Of Leopards and Power

Sometimes I can’t think of anything to say, so I remain silent.

Sometimes I can’t think of anything to say, but I know that I have to say something so I do; but I wonder, “Would it have been better to have said nothing at all?”

John the Baptist had something to say: something to say about the behaviour of God’s people and the judgment it would bring upon them; something to say about good behaviour and what just people should do. He did not remain silent; and though his message was good news, it also had a sting in its tail. And for John, as we know, it probably would have been better had he said nothing at all; but not for the people of God.

We believe that the news of God’s reign is good news; that it is worth telling other people about. We believe that we have something to say and something worth saying. It’s just that what we have to say does have a sting in its tail, not just for others, but for us. And the sting is so potent, that there will be times when we think it probably would have been better not to have said anything at all.
The message of God’s good news in Jesus Christ releases prisoners and sets the captive free. It also binds the powerful and loads responsibility on the rich. Our proclamation of the good news is the standard by which we are charged as hypocrites and sinners. It would be easy to think that it would probably be better if we didn’t say anything at all.

But we would miss the fundamental reality that this news is good. It is the sort of good news that we can celebrate, even as we know that our joy is also tinged with the pain of knowing that we do not live up to God’s call on our lives. We can celebrate the good news that God comes and dwells with us as we are, in order that we might receive the freedom of God’s reign in our lives; and discover that what we have to say is worth saying, and what we are called to do is worth doing, when it is about God’s kingdom, God’s reign, God’s order.

Of course, sometimes, we have been a little misguided in our understanding of the proclamation; in our enactment of the good news; and our supposed “good” news has bound the poor and laid responsibility on the disadvantaged. It has released the rich and set the powerful free to evade responsibility and victimise the powerless. There are times when we have simply got the story upside down and back-to-front.
I often think about this when I remember one of the Jungle Doctor Fables that were a feature of my Sunday School experience as a child: “Little leopards become big leopards and big leopards kill.” It’s the title and the moral of one of those Jungle Doctor Fables with which many of us would be familiar from our Sunday School days. “Little leopards become big leopards and big leopards kill.”

The fable tells the story of a leopard cub brought to a village by Perembi the hunter after Perembi had killed the cub’s mother for its magnificent coat. Perembi made a gift of the cub to the children of the village, much to the disdain of the village chief who proclaimed, “Little leopards become big leopards and big leopards kill.”

Now, as it happens, the chief was right. The cub grew from a cute little pet to a sleek, full-grown leopard. And as the story goes, “one day, when the leopard cub was no longer a cub, it discovered the taste of blood by tenderly licking a scratch on one of its playmates' legs.” The inevitable happens and the cub, now a full-grown leopard is ultimately killed by the chief for the havoc it wreaks in the village.
Now the moral of the story places the blame entirely upon the leopard: “Little leopards become big leopards and big leopards kill.” And that always worried me because it seemed to me that the leopard was just being a leopard—it had been captured by a human who had killed its mother; it had been kept captive by humans who thought it was cute; and it had eventually discovered that it was a leopard after all. “Little leopards become big leopards and big leopards kill.”

As a contemporary theologian, the moral of the story worries me even more, because the story was used to promote an understanding of the message of Christianity that, to me now, seems quite upside down and particularly back-to-front—a message that binds the poor and lays responsibility on the disadvantaged; that releases the rich and sets the powerful free to evade responsibility and victimise the powerless.
The story ends with the storyteller asking two questions: “What was the name of the leopard cub and what was the name of the Chief?” The explanation said that the name of the leopard was sin and the name of the Chief was Jesus because little sins become big sins and sins, big or small, kill. But I was always left feeling sorry for the poor orphan leopard which did just what leopards do. It always felt to me like the sting in the tail of the story had somehow been turned around the wrong way; and the wrong animal had been stung. What about Perembi the hunter who killed the cub’s mother for her beautiful coat? What about the village chief who seemed to be more interested in being seen to be right than in protecting the village?

In our reading from the Gospel of Luke for today, John the Baptist is crying out in the wilderness against people who take things for granted—people who presume that they belong to God simply because their ancestors did; people who are more interested in being seen to be right than in doing the right thing; people who use their power not to protect, but to threaten and extort.

John is calling the people to a different way of being, but not a way of being without consequences. He is calling the people to repentance, baptising them in the Jordan River as a sign of their renewal as the people of God; of their turning around; of them finding their feet again on God’s solid ground after they have been living lives that are upside down and back-to-front. And it wasn’t exactly an easy life to which John was calling them, “I baptise you with water, but someone is coming who is much greater than I am ... That one will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire (Luke 3:16).

John tried to explain to all of them the significance of their undertaking: “I offer you a taste of freedom, a foretaste of the Kingdom but there is another who comes who will give you this freedom and will bring in the Kingdom. But, that will be a scary sort of thing because it will completely change your world. And if you're serious about being free then let's start right here. You tax collectors don't collect more than is legal. You soldiers don't steal from others to supplement your own incomes. Those who have more than enough must share what they have with their neighbour. The powerful must not abuse the powerless.”

Of course, this message of John’s does have a sting in the tail, because if you’re really serious about it, you have to do something and something which won’t necessarily make your life easier. Not that John suggests that not doing anything is entirely an easy option either, “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

So, back to our leopard story for a moment: it never seemed to me that the leopard was the one who had the power in the story at all. Perembi the hunter killed its mother and the village chief killed it. And I wonder what John the Baptist might have made of this tale of the death of a mother leopard for the sake of its only coat; and the death of the leopard cub for the sake of it not fitting a life of captivity.

The good news story is a story of freedom and responsibility: freedom for the captive and the powerless; responsibility for the rich and the powerful. It has a sting in its tail; but it is fundamentally good news for those who need it. It is the sort of good news that we can celebrate, even as we know that our joy is also tinged with the pain of knowing that we do not live up to God’s call on our lives. We can celebrate the good news that God comes and dwells with us as we are, in order that we might receive the freedom of God’s reign in our lives; and discover that what we have to say is worth saying after all, and what we have to do is worth doing, because the order to which we’re being called is God’s; and in that order the captives go free and the powerful are bound.