"False"

Rev. Matthew Miller

FROM THE GOSPELS Matthew 26:57-68 Click here to watch the sermon "False"

Before we consider this account of Jesus’ trial before the high priest, Caiaphas, and the temple scribes and elders, I want to back up for a second to explain why we’ve diverted from our practice of hearing texts from the shared cycle of readings to examine these readings from what’s known as the passion narrative. When Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem, these are the events he knew awaited him. I don’t think he was speaking from some hidden divinity when he predicted this outcome, or out of a kind of supernatural clairvoyance. Jesus had already encountered his share of resistance from the religious establishment. He knew that who he was and what he had to say and offer would not be welcomed by those whose positions of religious authority would be threatened by him. The series of events that carried him to the cross are a part of every one of the four gospels. In each one, they account for a third of what these books offer in their account of the good news. And yet as a community of faith, we don’t spend much time with this rather sizable part of the story. The three-year cycle of Sunday readings that we share with Catholic and Protestant traditions alike only pulls them out for the Sunday before Easter, or for special services during holy week. I suspect that it is by a kind of design. That same cycle also avoids and edits other difficult passages of the bible that we never hear in worship, which is where many of us engage scripture the most. Certainly, people can read those passages on their own, but the beauty of worshipping as a community of faith is listening for God’s Word together, allowing it to shape our understanding and faithfulness as a body and not just as individuals. The avoidance is understandable. The problematic passages are often the ones that get dangerously misused to make claims about God and our world that can do real and lasting harm. When it comes to the passion, our objection isn’t all that far from what Peter expressed a couple of weeks ago before the transfiguration. We don’t want to witness Jesus’ rejection, suffering and death any more than he did. That isn’t why we come to church. We come to be uplifted. We come to be inspired. Hearing all that just makes us feel bad, and we want to feel good. I get it. I do. But what each of the gospel accounts demonstrate is that there is no good news without this part. Because this part is every bit as much a reflection of the human experience that Jesus shares with us, assumes upon himself and redeems as any other. A faith that fails to attend to suffering- both the suffering Jesus experiences and our own- has less to do with our trust in God and more to do with a kind of wishful thinking. It simply isn’t telling the truth. Which brings us to today’s passage. 

Given the history of how the passion story has been shared and responded to over the years, I feel like it needs to come with a warning. One Sunday I was guest preaching somewhere and made reference to the crucifixion being carried out by the Roman Empire. It wasn’t a stretch. Historians estimate that Rome crucified anywhere from 300 thousand to two million people over a 200 year span. In one recorded instance, 6,000 people were executed at one time. And that kind of mass execution was more common than you’d imagine. After the service an older gentleman came up to correct me. The Romans hadn’t killed Jesus, he informed me, it was the Jews. I was taken aback. He went on to explain that in the New York neighborhood where he grew up, they would often harass the Jewish kids, calling them Christ killers. In Europe, where passion plays were staged for centuries, there would be a spike in anti-Jewish violence following their performance. So, the warning as we approach this account of Jesus being put on trial before the Temple establishment of Jerusalem is to resist reading this as indictment of an entire faith. As I’ve reminded you many times, Jesus was Jewish, the twelve were Jewish, the early church was mostly Jewish. The way of Jesus is very much shaped by Jewish belief and practice. In fact, the very first controversy in the church was over what role, if any, that non-Jewish believers should play. Some of that contention gets projected backward into the gospels which weren’t written until well into the third decade of the church’s existence. To get a truer sense of what’s going on here, it might be helpful to frame this not as Jesus being put on trial by the so-called Jews, but by the powers of the religious establishment. Because what takes place in the high priest’s house has less to do with religious identity than it does with religion and religious authority itself. The truth is that regardless of creed, when human beings are given the privilege of speaking for and about God, the faith can come second to the preservation of that kind of elevated status. For example, not long ago the ordered ministries of our own tradition were distinguished in terms of ruling elders in a congregation who serve on the session, teaching elders who are called to serve congregations as their pastors, and deacons. This kind of language was in keeping with the principal of shared power between pastors and congregational leadership. But then a move was made to revert to the old language that set pastors apart as Ministers of the Word and Sacrament, a title with a far more elevated sound. To be specific the religious leadership that put Jesus on trial was Jewish and the political leadership that carried out his execution was Roman. The fact is that Jesus’ death was brought about by the collusion of church and state, politics and religion. Truthfully, while names may change, that same collusion has continued over two thousand years to do more harm to our witness of the gospel than any other.  

Sadly, it’s the same playbook we see on display before Caiaphas, the scribes and the elders of the Temple. They start by trying to find false witnesses against him. They start by suggesting he said or stands for things he never said, or championed. A few years ago my daughter Grace and I were at a family wedding and took a little time for her favorite activity, thrift shopping. As we were flipping through the rack of t-shirts that once belonged to someone else, we came across one with a picture that was unmistakably supposed to be Jesus, winking, with the words, “I never said that.” She got it for me for Father’s Day that year. People are still trying to assign positions to Jesus that he never spoke about: from gay marriage, to abortion, to immigration. What he did do consistently was break with conventional religious practice when it came to healing on the Sabbath, or touching lepers, or interacting with women as full and equal members of the human race. Jesus was a threat because he didn’t just challenge the practices, he undermined the authority that held its position through strict enforcement of Sabbath law, and purity law, and the subjugation of women. And that is really what this trial is all about. Jesus is a threat because he exposes the spiritual bankruptcy of those who substitute self-righteous and self-serving religious practice of any kind for humble trust in God and God’s ability to put things right in the world. When the multitudes were hungry, he said to his disciples, “you feed them,” not “ but only the ones who are deserving.” When his disciples tried to keep children from bothering him, he said, “let the children come to me.” Not, “they can come when they can sit still and be quiet.” When he told the story of the sheep and the goats, it was whoever welcomed the stranger that was offered the joy prepared, not whoever made sure the stranger had the right documents before welcoming them. And when he said, “destroy this temple and I will rebuild it in three days,” he wasn’t talking about a building. 

In an ironic use of language Caiaphas asks Jesus to swear, in the name of the living God, if Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. Back when his disciples were asked who they said he was, these were the same words that Peter used. “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” When Peter confessed it, he said it in all sincerity even if he didn’t really know what it meant. Jesus praised him and called him the rock upon which the church would be built. When Caiaphas asks, Jesus simply answers, “you have said so.” After all the false testimony against him, Caiaphas finally says the one thing that is true, but he himself cannot bring himself to  believe it. 

That’s the problem with misinformation and false testimony. Even the truth in the wrong hands can be used in deadly ways to get rid of what is inconvenient to us. Jesus would rather die than be used in that way. In the end, this trial isn’t about a single religion that twists the truth to send Jesus to his death. It’s about any religion or religious person who would use their version of him to secure their authority over others to get what they want. When that happens, we might as well be the ones who sent him to his death. Because we do. Every. Single. Time.