By Ched Myers, a few comments about the Gospel texts for the 2nd and 3rd Sundays of Lent, re-posted from Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries. If you are in Southern California in early April, register to attend the official launch of Ched’s new book here.

In a sequence that runs from Luke 12:35–13:9, Jesus names five examples of brutality endured by poor and working classes who labor and live in the world of wealthy “lords”:

1. household servants enduring sleeplessness (12:37) and beatings (12:47);
2. debtor’s prison (12:58–59);
3. Galileans suffering violence at the hands of Roman authorities (13:1–3);
4. pedestrians killed by dangerous urban construction (13:4–5); and
5. oppressive demands on peasants for agricultural production by absentee landlords (13:6–9).

Jesus’s warning to “settle out of court” (2) refers to a judicial system controlled by the landlord class that routinely imprisoned the poor for indebtedness.” Pilate’s massacre of Galileans (3)—perhaps during a Passover pilgrimage, hence the reference to “their sacrifices” (13:1)—could refer to any number of skirmishes between Roman authorities and Judean dissidents during the first century CE, many of which were documented by the Jewish historian Josephus. Urban construction accidents (4) were common, given the notorious working conditions and “code violations” that characterized ambitious and hasty Herodian building projects. Those two incidents might be connected if the Tower of Siloam was part of Roman aqueduct construction, since Josephus reports that Pilate killed a group of Jews who were protesting his seizure of Temple funds to pay for imperial waterworks projects in Jerusalem. . Jesus’s emphatic refrain—“I tell you, unless you repent, you will all perish as they did” (13:3, 5)—implies that unless his people defect from this system, they too would be killed by its oppressions (Luke uses apollumi far more frequently than any other N.T. writer). These are some of many reasons that Jesus repudiates the “peace” of an imperial system that routinely generates such violations (12:51).

At the end of Luke 13, Jesus returns to his critique of the ruling class, which he broached earlier during his defense of the incarcerated John the Baptist (7:24–30). There, Jesus draws a stark contrast between the wilderness prophet John and the plutocrat Herod Antipas, representing opposite poles of Judean identity. Jesus’ interrogative triplet unfolds like a three-part joke about “the plutocrat and the prophet”:

i. What did you go out into the wilderness to behold? A reed shaken by the wind?
ii. What then did you go out to see? A man clothed in soft clothing? No, those who are gorgeously appareled and live in luxury are in kings’ courts.
iii. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes! (7:24b–26a)

The reed reference is likely a title of ridicule and recognition for Herod Antipas, who had a reputation as a “waverer.” The Oxford Reference Bible notes: “Reeds were the vegetation motif on the first coins issued by Antipas, who founded his capital city on the border of the Sea of Galilee, where reeds were prolific.” Or the wavering image could be an allusion to 1 Kg 14:15 (“The Lord will smite Israel, as a reed is shaken in the water”), part of the aging prophet Ahijah’s oracle of judgment on the house of Jeroboam, which by implication also hangs over Herod. Either way, the phrase is decidedly uncomplimentary of the king.

Jesus’s second “dig” caricatures the royal regime’s insular affluenza, taking refuge in palatial luxury dressed in finery. In leaving Herod’s political space to go encounter John, that crowd encountered more than they bargained for: nothing less than Malachi’s messianic forerunner (Lk 7:26b–27). John is the greatest among human beings (7:28a), opines Jesus; the king only imagines he is! Yet from the perspective of God’s Great Economy, those “of least importance” in the Herodian economy are most paramount (7:28b).

In 13:31, after Jesus is warned that the king is hunting him, he refers to Herod as “that fox,” an allusion to vulpes vulpes palaestina , an opportunistic predator who is nonetheless vulnerable to larger hunters (i.e., Rome). Pyung Soo Seo points out that Jesus is mocking the king, not the fox, who he invokes respectfully elsewhere (9:58). Jesus assures (warns?) the Pharisees that he will carry on with his work despite being stalked (13:32)—but also acknowledges that soon enough his work will be “brought to an end” (13:32c), in large part because of Herod’s collusion with Caesar. Luke later sketches a damning portrait of Herod’s complicity in the railroading of Jesus (see 23:7–11).

So: May the gospel texts for both of these Sundays in Lent challenge our churches to rise to the example of their Lord to speak desperately-needed truth to and about the oppressive plutocrats putting people and Creations at risk in this very hour!