One man die
Caiaphas sees the way forward clearly: let one man die so the nation lives. It’s a numbers game. It’s always a numbers game with religion. What adds up? What balances the equation in our favor? This is an easy decision. Let one man die. One impious upstart irreligious peasant die. The people and the nation go on. The religion rolls on. It always requires sacrifice. They’ve shed lots of blood to get here; innumerable doves and goats and lambs. What’s a little more blood? What’s a little bit of human blood? What’s the difference? Why are the rest of you so blind?
Religion looks to kill anything that doesn’t fit neatly into its system. Don’t think for an instant Christianity the religion doesn’t work this way too. The crusades and the inquisition prove the point: conform or die. It isn’t unusual, it isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. The thing to keep in mind in this instance is what prompts the religious to act. A man (they keep referring to Jesus as “that man” or “the man”) has just raised someone from the dead. Raising someone from the dead doesn’t fit into the Jewish religious system. Once again we have to ask what really happened. If Jesus perpetrated a hoax with the intention leading people astray, maybe he deserves to die. If he raised a dead man because he’s in league with the devil he definitely needs to be stopped. Is this why Caiaphas wants to have Jesus killed?
Why would the whole nation perish if Jesus went on doing what he was doing? If everyone believed in him, how would that destroy the Jews? It might destroy Judaism but it wouldn’t destroy the people or the nation. When Christ performs the encore performance to the Lazarus resurrection and the whole world goes after him, he will actually go and take away Rome’s place and make Rome’s people into God’s people. There will be no more Jew and Gentile but one people (Ephesians 2). The Jewish “religion” was never meant to leave people in the cold. The Jews were set apart to attract the world to God. Here at the end of their religion, the leaders have come to the absolute pinnacle of their misconceived notions; there are observing Jews (Jews who conformed to their leader’s teachings about the law and the prophets) and there was everyone else. Jesus fell outside of that definition so they handed him over to the outsiders to take care of him. They didn’t sacrifice a Jew, they sacrificed an outsider so they could maintain their insider status.
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