MY NAME IS CAIAPHAS

In Mel Gibson’s long-ago movie of the passion of Jesus the hero, of course, is Jesus. The villain is the High priest, Caiaphas. The true villain in the real story, if there is indeed one true villain, is Pilate. Pilate was not the philosophical bon vivant Gibson portrays him to be but rather a ruthless, uncaring, me-first-and-damn-everyone-else-no-matter-the-cost-just- to-save-my-job ruler. Pilate washed his hands of the whole mess when he could have simply prevented it. That makes him Villain Number One.

Caiaphas, on the other hand, was not nearly as evil as Gibson depicts. Caiaphas’ job was to protect his people from further incursions by the Romans into what little freedom they had. Caiaphas was basically a good man, a man of deep faith, a man who cared about his people. Whether or not he was also well beloved, we do not know. He was probably a little power hungry. After all, he held the job for eighteen years when it was usually a one-year position. But if he had been doing a lousy job, the other ambitious priests among the Sanhedrin would have forced him out.

Caiaphas, I think, honestly believed his was doing the right thing both for his people and his faith in getting rid of Jesus, or at least making the attempt to shut Jesus up. If it meant that Jesus had to die because he would not cease his preaching and his gathering of followers, then so be it. The evil in having one innocent man killed was outweighed by the good that would come from keeping the Romans off their backs and allowing the people to practice their faith in relative peace. If Caiaphas was Villain Number Two, his villainy pales in comparison to that of Pilate.

Yet, when I reflect upon this man who, thanks to Gibson, has been receiving a bad press almost 2000 years after his death, I must sadly admit I see much of myself in Caiaphas. Power is alluring, corrupting. And those of us who are given power and authority -- and clergy are no exceptions, often take advantage of that power – and clergy are often the rule. Every division, controversy, schism in the church has been clergy led. The round collar and/or the purple shirt are just as seductive as were Caiaphas’ fine phylacteries. I know that if I am not careful, when I am on a power trip, my name is Caiaphas.

And yet there are times when I am worse than Caiaphas, who did the wrong thing for the right reason, or so he thought or so his love of power convinced him. Perhaps he didn’t know better. He didn’t have a clue who Jesus was. But I do. Caiaphas may have had a good excuse for doing something that was wrong. I do not. I know better. I know Jesus, who he is and what he desires and demands of me. When I do not do what my faith demands or do what I know I should not, I have the hammer in one hand and the nail in the other. I am one up on Caiaphas.

It is no consolation that I am not alone in any or all of this. The only consolation is that I am forgiven; forgiven when I use my authority for a selfish reason; forgiven when I do the wrong thing for what seems a right reason; forgiven for being worse than Caiaphas; forgiven. And because I am forgiven, I can always become better, less selfish and more loving. And I must. Must we all.

 

 

FIVE PEOPLE, FIVE LESSONS

 If heaven, as Mitch Albom wrote several years ago in his the five people you meet in heaven, is where all our yesterdays will finally make sense – and I do believe that is part of what we will learn in the life to come -- what lessons will those five people teach us now that it is too late to learn them? In other words, had we known and lived out those lessons in this life, would this life have made more sense to us as we lived it?

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Even when we know why something turned out the way it did, we still have to live with the results. Our foolishness and sinfulness get us into many messes. When we are up to our necks in an alligator pit, we may fully know how we got there. That is no consolation as long as the alligators are aiming to eat us alive. What we have to do is get out of that pit ASAP. Then we can kick ourselves for being so stupid in the first place, for getting ourselves into that mess when we knew better.

Then, too, how often have we said to ourselves, once safely out of the pit, blood pressure back to normal, “This surely has been a good lesson for me,” and then found ourselves back in that alligator pit once again? Lessons learned are often lessons ignored. We study history to learn its lessons so that we will be spared the pain of learning them from firsthand experience. Nevertheless, history repeats itself, as we all know firsthand.

Yet, we still desire to learn more about ways to save ourselves from pain and suffering and to make this life both better and more understandable. So Albom’s five heavenly people remind us of at least five lessons we have already learned but which we often forget when rushing from here to there, which is how we end up in all those alligator pits in the first place.

First: there are no random acts. We are all connected because we can no more separate one life from another than we can separate a breeze from the wind. Every act, intentional or accidental has consequences with unperceived and never-ending results. Second: sacrifice is a part of life. (The word means “to make holy” which is what we become through sacrifice and only through sacrifice.) Third: When hurt, as we all are, we need to forgive, now, unconditionally and unasked. To not forgive is to live in the past, which prevents living in the present.

Fourth: Love has no end even when the ones we love die. Love lives on in our memory and in us. Fifth, whoever we are is who we are supposed to be. Wanting to be someone else is simply a waste of time and prevents us from living who we are to the fullest at every moment in our lives.

