24 HOURS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD                                                            MARCH 26, 2006

SERMON: THE CAIAPHAS COMPLEX                           JOHN 11: 45-53 AND MATT 26:3-5; 57-68

CAIAPHAS: THE CONTROVERSY

Today I continue with the theme: 24 Hours that Changed the World.  We’re going to look at Jesus’ Appearance/Trial before Caiaphas the High Priest over the Sanhedrin.  The role of Caiaphas in the trial and crucifixion of Jesus can be seen from numerous angles and vantage points.  Caiaphas is something of a lightning rod personality and our Jewish friends often feel they are mischaracterized somehow; considered children of Caiaphas.  I was doing some research for this sermon and came across websites with Bible dictionary articles which referred to Caiaphas as “bloodthirsty” “enemy of Christ” “wretch” and on and on.  Parenthetically, the ossuary (bone box) of the actual Caiaphas of this narrative has been discovered.  (insert photo).

Many scholars completely discount this whole story; it was an attempt to rewrite their beginnings to make Rome look better – to curry favor with the real power-brokers of the world – and to make the Jews look worse.  Firstly, the High Priest did have power in capital cases (to put people to death) some of which are mentioned in the NT itself: the stoning of Stephen and James for instance.  Caiaphas could have executed Jesus without Pilates’ permission – like he would have cared.  If the charge was blasphemy, the method of execution according to Leviticus would have been stoning.  That was the Jewish method of execution.  Finally, it is difficult to see how Jesus would have posed a threat to Caiaphas.  Judaism had room for many differing expressions then (Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes). 

So many believe the story was re-written to make the Jews the real culprits and Caiaphas is the culprit in chief or the High Culprit.  In other words: Jesus was crucified by Romans and for Roman reasons.  Jews didn’t crucify.  The complicity of Caiaphas as representative of the Jewish people was a later historical fabrication which intended to make the Jews the bad-guys and give later Christians a better hearing with Rome.  Later Christians didn’t want their sacred texts make Rome look bad because they have to gain favors and don’t want these persecutions to continue.  So they make the Jews the bad-guys and take Rome off the hook.  Pilate comes out as almost forced by Caiaphas to crucify Jesus.  Actually if Caiaphas had any role at all, it would have been the other way round.

THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST

Mel Gibson’s movie simply took that idea and magnified it.  At a recent academic meeting, leading Jesus scholars called his movie perhaps the most morally depraved movie ever humanity had ever produced.  I think that is incredibly unfair.  The movie was filled with silly blunders (Jesus speaking Latin) and excessive non-biblical legendry, but it was not, in my opinion, morally depraved.  The movie, from start to finish, sought to make all sinners to blame for the death of Jesus.  It in no way made Jews particularly responsible for Jesus’ death.

So Caiaphas stands at the middle of all this confusion and debate.  Besides all this, it is an interesting fact of history that in 1990 what is almost certainly his bone box (ossuary) was discovered in Jerusalem.  An ossuary is where the bones of Jewish leaders were retained in the expectation of the final day of resurrection.  If God is going to resurrect the body, we may as well help out by making sure all the bones are in one place.  We have Joseph Caiaphas’ actual ossuary.

MR. CAIAPHAS, I PRESUME

My assumption as I read the New Testament is that it is not a historical fabrication.  There is nothing about the story that is incredible or impossible and fits what we know of Caiaphas from the Jewish historian Josephus.  But these criticisms make me aware of the degree to which Caiaphas was a puppet of Rome.  One thing both Josephus (a Jewish Historian of the time) and all the gospel writers tell us is that the High Priest Caiaphas had a particularly close relationship with the Roman government – and with Pilate in particular.  Pilate was governor he had actually appointed Caiaphas as High Priest (in 26 AD).  They came into office at the same time and went out together.  They were both deposed at the same time.  They knew each other very well yet Pilate was clearly the one in charge.  So, Caiaphas was well-liked by Rome and by Pilate.  At least they saw him as very useful. 

Secondly, Pilate was clearly in charge of this relationship.  Knowing the degree to which Pilate controlled the High Priesthood has changed the way I’ve read the story.  Rome picked and established the High Priests at will.  Pilate as Procurator of Judea had complete control over Caiaphas.  Josephus tells us that Pilate had actually impounded all the garments of the High Priest and put them under military guard.  This is a powerful statement: I’m the one in control here.  You cannot do your High Priestly thing without these garments and you have to come to me to get them.  That Jesus would have had a hearing and perhaps a trial before Caiaphas before being dispatched to Pilate is not beyond belief.  But, behind all this, we can expect to see the hand of Pilate at work.  Caiaphas is the Pilate’s puppet more than likely.

CAIAPHAS’ PRESSURE POINTS

But Caiaphas is more than a puppet.  He certainly has a personal agenda here.  It is very likely that the innovation of allowing money-changers to set up shop within the temple was Caiaphas’ own decision.  These money-changers provided a useful service (changing Roman coin into temple currency fit for use in the temple) and by ruling that all this had to occur within the temple itself, the High Priestly treasury make tremendous profit.  This was more than likely his innovation and it was very controversial.  You know how Jesus responded.  In all the gospels, Jesus’ cleansing of the temple is a pivotal event from which the animus of the Priesthood stems.  The temple cleansing wasn’t really a cleansing (it probably took five minutes to put the tables back up!) but a statement – rejection!  Jesus is saying two things by cleansing the temple.  First: I reject the abuse of power here – making great profit off of the people who come to worship.  Second: I’m here to establish a new kingdom and this temple isn’t needed any more. 

Knowing that this was likely Caiaphas’ own decision and one which brought him great profit, Jesus’ cleansing of the temple becomes a personal and dangerous affront to Caiaphas’ authority.  It is interesting that the false charges brought against Jesus deal with the threat Jesus posed to the temple complex: “Destroy this temple and I will raise it in three days.”  The cleansing of the temple could have played into this threat; it could have been viewed as a direct attack on the 2^nd Temple system.  It could have been seen as the precursor of the final destruction Jesus intended for the temple.

So Caiaphas has two pressure points here.  The first is external; namely, Rome and Pilate.  Pilate has crushed many Messianic claimants already and he’s very anxious to keep Jerusalem quiet during this Passover.  Passover is the dangerous period; city is packed with over a million people.  Caiaphas feels the pressure to hand this person over and let Rome keep the city quiet.  The second pressure point he feels is internal: Caiaphas wants to protect his turf.  Jesus message of the coming Kingdom of God making all things new calls into question the validity of the old.  He’s in charge of the old and has a vested interest in the old (the temple).  Jesus’ cleansing of the temple showed his contempt for his administration of the temple.  It is interesting that in the two passages read, we have differing tendencies which reflect the internal and external pressures felt by Caiaphas.

INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL PRESSURE

External Pressure: Caiaphas in John 11 is involved in Jesus’ death not so much as one who is plotting behind the scenes but one who simply prophesies due to his office as High Priest.  Caiaphas here is under pressure from Pilate to help keep things quit.  In the following passage, the chief priests and Pharisees are wondering what to do with Jesus.  They say, Jesus is out there performing signs and everyone is following him.  If things continue, everyone will believe and then Rome will come in and destroy our holy place and nation.  Caiaphas answered in John 11:49-53 (The Message)

49Then one of them--it was Caiaphas, the designated Chief Priest that year--spoke up, "Don't you know anything? 50 Can't you see that it's to our advantage that one man dies for the people rather than the whole nation be destroyed?" 51 He didn't say this of his own accord, but as Chief Priest that year he unwittingly prophesied that Jesus was about to die sacrificially for the nation, 52 and not only for the nation but so that all God's exile-scattered children might be gathered together into one people. 53 From that day on, they plotted to kill him.

Of course the writer wants you to know the irony here on two levels.  Jesus did die for the people but not in the manner they expected.  Caiaphas was prophesying as High Priest but did so unknowlingly and without real understanding.  Second, the city was destroyed by Rome anyway and also for real insurrection.  But the point here is that Caiaphas is saying, “Let’s give the Romans Jesus to save hundreds of lives.”  People felt Jesus posed a genuine threat to the security of the city.  It is a political powderkeg and Jesus is believed by many to be a Messianic insurrectionist.  So this passage shows us the Caiaphas who is responding to the pressures of Roman brutality (they will destroy us if we don’t keep things quit) and the political reality of the messianic powerful dreams of kicking Rome in the teeth and the hope that Jesus was the one to do it.

Internal Pressure: In the Matthew passage, we see more of Caiaphas’ internal pressure: his concern for Jesus’ threat to the temple system he oversaw.  The false charge was that Jesus was going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days.  Jesus, in Matthew’s gospel, never made that claim but only prophesied that the temple would indeed be destroyed.  But Caiaphas put all these factors together: Jesus preaching a new kingdom and temple cleansing seemed to be a “out with the old and in with the new” mentality.  Jesus is a threat to the temple and Caiaphas wants to protect his turf.

But when Jesus answered Caiaphas’ question, “Are you the Messiah” with “From now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power” things simply exploded.  This would have seemed to Caiaphas like a military-messianic notion – Jesus seated in power at God’s right hand.  Jesus did not allay Caiaphas’ fears with, “Oh, Caiaphas, I’ve been misunderstood.  My kingdom is no threat to you or Rome.  It is a spiritual kingdom not of this world.”  Jesus doesn’t do this at all.  It is almost like Jesus is egging Caiaphas on.  Jesus knows that while Pilate may misunderstand Jesus’ intentions (He’s not wanting to lead armies against Rome) – even so, Jesus does pose a real threat to the status quo.  Jesus will be seated in power and his rule will make this present temple-system obsolete.  Jesus does pose a threat and he does hide this.

THE CAIAPHAS COMPLEX

So what is the big story here?  How is this the 24 hours that changed the world?  What I see here in Jesus’ trial before Caiaphas is a clash of Kingdoms.  The clash between Jesus and Caiaphas is simply the perfection of a clash that has been in force since the start of time.  Caiaphas represents that part of each one of us that becomes so manipulated by our political and economic loyalties that we cannot serve the true king anymore.  Caiaphas represents for us that tendency we have, little by little, to acculturate to the needs and forces of the day.  I wonder if God, as he peers into our hearts by the Spirit this morning, sees more of Caiaphas than kingdom?  The world has incredible economic, social and even spiritual pressures that force us into its mold.

Jesus posed a real threat to the status quo.  I think we need to read the story of Jesus before Caiaphas as something of a personal wake-up call.  We have two kingdoms represented here.  Caiaphas was a spiritual leader but he had long ago sold his soul for power and prestige.  He had become a puppet of the most violent political machines the world has ever seen.  Jesus wasn’t going to stand in the way of that.  Caiaphas forces us to ask those questions of ourselves.  How have I soul my soul out for power?  What have I done to get ahead?  To the degree we allow our souls to be manipulated for worldly advancement – to that degree we have become infected with the spirit of Caiaphas.

I wonder if you have something of a Caiaphas complex.  Caiaphas is an example for us of present realities and possibilities, and the way things can go wrong in spite of our best intensions.  Look, we live with powerful powerful social and societal pressures: the pressure to be rich, look great, get ahead, have the most toys.  Even in the church, we can sell out so easily to what our culture values.  There are competing kingdoms here: Rome and the Kingdom of God.  Caiaphas, in the middle, represents how even people who have religion can be completely sold out to Rome.  Don’t look down your nose at Caiaphas: it happens all the time in your own back yard – or living room.

Let me close with a few diagnostic questions.  If you had to choose right now between your money and your faith, which would you choose?  That is the question.  This Jesus intends to be Lord of all, and that may mean some temples have to come down.  Some old ways have to change and go.  Jesus is still a threat.  Let’s not tone him down.  If he’s not a threat, we’re not listening.  How is Jesus a threat to you?