Some of you may be familiar with the story of Black Panther organizer Fred Hampton. He was an activist in Chicago and was an incredible and charismatic community organizer. Barely 20 years old, he became a deputy chairman for the national Black Panther Party and was chair of the Illinois chapter. Hampton was visionary in his approach because he saw that the struggle for freedom was not just a Black struggle. He saw poor white people struggling. He saw people in the Latinx community struggling. And so he worked to bring all of these groups together (which was no easy task) through his Rainbow Coalition – a multicultural political organization that quickly gained strength, popularity and power. Hampton also saw sexism as a threat to coalition building and named it as “counter-revolutionary.”
The FBI, however, targeted Hampton and considered him a threat to the social order. In the late 1960’s they actively sought to discredit him, spread misinformation about Black Panther activity and infiltrated his organizing. And then in a well-orchestrated pre-dawn raid at his apartment, they killed Fred Hampton in December 1969.
Hampton’s story reminds me a lot of the story of Jesus.
Today’s gospel is about the religious authorities plotting to kill Jesus because he is becoming a social threat. Jesus is creating quite a stir because people are being healed and following him from place to place. They appreciate and support his message, and he is bringing groups of people together that had formerly been separate. He spoke to them of a common dream of liberation and freedom that he called the kin-dom of God. And the people were responding.
What is so interesting to me in the gospel is the reasoning of the religious leaders in why they needed to address the problem of Jesus. Their fear is that if Jesus keeps going with his healing and movement work, it will draw the attention of Rome.
Why would this be a problem?
Remember that the Jewish people were living under Roman occupation. The Roman’s “allowed” people to practice their own faith and traditions as long as they did not threaten the social order. In other words, Rome basically said, “Keep your religion, but if you mess with our economics and power in the region, we will crush you.”
The chief priests and Pharisees could see the writing on the wall. If the Jesus movement got too big, Rome would just come in and clean house and EVERYONE would lose what little they had. So in an attempt to try to preserve their own position in an oppressive system, the chief priests and Pharisees rationalized that it might be better for one person to die than to sacrifice a whole bunch of people.
Fear can drive us to do some very harmful things.
Oppressive systems can encourage us to turn on one another.
We can easily feel threatened when the social order gets rattled by the potential freedom and empowerment of others.
When we read today’s gospel, I would encourage us not to demonize the chief priests and Pharisees, but to see ourselves in them.
When have we acted against other people based on our fears?
How have we enacted the tools of oppressive systems against one another?
Have we been instruments of trying to keep people quiet because they threaten a status quo that we like or benefit from?
Have we been fearful of being vocal or visible about something because we might lose some of our social standing?
Does the freedom and liberation of certain groups threaten us somehow (or threaten our wallets or way of life)?
Part of our Lenten journey is to more thoroughly examine our lives – personally and collectively. One of the invitations from today’s gospel is to dig deeper into the effects of fear in our lives and to interrogate its ripples in our behaviors. This fear may be there because of trauma. The fear may be present because of oppression. The fear may have come from being told that someone will hurt us.
For today, try to relax into your body and notice when fear shows itself. Notice when you tense up or get distracted. Notice your thoughts and how you narrate situations. Notice what these stories might try to get you to do. And then breathe and try to release and resist the fear.