The Plot to Kill Jesus

Ash Wednesday is upon us and we are about to begin the Lenten season. How meaningful it is that we are reading the Gospels and being stretched each day as we prepare for lent. Today’s reading in Mark (Mark 2:13- 3:6) covers, in a thumbnail sketch: Jesus calling Levi (Matthew), the hated tax collector, to become a disciple; His walk through a field where He and His disciples pick some grain and eat it on a Sabbath; His lack of fasting when other religious persons were fasting; and finally the time when Jesus stands in a synagogue on the Sabbath and heals a mans disabled hand.

There is a theme here that clearly is being developed and it is partially that Christ has come to shake things up. Men’s thinking about rules to live by, are being challenged by Jesus’ behavior. In each of the scenes from the text of Mark, there are two common elements. First, Jesus defies what is considered standard practices of the faithful or what is even considered socially acceptable. Second, and most important, Jesus is being followed and observed by the Pharisees.

Let’s look at that first point. He sits with sinners and speaks with them and even befriends and calls one of them to follow him in his ministry. Shocking news for the times. He does irritating things like picking and eating grain on a Sabbath. Not allowed. The Pharisees eyebrows are raised because while they fast for religious reasons, and even the odd preacher ‘John the Baptist’ and his followers are fasting, Jesus and his band of men are not. The Pharisees are perplexed. We can hear their minds turning as they begin to churn with the puzzlement that grows into anger and outrage: “who does this guy think he is?”

Jesus is in the place of worship—the synagogue. What does He do here? He has the audacity to question whether one should help another on the day called the Sabbath? Marks words are short and taciturn. We do not get embellishments. Therefore, you have to read carefully and between the lines as we see Jesus in this moment standing there with this man with an obvious deformity and we must assume that he has asked Jesus to heal him. He must have been witness to other healings that Christ had performed. Once again the Pharisees, the elders, the religious stakeholders are aghast. “He really is not going to do something like this on the Sabbath?’ Their thinking appears ‘turned around’ by their reaction. You would assume that they should be more overwhelmed to see that this man named Jesus, can simply heal a deformity like that – with the snap of his fingers. Who can or could do such stuff? This was not the norm in those times any more then it would be now. But what are they all bent out of shape about? It is about when he chooses to heal this man, not that he is able to.

Jesus looks around at the group of men in the Synagogue and asks a pointed question: is it better to do good or evil? No one, not one, answers. They stand like stones. Notice the words almost hidden between the lines of Mark: “He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts.” How often have we been given the idea that Jesus only showed anger at the tables of money changers in the temple? That is the common thinking. Jesus was Mr. Rogers. Not so. He is filled with distress here and almost in a “I’ll show you,” He heals the mans hand.

The reaction to Christ’s miracle before the eyes of these men leads us directly into the second and most important point. The Pharisees have been following and observing Jesus. Their reaction is not of wonder, shock, amazement or a slight realization of who this guy could be but instead it is outrage, anger and the actual plot begins here to kill Christ. It is interesting to me that in the latter parts of each Gospel, there is a place which has a subtitle that says “the plot to kill Jesus.” We tend to see this as the actual plot being shaped. Yet, it clearly begins early in his ministry. He is being followed, observed and plotted against right from the moment He began to teach and collect disciples. Every move was suspect. Every action was under scrutiny. Again and again, there are times in the Gospels, where it is mentioned that Jesus could have been overcome by marauding gangs of men who disliked what he was doing.

However, again and again, it also says “His time had not yet come.” While the Pharisees thought that they were in control of men and how they were to live, they had no control over anything at all. They lived in blindness, wrapped up in rules and unable to become awestruck by a miracle they witnessed. Their minds are like arrows directed at one thing: Jesus must be stopped. Even as they begin their plot against Christ, they have no conscious understanding that this is God’s Son. Jesus is being saved for the cross which sounds like an oxymoron. But it is the truth. He is being groomed for the end--- and the new beginning that God had in mind for all mankind.

Laurie Erdman