Drive the Bullies Crazy

Drive the Bullies Crazy--February 16, 2018

"At that very hour some Pharisees said to him, 'Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.' He said to them, 'Go and tell that fox for me, 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'." [Luke 13:31-33]

You know what really makes bullies and blowhards mad?   When you act like they don't matter.  

Jesus knows it.  Jesus has a way of moving right along--of keeping on keeping on, so to speak--when the bullies and blowhards bellow around him, and it has the double effect of driving the supposed "Big Deals" crazy and at the same time keeping Jesus from getting sidetracked with pompous puppets who are spoiling for fights.

This is one of those scenes from the Gospels from which I am convinced we can learn a great deal, because Jesus threads a needle here and doesn't get pulled off course despite all the efforts of the Pharisees and of Herod.  The setup is straightforward enough: some of the Respectable Religious Crowd (the Pharisees) come to Jesus, ostensibly to warn him that the Roman-installed ruler Herod (this would be Herod Antipas, if you are keeping score with your Herod family tree) has heard about Jesus and is looking to get rid of him.  They act like they have Jesus' safety and best interests in mind, but whether they do or whether this is a trap or not, Jesus doesn't let himself be swayed by their warning.  Jesus neither runs away out of fear, nor lets himself be provoked into a fight with Herod, but instead just keeps on doing what he has been called to do. 

Jesus keeps on with his mission--bringing the Reign of God everywhere he goes, whether in the form of healing for the sick, good news for the poor, liberation for the captive, or resurrection for the dead.  And Jesus doesn't let anything pull him off course.  He is clear about his purpose. He is clear about his path.  He is not about to let some pompous blowhard or petty tyrant (and Herod was all of the above there) distract him.  And beyond that, Jesus is not going to give Herod the attention he is starving for.

See, that's the thing about bullies and blowhards: they are starving, deep down, for attention, or for respect, or for praise, or for people to be intimidated by them.  And so when they threaten, like Herod has done to Jesus, they are desperately looking for a response, a reaction of some kind.  If Jesus turns tail and runs away, Herod gets to say, "See, I am so powerful and imposing a figure that upstart rabbis like this rabbi from Nazareth run away from me--look how great I am!"  And if Jesus lets himself get provoked by Herod and goes right to Herod's door shaking his fist or bringing along a band of angry disciples, Herod gets to arrest Jesus for disturbing the peace, and again Herod gets to come off like the tough guy who is really in charge.  Either one of those would have been satisfying for Herod, because either would have burnished his reputation as a strong, resolute, and tough ruler.  And either one would have meant that Jesus had surrendered direction of his work and ministry to the whims of Herod and let his mission be compromised by this royal loudmouth.

But Jesus will not be swayed or diverted.  He is clear about what he is about, even though he knows it will mean a cross.  This business about "today, and tomorrow, and the third day" is Luke the Gospel writer's subtle nod toward what is to come--there is a cross waiting for Jesus, and he knows it.  There will come suffering, and Jesus is not afraid of it.  There will come what looks like weakness and defeat--and Herod himself will think he has won, at least for a while--but Jesus doesn't run from it.  There will come death, but Jesus doesn't hide from it.  Because there will also come resurrection, and nobody--not Herod, not Pilate, not Caesar himself--has any power to stop resurrection.  Because Jesus is clear on all of that, he doesn't have to let Herod's threats hold any power over him.

Jesus shows us, yet again, that there is an alternative to flight (running away out of fear) and to fighting (turning back to Herod and getting dragged into a fight on Herod's terms, which an unarmed homeless rabbi would be sure to lose).  Jesus is neither Sir Robin from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, who "bravely" runs away from everything remotely scary, nor is he Marty McFly from Back to the Future, who lets himself get suckered into fights with bullies repeatedly over three movies, every time someone calls him a "chicken."  Jesus shows us here that either response--flight or fight--is a losing game, because both of those give power and control of the situation to the bullies and the blowhards.  They just want attention to puff themselves up, and running away in fear of them or fighting on their terms are both ways of giving them that attention.  Jesus knows better, and so he just refuses to play by Herod's rules or to accept Herod's terms.  He just acts like Herod doesn't even register a lick on Jesus' radar (some other day we'll unpack all that is going on in that loaded term, "fox," that Jesus uses for him).  And in doing that, Jesus embodies both great courage and great peace.

That is at the heart of the way of Jesus, isn't it?  For Jesus, courage and compassion temper one another.  They are both part of the same character, the same way of engaging the world, like iron and carbon and chromium are melted together to form stainless steel and become one thing.  Without courage, "peace" can become a euphemism for "fear of facing danger, so you avoid conflict and call it peacemaking," and on the other hand, "courage" without being grounded in peace can become just an excuse for foolhardy belligerence. But for Jesus, courage is always in the service of compassion, and compassion is never an excuse for cowardice.  Jesus keeps on doing his work--healing and casting out evil, teaching and restoring the outcast, raising the dead and welcoming the outcast--without being ruled by fear or lured into a fight.  He just doesn't let the bluster of Herod even sink in, because he is so clear on who he is, what he is here for, and where his worth comes from.

We could stand to learn something from moments like this in Jesus' life.  Because there will come times when the bullies and blowhards come out in full force.  There will come times when we seem to be presented with the false choice: either run away and be a coward, or get drawn into a fight that takes you off-mission.  And we can be people who simply refuse to accept those options.  Like Jesus, we can say, "We are not afraid of whatever the worst they can do to us might be.  We are not afraid of the loud-mouth puppets like Herod, and we are not going to be baited by the Respectable Religious Crowd, either.  We will simply keep going about the business to which we have been called--the Kingdom work Jesus has handed on to us as well.  There may well be crosses in store for us; there was for Jesus, after all, and we are set on following after him.  But we do not have to be ruled or controlled by either fear or fight-picking from the attention-hungry Herods of our lives.  Refusing to let them provoke us or petrify us strips them of their power, and it allows us to continue on with the work and the life to which we are called. And as an added bonus, it just about drives the bullies and blowhards crazy because they are so needy for someone to react to them. You and I can simply be free from fear of them.

As we seek to live in the way of Jesus, may we act with the same steel-like unity of courage and compassion, and may we find in that the ability to keep on keeping on with the work to which we have been called.

Now--eyes forward.  Hands ready.  Time to get going.

Lord Jesus, lead us in your way--your alternative to fearfully running away and to foolishly getting lured into fights that distract us from the work into which you have called us.