Sympathy for Caiaphas

Midweek Worship

The Seventh Week after Epiphany

A Reading from John’s Gospel:

Many of the Judeans therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what he had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, “What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.”

But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.”

He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God. So from that day on they planned to put him to death. Jesus therefore no longer walked about openly among the Judeans, but went from there to a town called Ephraim in the region near the wilderness; and he remained there with the disciples.

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

I sympathize with Caiaphas. I know I’m not supposed to. I know that he’s the boo-hiss villain of the New Testament, the leader of a corrupt religious and civil bureaucracy which condemns Jesus to an ignominious death. But I’m afraid we have a lot in common. We’re both clerics, both sinners; and both willing to compromise, I suspect, when it comes to conflict and risk.

Caiaphas married into his power. His father-in-law, Annas ben Seth, had been High Priest for a decade or so, a very prestigious and lofty position. The High Priest stood as successor to Aaron, the brother of Moses, ancient progenitor of the priestly line. Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, the High Priest would enter into the Holy of Holies, the Sanctum Sanctorum in the center of the Temple at Jerusalem: a place so holy that none were allowed entry save for this one man on this one day.

He would clothe himself in white, like an angel, like a god, and pass through the great thick curtain that divided the sanctuary from the Holy of Holies. This curtain represented the border between the visible, physical world we know, and the greater reality of the spirit; which is to say, Heaven, here on earth. There the high priest would offer mixed blood, representing the mingling of the human and the divine, as expiation for the people—forgiveness for their sins.

So sacred was this duty that a cord was tied ‘round the High Priest’s waist, so that were he to be struck dead by the unfettered glory of God in His Heaven, the other priests could pull his body back through the curtain, back into our world. Legend holds that each year, on the Day of Atonement, a bloody red thread would be tied to the doors of the Temple, and when the High Priest’s offering was complete, that thread would turn miraculously white for all the crowds to see.

This wonder occurred annually, only to cease some 40 years before the destruction of the Temple, right around the time when Jesus was crucified. This was said to have happened, according to the rabbis, because of the people’s “baseless hate.”

In the time of Jesus, there is no king on the throne of Judea, no son of David to claim the crown, only the Prefects of Rome. And so the role of High Priest held not only religious significance, but political power as well. Annas was deposed from office after the death of the Emperor Augustus, probably because he’d backed the wrong horse somewhere along the way. But that didn’t mean he was powerless. Far from it, for he had many sons.

All told, five of Annas’ sons would eventually hold the High Priesthood in succession, along with one son-in-law, Joseph ben Caiaphas, whom we know simply as Caiaphas, the High Priest at the time of Jesus’ trial. Annas may not be on the throne, but he’s still the power behind the throne. Caiaphas, let’s be honest, is the front man. He still has to defer back to daddy.

When it comes to the question of Christ, Caiaphas finds himself in an impossible situation. The whole city’s gone nuts over Jesus. It’s already the Passover, the most volatile time of the year, when the city is crammed with pilgrims come to celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Religious and ethnic fervor has reached its annual peak. If there’s going to be an uprising, it’s going to be here, and it’s going to be now. And the Romans know it.

They have a fortress attached to the Temple Mount itself, the very heart of Judean identity and faith. At the first sign of trouble, they’ll unsheathe the sword, stab first and ask questions later. And now here’s Jesus on top of it all—Jesus, whom the rumors say raised Lazarus from the dead, just the other day, not two miles from Jerusalem, in front of a massive crowd. Now everyone thinks He’s the Messiah, the promised Son of David come to lead His people to freedom.

And if that happens—if Jesus starts a war, in the midst of Jerusalem, in the midst of the Passover—then the Romans will bring down the hammer. They’ll unleash the Legions, and believe you me, ancient armies have no stun setting. They’ll kill everyone. So what is Caiaphas to do with this Jesus, this would-be Messiah, this King who rides in on a donkey? Well, the calculus is clear enough. Kill Him. Do it quickly, do it quietly, away from the crowds, away from the mob.

Is He guilty? Does it matter? What is the life of one scraggly desert rabbi when compared to the entire population of Jerusalem and Judea? Surely it is better for one man to die than for the entire nation to be destroyed. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one, after all. So they hire a spy, and trump up a charge, and get the Romans to do their dirty work for them.

Would I have done any better? Would I have ruled any differently? It’s not that I think Caiaphas was right, but I fear that I’d have been just as wrong. We constantly kill people in the Middle East, claiming that missiles save lives in the long run. But here’s the thing—here’s the thing—what Caiaphas did in the banality of evil God was able to shape for good. He took the worst we could throw at Him, the lash, the cross, the nails, the spear, and turned it into our salvation.

He forgave us even as we were murdering Him, and thus turned what appeared as His final defeat into His eternal victory, trampling down death by death. God does this all the time in the pages of the Scriptures. He foils the plans of evil men not by destroying us but by redeeming us, by taking our sins and drowning them in the ocean of His grace.

And that doesn’t mean that evil’s good, or that it’s even excusable. But it does mean that there is nothing I can do or say which God cannot redeem. There is no wound He cannot heal, no wrong He cannot right, no sin He cannot forgive. I’m no better than Caiaphas. My wickedness is no less banal. Yet here’s a man who murdered God and thereby saved the world! And if that’s what Christ can do through him, my God, there’s hope for me.

You know, one of Caiaphas’ brothers-in-law, who held the High Priesthood after him, was named Theophilus: Theophilus ben Annas. And that’s also to whom the Gospel of Luke is addressed: to “most excellent Theophilus.” It might be the same guy. It might be the High Priest. It might be that the very same family who executed Jesus are the ones to whom this Gospel is dedicated and addressed. God defeats His murderers by loving us back to life.

We have all been enemies of God. We have all together crucified the Christ. And yet He rises, bearing scars, to heal our every wound. Now there’s a God worth the name.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.