Who’s familiar with the game of Jenga? Where you build a tower out of blocks and one by one remove one of the blocks until the whole thing finally comes crashing down? In seminary, one of my friends won a Jenga game as a door prize and for several months a group of us got really into playing Jenga. Only this was a seminary door prize, so this was not name brand Jenga, this was the knock-off brand “Jumbling Tower.” And Jumbling Tower is like Jenga in concept only. You know how in Jenga the blocks are all exactly the same size, and they are sanded smooth and finished so they can slide easily out of the tower? Jumbling Tower does not have the same concern for craftsmanship. In Jumbling Towers, the blocks are all uneven. Before the game even begins the tower has a decided lean to it. And the blocks are not finished, or even really sanded. Splinters were a common Jumbling Towers injury. This caused the blocks to catch on each other as you were trying to remove them. These handicaps added a certain unpredictability to the game that was not present in regular Jenga. Jumbling Towers was more a game of chance than anything else. You could have the steadiest hand in the world, but if the block you were going for caught on the other block it didn’t matter how steady you were, the tower was going to come jumbling down.
I was thinking about Jumbling Tower in relation to our Gospel reading for today, because do you ever have those periods where life feels like a game of Jumbling Tower? Where work and family and relationships and money and stress are all balanced precariously on top of each other. And the pieces aren’t smooth or uniform, so even if you are totally balanced, totally steady, do everything exactly the right way, still all the pieces come jumbling down around you?
I think the Pharisees saw Jesus’ life as a game of Jumbling Tower in our Gospel reading for this morning. Scholars are back and forth about these Pharisees, if they are allies of Jesus who are trying to protect him from Herod or if they are trying to trick Jesus or lead him into a trap. For me, I think the Pharisees are well intentioned here. I think these particular Pharisees like Jesus, or even if they don’t fully buy into his whole ministry, are at least decent enough people that they don’t want to see him killed. And they know that’s exactly what Herod is trying to do. They can see the tower start to lean as Jesus gets closer to Jerusalem. They can see the block that Jesus is reaching for, and they can see the large snag on the block that will catch and cause the entire tower to come tumbling down. So they run up to Jesus and they’re like, no, turn around, go the other way, grab a different block. If you don’t, if you keep going forward on this path, the whole thing’s going to come crashing down.
Herod too, I think, sees Jesus’ ministry as a game of Jumbling Tower. Only for Herod, the tower that’s going to crumble is the tower of his own power and control. If he lets Jesus keep going, keep teaching, keep healing, keep inciting the crowds about the promise of the coming kingdom of God, Jesus is eventually going to dislodge the block that supports Herod’s entire precariously balanced reign. There is, in Herod’s view, already a king in Judea, and there is not space for another one. The only solution Herod can see to keeping his own tower standing is to get rid of Jesus.
Both Herod and the Pharisees are trying to prop up unstable towers, to keep things exactly the same. And what’s driving this need for stability is fear. The Pharisees are afraid for Jesus’ life, Herod is afraid to lose control. Fear. In Bible study this week, we were talking about this story and what I found incredibly powerful was just how current the political machinations Luke describes feel. Herod is afraid. And because he is afraid, he is fear-mongering. He is trying to gather people behind him to spread the news that this barefoot preacher from Galilee is dangerous, is a threat to safety, stability, and everything that the people of Israel hold dear.
And what did Jesus do? Jesus leaned into that fear. “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.” From the very beginning of Luke’s Gospel, the conflict has been billed as a battle between the powers of the world, as represented by Herod, and the power of God, displayed in Jesus. We saw it when Mary sang “My soul magnifies the Lord…who has brought down the powerful from their thrones.” We saw it when Herod imprisoned John for exhorting the people against all the evil things Herod had done. We saw it when the devil took Jesus to Jerusalem to test him. And since the transfiguration, when Jesus turned his face and his feet toward Jerusalem, we could feel the pressure rising, as the two great forces seemed to be drawing ever closer to each other, gearing up for the great cosmic battle between Jesus and Herod. To return to the Jumbling Tower analogy, Herod seems determined to push Jesus’ tower over before Jesus can topple his. In Herod’s mind, Jesus has to die, because it is the only way that power can be maintained.
But here’s the thing. What’s amazing about this text is that Jesus is actually planning to die. The Pharisees thought that they could scare Jesus away from Herod by telling him that Herod was trying to kill him, but Jesus was not afraid of Herod and he was not afraid of death. Jesus told the Pharisees, “I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.” Herod wants to kill Jesus because he is afraid, but Jesus is steadily walking toward death, death on his own terms, because he is not afraid. And Jesus is not afraid, because Jesus knows that his death is not the end of the story. In fact, his death is just the beginning of the story. Jesus knows that resurrection follows death, that in fact it isn’t until he dies, that life can begin.
And so, sisters and brothers, I think the question this text asks of us is what would we do if we were not afraid. Who would we be, what chances would we take, what power would we have, if we leaned into the fear, if we truly understood that in Jesus there is always the opportunity to begin again. Sometimes I think we think of faith as the thing that props up the Jumbling Towers of our lives, when in reality, sometimes the towers just fall, and faith is comfort of knowing that when that tower falls, God is always there to build it up again.
And so, as we continue through this journey of Lent, I challenge you this week to do something that scares you. Introduce yourself to someone who is different than you. Get to know them, get to know their background, where they’re from, what drives them. Find commonality, but also rejoice in your differences. Agree to disagree on something. Or maybe commit to a regular prayer practice. Give God the time or the money or the talent you have been holding back because you were afraid you did not have enough to go around. Or forgive yourself or someone else for something you’ve been holding onto. Let go of your need to control the outcome, and instead focus only in the very next step in the journey. Lean into your fear, whatever it may be, trusting that when the towers around you come crumbling down, Jesus is on his unwavering journey to Jerusalem, and no amount of fear will keep him from completing his work of bringing resurrection to all. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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