Luke 13:31-35

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The book that we’re studying for Lent, Cherished Belonging by is by Father Greg Boyle, the Jesuit priest and founder of Homeboy Industries, the largest gang intervention and rehabilitation program in the world. In the introduction to the book, he lays out nine propositions that he has come to believe over the course of his life and this ministry. The fourth one on the list is: Demonization is always untruth. My guess is that Father Greg has come to that one through his personal relationships with a population that is easy to demonize. The negative connotations that come from the word ‘gang’ are as difficult to shake as the tattoos that Homeboy offers to remove for people that come through their doors who want to leave that life behind.  

Our reading this morning opens with a description of some Pharisees who have come to give Jesus a warning. Growing up in the church, I can remember thinking that the Pharisees were the bad guys. It seemed like every time we heard about them in the gospels, they were giving Jesus a hard time about something: who he ate with, what he did on the Sabbath, the people he healed. But to Father Greg’s point, demonizing the Pharisees and accepting the negative connotations of that identity is its own kind of untruth. For one thing, a Pharisee wasn’t the same thing as a priest or a scribe. Those were religious professionals that belonged to the institutional tradition of their day, the ones with the authority to hand Jesus over to the Roman authorities for execution. Pharisees did not occupy that kind of elevated institutional status or exercise that kind of power. But they were very devout. They cared deeply about the things they challenged Jesus on: sabbath, ritual purity, a biblical ethic of strict adherence to God’s Word. So, to demonize them and label them as enemies of Jesus is simply untrue. It might be more accurate to say that they are rivals, each coming from their own understanding of how to be faithful to the call of God upon their lives. It is the unfortunate reality of our times that difference or disagreement is misunderstood as enmity, some kind of existential threat that must be destroyed, rather than the kind of challenge that often forces us to better understand and articulate our own perspective. 

If all we see when we read about the Pharisees is a negative and vaguely antisemitic stereotype, then we’ll be confused and skeptical about what happens at the opening of this reading. This time the Pharisees who approach Jesus aren’t there to question him, or criticize him, or challenge him. They are there to warn him about Herod, that he’s looking to kill Jesus. Now, maybe they know this firsthand, or maybe it’s something they’ve inferred. After all, Herod has just killed another outspoken prophet. And not just any prophet, but Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist; the one who baptized Jesus in the Jordan where the Spirit descended and a voice from heaven declared him beloved. All of which is to say, if Herod killed John, Jesus could very well be next on his list of inconvenient prophets from the same family to silence once and for all. As with much that the Pharisees bring to the table, it is well meant. But Jesus is having none of it.  

The sharpness of his words might startle us as much as the Pharisees’ warning. This is not gentle Jesus meek and mild. “Go and tell that fox for me,” Jesus says, and we’re suddenly aware of who the real enemy might be.  The real enemy might be the person who cares little for the questions of faithful living and more for his proximity to power and whatever it takes to hold onto it. Of course that begs the question, “is Jesus demonizing Herod?”  Certainly, foxes are cunning hunters who can be sneaky in getting what they want in order to survive. Perhaps Jesus is simply following in the long line of prophets who were known for calling out dangerous and corrupt leaders. 

I have no doubt that for as strenuous as their disagreements with Jesus are, these Pharisees have no desire to see him go the way of John the Baptist at the hands of Herod. They are genuinely worried that if Jesus has caught the attention of Herod, it won’t end well for Jesus. What Jesus says next I think is more for them than it is for Herod, more for those who would silence him for his own good, fearful of what his words may provoke. ‘Listen,’ he says, ‘I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow and on the third day I finish my work.’ Jesus lets them know that he’s not going to be quiet just because someone like Herod might threaten to kill him. And the truth is that Jesus knows the trial that awaits him, in Jerusalem. You see the Herods of this world like to believe they are a big deal, and they will try to throw their weight around in an effort to make you believe the story they’d like people to tell about them. They want to create the impression that we better go away, stop speaking, stop healing the wounds of the hurting and casting out the real demons- who are rarely people but the ideologies of tribalism, nationalism, racism, sexism, and conformity of thought. The Herods of this world know that work like that threatens their ability to rally people to a cause framed in terms of ‘us’ versus ‘them’. So, Jesus lays his marker down. The work of the Gospel, the work of the kingdom is always going to encounter pushback from those to whom the good news of love and belonging is seen as a threat. And that work will find its completion not at the hands of some petty puppet king like Herod, but in Jerusalem, where the forces of institutionalized religious authority run up against the forces of earthly Imperial power.  

But here’s the thing. And it’s the thing we touched on while Jesus was still up north in Galilee, up on that mountain of transfiguration with Moses and Elijah. Jesus knows exactly what’s waiting for him in Jerusalem. It’s the same thing, as Jesus points out, that countless prophets before him have faced. Jerusalem is a place that kills prophets and stones those who are sent to it. He is already on his way there! Do we think someone as inconsequential as Herod is going to stop him? And still, he keeps walking. Every week draws us closer and closer to what is going to happen there.  

The fear of the Pharisees, our own fear, would have us play small instead; stay away from saying or doing anything that could draw unwanted and deadly attention. That is not the way of Jesus Christ. That is not what it means to follow him.  

Notice too the way he speaks of the place where he has every suspicion that he will meet his end. He doesn’t demonize Jerusalem, or condemn it. He weeps over it. He laments a world and a place where prophets are killed; that stones those who are sent to it. In a world that would have us hide from those who want to cancel us, challenge us, erase us, or even kill us, Jesus longs to gather us in, to bring us together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings. 

There is so much anger in our public discourse that it’s hard not to get caught up in it, hard not to point fingers, lay blame and demonize the ones who think, act, vote, and live differently than we do. It begins to feel like the more we fight with each other, the angrier and more divided we become. The fact of the matter is that it is that same impulse, that violent desire to eliminate anything that threatens our well-being or status quo that kills prophets and stones those who are sent to us to show us God’s still more excellent way of love instead. Every time we descend into these patterns of demonization, every time we participate in the untruth that a person, or group of people, a neighborhood, or part of town, a community, or a voting block are unredeemable we participate in the very forces that drove nails into Jesus’ hands and hung him up as a public spectacle in the ultimate act of owning someone.  

And still, all Jesus wants is to gather this murderous and unruly brood that are so prone to endlessly peck at each other, to pull them closer to him. So close, in fact, that there is no more room for pecking, just the warmth of each other’s bodies, and the reminder that we belong to each other, because ultimately we all belong to God. Every last one of us.