Wednesday of Holy Week
Lectionary Texts:
OT: Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalter: Psalm 70 (UMH 793)
Epistle: Hebrews 12:1-3
Gospel: John 13:21-32
Jesus had three sets of enemies. The most persistent enemy was the Pharisees, with whom he frequently debated points of Torah. In Matthew 23 he lashes out at them with some of the sharpest invective in the Bible. Let me hasten to point out, however, that the Pharisees played absolutely no part in the death of Jesus. They did not conspire with the priests or the Romans. They did not seek to kill him. Jesus was not a significant threat to them. The Pharisees were laymen, most of whom had day jobs. They studied Torah, debated its finer points, and interpreted it. They understood that following Torah was pleasing to God, and that was what they sought to do.
The priests inherited their positions. They controlled the Temple and the Temple wealth, which was considerable. They administered the sacrifices. This involved saying the appropriate rituals and slaughtering the sacrificial animals. The priests were wealthy. They had extensive land holdings in and around Jerusalem. The priests were the most powerful Jews in Israel. They had an uneasy alliance with the Romans. The Romans granted them the ability to tax (the Temple tax) and exempted them from paying taxes to Rome. In exchange the Romans expected the priests to maintain order in Jerusalem. The political arm of the priests was the Sadducee party.
The Romans were the foreign occupying and governing force. They're language, customs, religion, and just about everything else were radically different from those of the Jews. They and the Jews did not associate with each other any more than was absolutely necessary. They ruled by violent force. 95% or more of the Romans in Israel were military men. They regarded the Jews as backward and ignorant people with very strange customs.
Two things Jesus did during this week caught the attention of the priests. In his discourse on the Mt. of Olives (Mark 13, Matthew 24, Luke 21), he prophesied the soon destruction of the Temple. He acted out this prophecy by overturning the tables and causing disruption in the Temple outer court. The priests realized that Jesus was threat to their authority and more than that, a threat to the Temple. That made him a threat to their livelihoods and a threat to what they believed in.
The High Priest Caiaphas had the Roman governor Pontius Pilate informed of the threat that Jesus posed. He appears to have put it to Pilate in terms of Jesus being a threat to violently overthrow the Roman occupying force. His Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem had seen him hailed with Hosannas as the deliverer, the King of the Jews. The Jews had had no ruling Jewish king since 586 B.C. The Romans were not about to let them have one now. Jesus may have had but a small band of followers, but both the priests and the Romans knew that his charisma would rapidly grow that small band. It was better to nip it in the bud, to get rid of Jesus now.
The Romans found an informant in one of Jesus' disciples, whom they bribed to make Jesus' nighttime location known to them. Under the cover of darkness, late that Thursday night, Jesus was secretly arrested.
The arrest did not come before Jesus could have one last supper with his disciples.
Lord Jesus,
Help us as we seek to be faithful, not to deny you like Peter or betray you like Jesus. Give us the courage to stand with you and stand for you, and to live in your name. Amen.
Faithfully,
Christian
1 comment:
My friend Paul had an interesting meditation on the betrayal of Jesus as our Lenten Ango (it's a Zen thing). Paul talked about how Judas asked, "How much will you give me if I had him over." Paul pointed out that Judas had already made the decision to betray Jesus - the "how much" was pretty irrelevant. Paul posed the question of whether any of us can truly change, if the die is cast. A firm believe in free will, as well as the Zen idea that everything is in constant change, and there is no fixed self ("You can't step in the same river twice,") I fell on the side of "Of course we can change." But Judas had made his choice, and many would say he was destined to. It's like he played a part in a play. What if he hadn't betrayed Jesus? We don't get a resurrection then. Not much of a story. I think Judas gets a bad rap. He reminds me of Job, someone who seems to be just a pawn of God and evil, but unlike Job, Judas never gets to speak for himself. I wonder.
I also wonder what various activists at the time were saying behind Jesus' back. History always tells one side of the story, but I'm sure there were many strategies on how to win back some freedom from the Romans, and crucifixion and resurrection probably wasn't among them. It's an unusual organizing tactic, and one I don't plan to try.
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