The Real Enemy
The Real Enemy
There’s one character who has no speaking parts in Luke’s account of the Passion, and you might have missed him — Simon, Simon! Look, Satan has been granted to sift you all like wheat — And I suspect there may have been two other “opportune moments” for Satan to tempt Jesus. We can’t say we weren’t warned. Back on the first Sunday in Lent, we read — Having finished every way of putting him to the test, the devil left him, until the opportune moment.
Recalling my sermon on the 1st Sunday in Lent, I cautioned against conflating the Hollywood Satan with the biblical Satan. On top of that, I also caution you against saying the Devil made me do it when human anger and greed work just as well to explain human sin. I doubt that the Devil made Judas betray Jesus. But remember from my sermon that “Devil” and “Satan” literally mean, “accuser.” The Accuser certainly indicted the human race in his first temptation of Jesus in the wilderness — more concerned with their immediate physical needs than with losing their freedom, ready to be told what to do for the sake of security.
Today, those whose sole concern is preserving their religious and political power will do what they have to do to convict a man of blasphemy and sedition even when he won’t give them the testimony that would make it an open and shut case. No matter, they get what they want anyway. And lurking throughout this story, sometimes unobserved and unreported, is the Accuser.
I believe he was there in the garden, tempting Jesus to run out of the garden, run away from Jerusalem, which certainly would have made him much less a threat to the religious and political powers of his time and place. They might have been perfectly happy to leave him alone. In the CBS two part film about Jesus that aired in 2000, Satan is a suave, casually well dressed man with good hair, slicked back. And in Gethsemane he shows Jesus how crusaders will kill women and children in his name; women accused of witchcraft will be burned at the behest of bishops; soldiers from Christian nations will slaughter each other with poison gas and machine guns. As Judas and the crowd are approaching, he practically begs Jesus to go back to his Father. For a second, you’re tempted to think that he actually cares. Inspired imagination I suppose. But why, in Luke’s version of Gethsemane, did it become necessary for another angel to come and encourage him? Unreported, but perhaps still there.
And then one last time perhaps on the cross? Was Jesus, God the Son, tempted to ask God his Father to curse those who were responsible for his death by torture? Note that Jesus himself didn’t forgive those who killed him. He asked his Father to forgive them. If God is one being and three persons, then perhaps each would naturally ask the others if they as one being would forgive those who killed Jesus of Nazareth. But to be clear, Jesus did not do what any innocent human being would almost certainly have done in that situation.
As I said at the beginning, we should not deflect human responsibility onto some supernatural being. But it must be said that in the Passion of the Christ, Jesus treated no human being as an enemy. His enemy was that force, or spiritual messenger, some kind of creature that blows back against truth, against love. Jesus only shows mercy and empathy to all whom he encounters. Healing the servant of the religious leader most out to get him. Looking straight at Peter with care: Seemingly without meaning to, still creating an opportunity for Herod and Pilate to bond over their mutual incomprehension of this Jesus. Warning the Daughters of Jerusalem to get out before the rage of his fellow Jews leads them to catastrophe. Yes, asking forgiveness of his torturers. And promising paradise, not to a thief as if the Romans would have cared enough to crucify a thief, but more like a murderer.
This is the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed Liberating King, whom we follow. And perhaps this year especially we need to hear Luke’s account of his Passion. Perhaps this year especially we need reminding that we certainly have rivals, even bitter opponents whom we must oppose. But we do not have enemies among our fellow human beings. In the words of our Baptismal Covenant, our enemies are “Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God … the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.”
No doubt, those who brought about Jesus’s death on the cross thought they were acting in the best interest of their people, or their religion, or their peaceful order. They were wrong, deadly wrong, at the peril of their souls wrong. But none of them was Jesus’s enemy.
Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday
The Rev. David Kendrick
April 13, 2025