a king’s guide to political assassination
Lent 2C | Luke 13:31-35
Some Pharisees approach Jesus to warn him. Herod, Rome’s puppet king, is planning to kill Jesus and they want to give him a head’s up.
Why do you think they do this? Do they think Herod’s going too far? Are they thinking Jesus doesn’t deserve to be assassinated by the state? Do they have a problem with the murders in general or here specifically?
It’s weird, right?
And what we tend not to do in church is take any time considering this moment with these Pharisees as reflecting anything about them or their character. Because we are so easy to paint them in the dismissive brush with which we paint all Pharisees in the gospels or by the redemptive brush of those seeking to do the right thing and I think neither fits because these men are cowards — perhaps seeking to absolve themselves of sin by warning Jesus rather than stopping Herod’s reign of terror. Rather than stand in front of the tanks to stop their rolling into Tiananmen Square.
The Rebuttal
Jesus sends a message back with them that is bold and biting:
“Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.”
He tells them where he’s going to be. So, he’s not avoiding the assassin’s bullet. But he’s also sharing with them that he understands how this works. That people aren’t assassinated in the middle of nowhere because nobodies mean nothing to the powerful. But more importantly, when a fox runs the state, the state will execute its critics.
When I read this passage, it is easy to think of the dispatch of meddlesome priests or the authoritarian slaughter of innocents by fascists. But it is also the wetwork of the FBI, assassinating civil rights leaders and the CIA-led coups in Latin America. When people offer a different vision, the small, the petty, and the insecure will seek to silence them, to control the situation, and demand loyalty (often under the blanket of patriotism). And these Pharisees who go along with it, have a hard time not going along with it.
Lament
It is a telling contrast to hear Jesus lament the Holy City. That it should be above this. It needn’t be this way. The blessed community is to be ruled, not with the iron fist of an insecure king, but by the gentle embrace of the mothering hen. Who holds her children, warming and protecting them from the elements. Whose touch marks them as loved and blessed children who need not fear or rouse suspicion. Loving and supporting one another in the ways they have been loved and supported by God.
The mother who pairs with the father, offering the just wholeness of heaven here, who feeds us daily and ensures we all might be fed, who forgives our debts so we might forgive the debts of others, and whose way is love and safety from all manner of evil.
This is the prayer we pray every day, isn’t it? And we pray it because it is the way we are to work with the blessed trinity in ordering our world, shaping and building it up as the blessed way of love in Jesus. So that we may be like Jesus in a world of Herods and cowardly Pharisees. That we see the evil in our midst and say Nah…let’s do love today. Every day.
Eucharistic Dangers
Let’s shift gears now and talk about the Eucharist. During the season of Lent, we’re taking time to dive into one of the two primary sacraments of the church: the Eucharist. And last week, we explored why we get together for communion and I gave a little of its origin story. This week I want to warn us of its danger.
In her book The Dangers of Christian Practice: On Wayward Gifts, Characteristic Damage, and Sin, Lauren F. Winner goes through the sacraments to describe not just what makes Christian practice essential, but the parts that lead us away from the holy. Yes, it is a provocative title, but it is something more than sincere: it is an opening up of the hidden side of our faith. When we make idols of our practice and place them above our devotion. Or, to put it another way, when what we practice matters more to us than our devotion to God.
I hinted at this idolatry last week when I reminded us that the purpose of our weekly gathering is first to gather and that the Eucharist’s place in the weekly gathering is to remind us of what we already know, to affirm our sacramental relationship, and to bind us together as equals within a practicing community of faith.
The move to weekly Eucharist within our tradition, elevating its place and centering it in our common life together has done wonders for binding practicing faith communities and bringing awareness within new communities to the radical equality at the heart of the gospel. Many Christians can attest to the transformative power of communion and particularly to its power to tear down the walls of division. I’ve heard some American Christians testify to the impact of communing inside prisons and even bringing together prisoners and guards, reducing incidents of violence within the prison to nearly zero.
The centralization of the Eucharist has also disempowered lay leaders in the church to lead its worship, requiring priests to be always present, and inviting the community to actually forget its purpose in gathering regularly is to gather regularly — not to receive communion at the altar rail each week. Like a commodity produced and we, as Christians are mere consumers.
In a sense, we have offered the church too much of a good thing. Not because the eucharist has lost its power over us, quite the contrary, but because its power may have supplanted our love of God and the courage of worship.
The beauty and power of the eucharist is not found in its abundance or its rarity. It is supposed to be something we partake in regularly. The question is what becomes of devotion — love itself — when we put the Eucharist (rather than God themselves) at the center of our faith?
Five years ago this month, we entered a wilderness without communion. We were forced by a pandemic to refrain from eating the common elements in common. And I reminded us then that people of faith have had periods throughout history when the time they were forced to go without sharing the bread and the cup with others was counted in decades, not months and their faith not only survived, but it thrived, developing new practices and intentions, encouraging new gatherings and reflections of Christian life. Rather than destroy faith — the absence of communion grew their faith. For many of our neighbors, the opposite was true. And for some, the demand for physical, in-person communion, led them to abandon their home church, often for a fringe faith community that compared vaccination to the mark of the beast.
The joy of Anglicanism is that we love our practices and see them as a reflection of our faith. A faith that is to be for us as individuals and a people. I like to call this a holy Both/And. Do we do this or this? Yes! But this reflects a useful interior check. Because practice reflects faith (and vice versa) we can tell when our practice and faith aren’t in alignment. Like, for instance, do we only show up for communion? Does that mean our faith is similarly conditional? Our common prayer so conditional? Rite I only? Or II? Certain hymns? Is it about what pleases our ears or might it also challenge our faith to reflect a bigger vision of the divine?
The true vision of our tradition is Common Prayer. That we have prayers we share in common and that we pray them together. Both/And. They are for us to use at home and for us to pray here, together. And when it is time, we share a meal together that is intended to remind us of the healing, equalizing, generous, undeserved, encouraging grace of Jesus in community.
In other words, to help us remember that we are people who do things like this. Here. Out there. Everywhere.