval and threats of violence will not determine his route to the cross.

I write these words on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday in 1965. White Alabama authorities (the only authorities under the Jim Crow system) were determined to keep Black citizens from registering to vote. In protest, marchers decided to walk from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital in Montgomery in order to protest these crimes against human dignity and the American constitution. As they came to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, state troopers fell upon the marchers and beat them nearly to death. Jimmie Lee Jackson was murdered during the series of protests as was James Reeb.

The intention of the violent response was twofold. First, the powerful intended to stop the protest itself. Second, the powerful intended to send clear communication to all who were watching that the status quo would remain in place. Quite the opposite happened, of course. This was a televised revolution, and Americans were horrified at the inhuman brutality visited upon the marchers. One result was the rapid signing of the Civil Rights Act into law, the very thing the White authorities sought to prevent.

Jesus did not respond to the Pharisaic warning with false bravado. The violence was coming, and he knew it. But it was going to be on his terms, for his purposes, and in service of his goals. He would not be deterred from his path today, tomorrow, and the third day.

We can perhaps wonder about the ways we react to threats and intimidation, whether internal or external. We can wonder about that in our personal lives. I’m far more easily frightened by secondhand threats than I care to acknowledge. I worry about being physically attacked or legally sanctioned if I protest or resist injustice. I don’t even like the confrontations that might happen with family members about divisive social issues. Too bad for me…Come, Holy Spirit.

I know that White, mainline congregations are routinely terrified of pissing off members by being too confrontational or political. So, we typically choose silence and the status quo rather than shaking things up. Jesus is clearly comfortable with stirring up trouble and getting powerful pushback. I think, as I have noted before, that I (and we) need a lot more practice in tolerating good trouble as White people and white congregations…Come, Holy Spirit.

Well, there’s a start, eh?

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