Life’s little lessons? Heaven’s little lessons? To be sure, simple but profound. I would like to assert that one of these lessons is more important than the others or that they could be listed in order of importance, but I cannot. The truth is, I think, they are interconnected and cannot be separated one from another. Albom gave me a whole lot to think about back then and he is still giving me a whole lot to think about, and my guess is that I will still thinking for years to come, God willing. You, too?

 

IF ONLY

Life, my life at least, would be so much easier if everyone agreed with me. If everyone thought like me, reasoned like me, understood as I understand, why preaching and teaching would be a piece of cake. We would all be on the same wavelength and be able to get to the core of any problem very quickly. Wouldn’t that be wonderful for me! However, it might not be so wonderful for someone else.

We all would like others to agree with us, to think and understand as we do, to see life and all life is about from our particular perspective. Then there would be less disagreement, less dissension and division and, perhaps, even true peace in this world. But no two peoples and no two people think alike, operate with the same mindset, the same principles, the same belief system simply because we are unique. We are each one of a kind. That is the way God created us. That is the way we are. That is the way we will always be. That is why we will never be of one mind on everything.

The reason why I believe what I believe is the result of almost eighty-two years of living: eighty-two years of unique thoughts and experiences. Since I have not experienced everything there is to experience and not thought about everything there is to think about, there are still great gaps in my education and in my understanding. And so it is with everyone else. Thus, when my gap meets your understanding or your gap, or vice versa, we will no doubt disagree because we cannot see what the other sees.

If only we could, but we cannot. That is why while we must stand up for our beliefs and convictions, we cannot and must not negate or belittle those who do not see or understand the way we do. We may try to convince another about the truth of which we are convicted, but we may not succeed. Some truths are only arrived at through a lifetime of thinking, experiencing and learning. Sometimes they are never arrived at.

And sometimes what we believe to be true may indeed be false, may be wrong. We may go to our grave believing something to be true that we discover in eternity to be false. And we may only discover in death that what we thought was false was in fact quite true. Life would be so much easier if we all knew the whole truth and lived our lives based on nothing but the truth. If only.

In the meantime, as each of us struggles to discover the truth, we have to agree to disagree on some matters, perhaps even on some issues of faith and morality. We do not have all the answers because we have not yet asked all the questions and because we will never fully understand God and God’s ways. We must never try to force our beliefs on anyone but must live our beliefs to the fullest. We will never convince another simply because we have the better argument. We will convince another by the way we live out our faith.

Jesus never convinced nor converted anyone by trying to change his or her mind. He tried to change the way they lived and he did it by modeling that lifestyle. So did the early church. So must we today. If only there were an easier way, but there is not.

 

FREE AGENCY

As a sports’ fan I hate free agency. I relish the days when players stayed with the same teams almost forever, for better – the Steelers of the ‘70s, and for worse – the Pirates of the ‘50s. Yes, it was an owners’ market in those days. If you did not like the pay, too bad: we own you. Now, it seems, the shoe is on the other foot. The players dictate. Such is the free market, I guess.

But sports is sports and the outcome of any sporting event has little or no effect on the rest of the world even if it seems the stock market rises and falls on which conference, the AFC or the NFC, wins the Super Bowl. Free agency may lead to better contracts. It has not led to better team loyalty. That does not exist any more, not as far as the players are concerned anyway. Why we fans put up with it is anyone’s guess.

But this phenomenon of free agency in sports has carried over into all of life. I read a report a while back asserting that this generation of students will have five to seven careers before they retire: careers not jobs. Talk about free agency. Job loyalty seems to be a thing of the past, for better or for worse. As with sports, so with every other profession, there are pros and cons about this penchant for moving on once the job gets boring or until a better offer comes along.

What is somewhat frightening, at least to my vocation and me, is that free agency has also invaded the church and perhaps to a wider degree than the rest of society. My children do not feel in any way obligated to worship as adults as they worshipped when they lived at home, if they feel obliged to worship at all. And if and when they do feel some urging to try out a church, they may begin with the tried and true of their past. But if it is not of their liking, they are likely to go somewhere else that is much more to where they happen to be at a particular point in their lives.

Brand loyalty is gone and gone forever, it seems. I don’t know if all denominations are like us, made up of more than half who were not born and raised in it. But they are all getting there. Like sports, so with church, the players are now in charge and not the owners. The owners (the clergy, although we never owned anything and the only authority we had [or may still have] was what was given to us by the players/people) have to listen to what the players/people want or else they will [have to] go somewhere else.

That does not mean we take a straw poll, test the wind and see which way we will go next in order to bring them in. That only works until the product gets stale or someone offers something more enticing. The temptation, however, is to play to the crowd in these days of free agency in religious affiliation. The greater temptation is to abrogate responsibility in order to please. Given our fickleness as human beings what may be pleasing today may be just the opposite tomorrow.

The old ways are not working too well and the new ways seem to be too much of passing fancies in order to please. Is it any wonder we’re confused and not sure just what to do?