Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him;but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council, and said, "What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on thus, every one will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation."
But one of them, Ca'iaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, "You know nothing at all; you do not understand that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish." He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.
So from that day on they took counsel how to put him to death. Jesus therefore no longer went about openly among the Jews, but went from there to the country near the wilderness, to a town called E'phraim; and there he stayed with the disciples.
Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and many went up from the country to Jerusalem before the Passover, to purify themselves. They were looking for Jesus and saying to one another as they stood in the temple, "What do you think? That he will not come to the feast?"
Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if any one knew where he was, he should let them know, so that they might arrest him. - Jn 11:45-57
Even Jesus told his followers to listen to the priests but not to follow their example, knowing that God ordains the position to which they are assigned with proper authority. In this case, he spoke his words through Caiaphas, words which were in a sense uttered before the dawn of time and at which Jesus entered the womb of Mary to be born to die for the people. However, this does not afford Caiaphas any slack: his intentions are still unjust, even though God had planned to work through him all along in this way, seeing in eternity the decisions Caiaphas made in time.
The thing that struck me about this passage when we shared it last night was the role that fear plays in leading us into unjust choices. We anticipate the worst - in this case, that Jesus would cause the Romans to crush them as they had other unrepentant rebellious provinces before - so we become obsessed with how to avoid at all costs the eventuality we fear. Often the only certain way we can see to do so is an action or choice which we would be able to recognize as objectively unjust if we would simply stop weighing it against the "greater evil" that we fear. It clouds our thinking, and we end up trying to justify something that is plainly unjust. Thus the council decided what they should do about Jesus without giving full consideration to the wondrous works that we being done through him.
It is good for us that they did, for we have need of a Savior who is the resurrection and the life for us, who is firstborn from the dead that we may not perish, but have everlasting, abundant life. That is not to call their decision good or just, but to point out that God's plan already allows for every wrong, bone-headed, self-centered decision he has seen us make.
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