So much better than a Superhero

A sermon on Luke 13:31-35

[for an audio recording of this sermon, click here. Photo by Robert McGowan on Unsplash.com]

I have mentioned before that sometimes my instinct is to wish Jesus was a bit more of a superhero God.

When the state of my life or the world is distressing, and I feel helpless to fix anything, it’s nice to fantasize about a Savior who would swoop in, with or without a cape, to save the day in a show of miraculous power.

Whether I am longing for healing, or policy change, or some other way-where-there-seems-to-be-no-way, I really get the appeal of a God who comes with power, rather than a God who goes to the cross like a lamb to slaughter.

But when the threat is the cross…then I don’t really want a superhero attitude from Jesus.

When he is warned that the king wants to kill him, I don’t want Jesus to clench his jaw with steel in his eyes and growl out, “let him try” like some 1st century, middle eastern Dirty Harry.

I just… don’t think that’s an emotionally healthy model to follow.

In fact, it sounds a bit toxic, if I’m honest.

Let Herod and his type who grapple for status and power have their fun with aggressive posturing. That is not what I have come to want or expect from Jesus.

So, I have to admit, I grimace a little when Jesus opens his response to the warning about Herod’s murderous intentions with the phrase, “go and tell that fox for me…”

It sounds a bit “Hollywood Hero,” verging on deliberatively combative… it could even be heard as an overdone demonstration of bravado. Like he is making a show of his willingness to pick a fight by calling the violent king demeaning names.

But actually, if you look into it, “that fox” is a strange name to pick to prove that you aren’t afraid.  

It’s derisive, but it’s not a denial of Herod’s very real power to kill Jesus just as he had killed Jesus’ cousin John.

Especially when we consider that Jesus is about to compare himself to a mother hen.

Probably the most common and dangerous predators to chickens are, in fact, foxes.

So, Jesus is, if anything, reinforcing the threat the Herod poses to him.

And then, if we dig into the precise details of the original Greek, it turns out that Jesus is not issuing a snappy command for the concerned Pharisees to “go tell Herod,” about Jesus’s defiance.

Jesus doesn’t use an imperative. Rather, he uses the aorist passive participle, which I could not independently tell you with any precision what that means, but my Greek translation resource tells me it’s something along the lines of “having gone, you can tell him.”[1]

The idea is that those who issue the warning to Jesus have access to Herod, so they will be going back to talk to him again. And when they do, they can deliver Jesus’s message.

But the message they are to deliver is the truly telling detail, because it is not a braggadocios challenge.

Rather, Jesus tells the messengers to just describe what he is doing: which is pursuing the mission that he came to fulfill.

He is meeting the needs of the people, by casting out demons and performing cures;

And he is going to complete that work within the timeframe laid out for him;

And he needs to “be on his way” because this is what he came for, not a power struggle with Herod.

Of course, Jesus knows that Herod IS going to kill him, just like he knows that “on the third day” he will complete his ultimate mission by rising from the dead, but it’s the mission that is the point, not the confrontation.

Jesus has no need to defend his ego.

He’s not trying to assert his dominance.

He has a job to do.  Regardless of what warnings or obstacles present themselves, he “must be on his way.”

It’s a compelling contrast to the unsettled monarch turning to violence at the mere possibility that the itinerant teacher might be a rival.

And the contrast becomes even more stark when Jesus interrupts his single-minded focus to be “on his way,” with his unexpected lament for Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is the place to which he is “on his way,” because that is where his mission will be fulfilled.

And yet he pauses to grieve.

Not for himself, though.

He grieves for the city that kills the prophets, shutting their ears to the messages of God.

He grieves those who are duped by the powers of the day and will not lean into God’s open arms of mothering protection and love.

He grieves for those whose fixation with preserving their familiar security (the temple, or “house” Jesus refers to) convinces them to accommodate a corrupt, power-hungry, abusive ruler like Herod, instead of embracing the one who has come to save them in a much more indelible way than the temple ever could.

By all rights this people should engender frustration in Jesus, or even resentment.

But what he feels instead is empathy for how lost and deceived they are.

He feels compassion and care for the vulnerable people who deny themselves access to love and nurture because they are not willing to be gathered into the arms of their mother hen for fear of the fox.

I find this such a compelling juxtaposition of responses.

A very real threat from a ruler looking to kill him cannot distract Jesus from his mission, but the misguidedness of the people makes his heart go out to them.

Because he understands the role of a real leader, a real “hero” if you will.

It’s to do the work and to make the sacrifices that his people cannot, all without despising them for it.

While HE can brush aside the threats of Herod-the-fox as they relate to his own life and death, Jesus knows that he is not the only one affected by the environment of toxic threats and power plays.

He knows that way that fear can control people.

He knows how it can make them unwilling to draw near to a protector who DOESN’T play the superhero game, who offers nurture and self-sacrifice instead of conspicuous, confrontational heroism.

He knows the damage this fear-based decision-making does in the long term, but he doesn’t abandon the people for their short-sightedness… he grieves for them.

In short, Jesus gives a master class in empathy.

This past week we probably all saw the headlines about empathy being a fundamental weakness in our society, the more extended argument being that it opens the door for exploitation.

From a mindset that puts the ultimate value in power, this makes sense.

But Jesus quite literally suicides himself out of empathy… intentionally.

That’s his mission. To love so intensely, to care so completely that he DIES for the sake of those who do not even understand what he is doing for them.

Dies, of course, and rises again. Because the love that Jesus is “on his way” to demonstrate is more powerful even than death.

It turns out, empathy is not a weakness. It is freedom.

It is freedom from the fear of losing your power to someone’s manipulation.

It is freedom from the compulsion to always be looking over your shoulder and guarding against the next threat.

It is freedom from the fear of death because we serve a God of resurrection.

And the God of Resurrection is a God of unapologetic empathy.

Resurrection and Empathy are a harder sell than Superhero Savior, I get that.

I am far from immune to the appeal of power leveraged to remake the world the way I think it should be.

But I cannot get away from the fact that dominating power is just NOT the way of Jesus.

And if I have to choose between the fox and the mother hen, I will choose the hen who will gather me in loving comfort, because she takes my pain and fear on herself, and offers me the hope that whatever comes, it will end in resurrection.

Thanks be to God.

[1] “Πορευθέντες” is an aorist passive participle, not an imperative…. The sense – it seems to me – is that Jesus is not sending them immediately to Herod with this message. Rather, as they go they can bear this message to Herod rather than bearing a warning to Jesus. – D. Mark Davis.

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