“At that very hour, some Pharisees came and said to him, ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.’” From the Gospel for today, the Gospel according to Luke, chapter 13, verse 31.
In nomine, etc..
Well, we can’t have any clearer warning than that! Get away while the going is good, for Herod wants to kill you! It is as strong a reminder as we can think of, that the ancient world was no different from the world that we know: dangerous, violent, potentially and actually lethal. It was, and is, especially dangerous to prophets, visionaries of any kind, reformers, anyone committed to truth, justice, goodness, and so on. Authoritarian rulers, and many others not necessarily authoritarian, have an interest in keeping down anyone with a vision of life better than what the ruler allows. We need to keep in mind what has happened just before today’s reading. Jesus said, “People will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God...some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.” People who are first in this world, like Herod for instance, aren’t necessarily happy with a message like this, and indeed Herod is downright murderous in response to it. He won’t tolerate anyone who is last in the world, like Jesus perhaps, getting ahead of him in the kingdom of God, or any kingdom. Perhaps Herod hears this as a threat to his own throne, and, autocrat that he is, he opts for the best solution available: murder. History is littered with reactions like this.
“Some Pharisees” let Jesus know of this potential threat. This tells us that Jesus has followers, sympathizers, supporters, among the spiritual elite of the time. The Pharisees are careful practitioners of the Law and are devoted students of the Prophets, and some of them see in Jesus the fulfilment of Law and Prophecy. Given the known threat from Herod, it is very risky for them to have anything to do with Jesus, the more so to be communicating with him, giving him advice to escape, which the king might interpret as treason. There is real danger behind the few words introducing today’s reading.
And that danger reveals something important about Jesus’s teaching.
“Go and tell that fox...I am casting out demons and performing cures…” If this isn’t just rhetoric, Jesus apparently expects Pharisees (probably not the same Pharisees who are warning Jesus off) to go back to Herod, to tell him what he, Jesus, is actually doing: casting out demons and performing cures. In other words, there is nothing going on that Herod should be afraid of. Not that it makes any difference. Jesus is realistic about what happens to people like him in Jerusalem, “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it.” He fully expects such an outcome.
We’ve just heard what Jesus is actually doing: casting out demons and performing cures. He amplifies his intentions when he says, “I have desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.” This is another version of what he says earlier in the chapter, “Then people will come...and will eat in the kingdom of God.” The whole human family will gather and feast in the kingdom which Jesus is proclaiming. And Herod, of course, will have none of it.
What can we take from this story? What does it reveal about the nature of Jesus’s teaching? To begin with, the story teaches realism about the world of Jesus, and the world in which we live, as not always friendly, welcoming, to prophets, miracle-workers, visionaries --- to Jesus, in fact, and to anyone who proclaims the possibility of the human family living and feasting together in harmony. It is fitting that Jerusalem should be the locus of this teaching, since the Hebrew root-words for Jerusalem have a collection of meanings which can be interpreted to mean “rain (as in water) of peace.” So Jesus is recalling Jerusalem to its vocation to nurture peace and harmony among all peoples from “east and west, north and south” and at the same time he is being realistic about what can happen when he proclaims this teaching, or when any prophet proclaims it.
So, appropriately perhaps for Lent, it is good to be reminded of how radical Jesus’s teaching is, in worldly terms, and how realistic it is, when Jesus refers to the world’s reactions to it. The expectation is always before us, to choose between the world and the kingdom of God, between the teaching of Jesus, and the endless desire to find ways to accommodate Herod’s needs and God’s.
In nomine, etc..
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