The Powerful Have Always Preferred Their Prophets Dead
A Lenten reflection on Trump, Mueller, and the measuring stick God reserves for the powerful.
Dear friends,
Letters from Leo is publishing daily Lenten reflections through Easter, available exclusively to paid subscribers.
Each day during Lent, I’m sharing a short meditation rooted in the day’s scripture readings — exploring what it means to follow Jesus more faithfully in the midst of American civic and political life. Not as partisans first, but as Christians whose consciences are shaped by the Cross.
These reflections are my most personal writing. They are meant to be read when you can find a quiet moment. I hope they meet you where you are.
Robert Mueller died on Friday night. He was eighty-one years old, a Bronze Star and Purple Heart veteran who had served his country in Vietnam and in courtrooms for decades before Parkinson’s disease claimed his body.
A man of deep and private faith. Within minutes of the news, the president of the United States posted five words on Truth Social: “Good, I’m glad he’s dead.”
Jeremiah knew what faithful service costs. “I was like a trusting lamb led to slaughter,” he writes in today’s first reading, “not knowing they were hatching plots against me.” The prophet obeyed God and spoke the truth. His reward was a conspiracy to cut him off from the land of the living. The powerful have always preferred their prophets dead.
Today’s Gospel carries the same tension. The temple guards return to the Pharisees empty-handed, unable to arrest Jesus.
“Never before has anyone spoken like this man,” they reported. The Pharisees did not care whether the guards were right — the claim threatened their authority, and that was reason enough to dismiss it. Nicodemus tried to insist on due process. They shut him down without a hearing.
President Trump has said, more than once, that he wants to get into heaven. He has wondered aloud whether he has done enough. Today’s readings answer him with a clarity he will not welcome: the narrow road does not run through celebrating your enemy’s death.
