We must always have seen this coming —the crafty, the cynicism, the plotting, all wielded by highly effective clergy of the day who’re conspiring to exterminate Jesus.
We must always have seen this coming as a result of the opening strains of the Gospel of John anticipate it. The interpretation often called The Message explains that Jesus, “ … got here to his personal folks, however they didn’t need him” (1:11). This rejection heats up by way of ten subsequent chapters of confrontations and allusions that anticipate the boiling level in in the present day’s passage.
The spiritual authorities didn’t need Jesus as a result of he was encroaching on their spiritual market share. “Many [of the people] … believed in him.” By his being and instructing and indicators, Jesus threatened change, lack of management, lack of energy because the world wields it. The “authorities” obtained that proper.
However the dedication to kill Jesus was extra difficult than rivalry, pettiness or worry of change per se. Caiaphas and the Pharisees and their cohort had been acknowledged by the Romans because the legit stewards of their folks’s faith. In return, they had been anticipated to maintain the populace in line. And so, “If we let him go on like this, everybody will consider in him, and the Romans will come and destroy each our holy place and our nation.”
Many people are rightly preoccupied by and anxious about implicating “the Jews” within the crucifixion of Jesus. The age-old scourge of antisemitism—presently undulating in new varieties and giving rise to new questions—has been bred largely attributable to narratives within the Gospel of John, together with in the present day’s passage.
What if, nonetheless, in the present day’s textual content can function a cautionary story to all? We are able to marvel about our personal complicity with methods of abusive, prejudicial energy. We are able to marvel about our personal unholy alliances, how we rationalize what we name “essential evils.” How is Jesus posing a risk to your personal order? How are you conspiring to carry him down?
Patrick Raymond is a priest of the Diocese of Chicago, at the moment serving as Interim Rector of Emmanuel Church, Mercer Island, Washington.
