In his agony, Job asked if it were possible to put God on trial. Each gospel has a distinctive take on exactly that. Mark focuses on the "senseless nightmare", the Kafka-esqe qualities of a trial marked by Jesus' stillness at the eye of the storm. Matthew challenges us to match words with actions: "'The words are your own', says Jesus. If you mean them, where do you stand?" Luke "challenges us not only to stand with those left out and left over, but to find *in ourselves* the poverty and exclusion we fear and run away from in others." For John, Jesus is king of a kingdom that "does not compete for space in the world," one that threatens earthly authorities "because it puts into question the very definitions of belonging and power that previously seemed so obvious." How can we apply this in our lives, when the martyrs of the early church occurred so many centuries ago?

"... we have to make room for God in prayer and repentance, *day after day*. At the time of trial it will become apparent how honest we have been in letting God in."

"Real life in Christ requires us to look death in the face - the little deaths of dishonesty and evasion as much as the great risks faith may run."

Experimentum Crucis: The significance of reflecting on the passion and the gospel stories of the trial is that "the question we are left with as we read is about who we are. The various ways in which we can ask Jesus who he is, summed up in the variety of ways he is cross-examined by his judges, tell us where we are coming from, what it is in us that is afraid of the prisoner in the dock."

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