Mark 14.53-65

CAIAPHAS

(Mark 14.53-65)

'The High Priest tore his robes and said, "We don't need any more witnesses! You have heard his blasphemy. What is your decision?" [Mark 14.63]

The decision of his fellow priests was that Jesus was guilty and should therefore be put to death.

Caiaphas was High Priest in Jerusalem from 18-36 AD. It was he who presided over the appearance of Jesus before the Sanhedrin, the ecclesiastical court of seventy. As regards the exact nature of the meeting, which took place between midnight and 5.00am the following day, scholars are uncertain. Some would say it was a Jewish trial. Others, noting the considerable number of irregularities if it was a trial, have suggested that it was a meeting of some members of the Sanhedrin with a view to forming a charge.

Clearly, as far as St Mark was concerned, trying to explain to the early converts why the Messiah came to die a criminal's death, he was anxious to show how the Jews were responsible for that death.

For our purposes, we are not interested in the details of the trial but rather what was the possible motivation behind the action of Caiaphas and his fellow priests.

Why then did they want to get rid of Jesus?

Some would say that it was out of retaliation for Jesus cleansing their Temple.

Perhaps we should look again at the incident.

Every adult Jewish male was expected to pay an annual Temple tax, the equivalent of the wages of two days for an average working man. Since all coins bore the heads of various secular rulers, it was necessary to change the money into acceptable Temple coinage, in order to avoid the charge of using graven images for a sacred purpose. Those responsible for the changing of the money charged exorbitant commissions since they had a captive market. Any surplus which they made, went into the pockets of the priesthood.

But, not only were they lining their pockets at the expense of pilgrims, they were also lining their stomachs!

Let me explain.

Only unblemished pigeons and doves were considered a worthy offering for sacrifice. Whilst these could be easily purchased cheaply outside the Temple, the Temple inspectors responsible for ensuring that such creatures were in perfect condition invariably managed to find some flaws. In order to ensure that such sacrificial creatures were acceptable it was deemed necessary to buy such creatures from the Temple stalls. And guess who owned these? None other than the father-in-law of Caiaphas. Since the Temple stall holders had the monopoly of selling suitable creatures, they could charge what they liked. In addition to this, only a small portion of each creature was used for the purposes of sacrifice, the remainder being used to furnish the tables of the priests.

Little wonder that Jesus sought to cleanse the Temple of its malpractices. Little wonder that Caiaphas, his father-in-law Annas and their fellow priests were angered at the action of Jesus and wanted to silence him because he threatened their dishonest livelihood.

And if that was not enough, Jesus also challenged some of their teaching, especially that concerning the resurrection of the dead. Whilst the Sadducees had some shadowy belief in the resurrection of the soul, they denied the physical resurrection of the body. Thus Jesus, by raising Lazarus from the dead, caused the average person to begin to question the teaching of the Church leaders. So their authority as teachers was being challenged by the action of Jesus.

But worse still, their overall position of influence over the nation was threatened.

Let me explain.

When the Jews returned from exile, they relied heavily upon the priesthood for leadership and guidance as they sought to replace the monarchy with a theocracy. The priesthood, therefore, became part of the Jewish aristocracy. As the years rolled by, the priesthood became more and more involved in the political life of the nation, often to the neglect of their religious duties.

So when the Roman Empire began to spread its tentacles of power and influence to include the Holy Land, they used the priesthood as a means of establishing their rule and authority, watched over by the Roman Procurator named Pilate. In other words, the priesthood had allowed themselves to become pawns of the Roman Empire, to whom they owed their comfortable life style.

Now all this was being challenged by an itinerant preacher from Nazareth, together with their malpractices in the Temple and some of their teaching. In short, their whole way of life was under threat.

What made matters even worse was that the whole nation was growing restless and was looking for a leader to challenge the current religious and political situation. No wonder they were anxious to see Jesus removed from influence. No wonder they began to plot his death, even though they could not agree as regards the precise charges.

At the end of the day, it was not Jesus on trial before Caiaphas, but Caiaphas and all his cronies who were on trial before Jesus.

ooOOOoo

And what of ourselves?

There is a basic human need to feel safe, from the cradle to the grave. Whenever that personal security is threatened we often hit out, sometimes in the most irrational ways.

Whilst we may not seek to crucify those who threaten our security, we do often seek to protect ourselves by character assassination. Such expressions as 'idealist', 'visionary', 'eccentric', 'inexperienced', 'misguided', 'lacks maturity', 'conservative' and ‘radical' fall very easily from our lips as we seek to discredit those who threaten us.

Character assassination may not seek to destroy by physical death. Nevertheless, it seeks to silence and to discredit those who threaten our security. In much the same way as Caiaphas and his cronies sought to discredit and silence Jesus when their future came under threat.

So as we stand before the cross, let us not be too hard on Caiaphas and his colleagues. There, but for the grace of God, go we all, when we seek to silence, by character assassination, those who threaten us.

O God, our heavenly Father, whose blessed Son before his passion cast out from the temple those who desecrated the holy place: Cleanse our hearts and minds, we pray thee, from all evil thoughts and imaginations, from all unhallowed appetites and ambitions; that in lives made pure and strong by thy Holy Spirit we may glorify thy name and advance thy kingdom in the world, as disciples of the same, thy Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen