After a conversation with my husband in which the root of some of my current religious struggles took shape, I was reading in John 11. I found some interesting material I've never noticed before.
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| Source: Lazaro, Ven Fuero, Jorge Cocco Santangelo |
In that chapter, Lazarus gets sick and dies. Jesus gets to Bethany after Lazarus has been dead for four days. Because Bethany was so close to Jerusalem, it wasn't safe for Jesus to come any sooner. As it was, the apostles thought they would all die there.
Lazarus being restored to life is such a beautiful story, I've never paid attention to this subtext of personal danger on the Savior's part. But in our current political climate, it's hard not to see it above all else. In my mind, the rational for why the Pharisees wanted to kill Jesus was a power struggle born of jealousy. But the scriptures we have clarify that it goes much deeper than that.
48 If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation...
52 And not for that nation only, but that also he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad.
Their response to power they could neither understand nor control was not just jealousy. It was the irrational, but deeply-held belief that they would lose their nation and identity as Jews to Rome. They were afraid that Jesus would reunify the lost tribes of Israel, reunifying the kingdom and thereby challenging their power and superiority.
It was an anti-immigrant, nationalistic stance born of fear, hatred, and ignorance.
How did the Pharisees and their supporters justify the decision to kill Jesus, through which they would break any law, enter into any conspiracy, and shed innocent blood?
Nationalism. A rotten fruit of the human spirit, from which no good has ever come.
If the Pharisees were alive today, they'd be wearing red hats that say "Make Jerusalem Great Again." They followed Caiaphas, who couldn't be a better parallel for many of the leaders on the world stage today. Caiaphas was willing to justify murder for the sake of his nation, because "it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not."
Jesus was arrested illegally, given an unjust trial, sentenced against the law of his people, and killed because of a vocal minority's fear mongering and manufactured narratives. No one understands nationalism and the injustice that comes from it better than he does.
Like the rest of us, Jesus was a man of many good intentions living in an unjust world. Nothing he could do in mortality could ever make life just. He suffered and died because he tried to make life just a little more fair for the disadvantaged and the outcast. He believed in equality. He believed, and hoped against hope, that he could make a difference. It was exhausting to him. The more he gave to the poorest in his society, the more some people hated him. And even he couldn't change that.
We all will experience that same ugliness of spirit, because evil is timeless & has a habit of repeating itself. But we can't give up, the same way Jesus never did. We can't make things fair. But we can make things better than they would be if we did nothing at all.
Now that Jesus is no longer mortal, has risen from the dead, and sits in judgment over the entire human race, he has the power to right all wrongs. He has the power to achieve justice and fairness. We will have our day in court. We will all have justice.
The injustice and unfairness that surround us are not God's doing. But with his help, we can travel on the same long, arduous road where he walked to create change. It won't be easy, but nothing worth the time ever really is.
