Jesus made me laugh out loud the other day.
As Jesus is winding his way down the road on a God-driven mission, he is approached by some Pharisees who say, “Go! Get away from here, because Herod wants to kill you” (Lk 13:31).
It’s a pretty bad day when you find out that someone is angry with you. It’s a really bad day when you discover they’re mad enough to kill. It’s a whole different level of day when you learn that the person who wants you dead happens to be the most powerful politician in your part of the world.
If I was among the Pharisees, I’m not sure how I would expect Jesus respond to this news. But I know I wouldn’t expect what Jesus says: “Go tell that fox, ‘Look, I’m throwing demons out and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will complete my work.”
It’s just so unexpected and cheeky. The more times I read it, the funnier it gets. “The ruler of Galilee wants to kill you,” the Pharisees tell Jesus. “Ok,” says Jesus. He doesn’t freak out, scream, panic, or bolt. He also doesn’t break out in a furious diatribe against corrupt leaders and their evil. He says, “Tell that wily old fox that I don’t time for his threats right now. My days are all booked up right now with going about God’s business; I’ve got people to heal and demons to evict. So tell him to do his worst, try what he can to take me down. In three days—a mere weekend—I’ll finish my work regardless. The harder he tries to stop me, the more he might help me get it done.”
I am in awe. This reply reflects a level absolute cool and dazzling moxie to which I frankly cannot even dream of aspiring.
I’ve been pondering over the last few days what this story might suggest as a strategy for dealing with evil. I have friends across the political and theological spectrum who are currently wildly alarmed by what they see (each in their own distinct ways) as the encroachment of evil, its threat to the holy and good. There is much talk of weapons to be gathered, battle lines to be drawn, warfare to prepare for.
There may well be a right time and way to confront the world’s powers directly with prophetic, Jesus-centered integrity. But embedded in Jesus’ cheeky response to Herod, I also see a startling insight: sometimes the most radical form of resistance to evil’s encroachment and threats is to just keep on doing God’s business. Not to run. Not to hide. Not to get drawn off the journey to Jerusalem by endless verbal skirmishes. But to keep on healing. Keep on exorcizing. Keep on walking the Spirit-driven, others-centered, self-sacrificing, cross-ward road.
I find myself wondering about the motives of the Pharisees who came to warn Jesus of the threat. Maybe they were trying to save his life. Or maybe they were using fear to try to derail him from his mission. After all, a Jesus preoccupied with Herod’s threats is a Jesus with less attention and energy to devote to his troublesome mission of pouring God’s disruptive mercy on the people right in front of him (case in point: see the very next story, Luke 14:1-6).
Perhaps Jesus, in his divine Wisdom, perceives that sometimes in the face of a very real threat by evil, the best defense is a good offense—to go right on doing good God-things. Stay faithful. Stay on course. Do the healing and delivering work before you. Trust that, even if the worst happens, evil’s play will backfire, and three days later, the mission will go on, stronger than before.
I wonder.
It’s fine, even good, to call out evil, to name it for what it is. But I wonder if Jesus might warn us against getting too interested in its threats. Jesus refused to give Herod more power by allowing Herod’s bluster to define the day’s priorities. Jesus let God define each day’s priorities; he went right on doing the mission until it killed him, and then he got up a few days later and did it again. This, in the end, was the radical act that put evil in its place and showed up its impotence smallness.
May we have the courage and the sanctified cleverness to tell evil where it can go by letting Jesus, not Herod, define the day’s terms.
