Fighting A Battle You Know You’ll Lose
Every political instinct told me to walk it back. There were moments I did — chose the cautious word, the calculated silence. Those were the moments I felt furthest from God.
Dear friends,
Letters from Leo is publishing daily Lenten reflections through Easter, available exclusively to paid subscribers.
These reflections are meditations on the day’s scripture readings. They are meant to be read in a quiet moment whenever you can find one.
Today is Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent. We are turning toward Jerusalem now.
The cross is getting closer, and it’s not too late to join.
Walk with us today.
“Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us; he sets himself against our doings.” — Wisdom 2:12
There is a moment in every life when you know what walking into the room will cost you. You can feel it before you open the door — the weight of what you are about to say, the faces that will turn, the silence that will follow. Most of the time, we turn around. Prudence is the word we reach for. Bad timing is the excuse we give.
Jesus, in today’s Gospel, does not turn around.
He knows they want to kill him. John is explicit: Jesus was moving through Galilee because the authorities in Judea were looking for a way to destroy him. The threat was not abstract.
People with power had decided he needed to die. And yet when the feast came, he went up to Jerusalem — not openly, not with fanfare, but he went. He walked into the room. He stood in the temple and taught.
The Book of Wisdom frames the dynamic with unbearable clarity. The wicked see a righteous figure and recognize the threat he poses — not to their safety, but to their self-image. Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us; he sets himself against our doings. His faithfulness is the indictment. He does not even need to speak.
So they plot. They condemn him to a shameful death. Their wickedness blinded them, Wisdom says. Power does that. It convinces you that you are the protagonist of every story, when in fact you have become the villain of this one.
I think about this when I remember running for Congress in Tennessee.
