New Thoughts (08/26/12-08/28/12)
In the confusion which is the testimony of this trial, there is something we can certainly recognize. That is how very careful these men of the Sanhedrin were to maintain the appearance of propriety. Now, according to Luke’s accounting morning is already upon us as the council meets, such that only that interview with Annas has occurred during the night. This seems somewhat at odds with what I had understood to be the case, for it is generally held that this ‘trial’ was held at night, which was in itself a violation of Jewish law. I note that Matthew and Mark speak of the dawn more as something that they were waiting for before they took Jesus over to Pilate (Mt 27:1, Mk 15:1).
Given that these accounts were written much nearer to the event, and by those more near to eye-witnesses, I tend to accept what Matthew and mark set out as the timing. They had held the court session overnight, but waited until morning to parade Jesus over to Pilate’s court. Now, in part, that would be a simple necessity. Pilate wouldn’t have been there in the wee hours, even if he had supplied some number of troops for the arrest. There were concessions he would make to these Jews, but his convenience, and his regularly scheduled hours for audience were unlikely to be on that list.
In another sense, this seems to be a case of these men trying to keep up appearances. If it is illegal that the Sanhedrin should meet at night, which doesn’t seem unreasonable to me, then they ought to at least wait until morning to deliver a judgment. Maybe they figured they could always claim the whole thing had been done after sunrise, so long as they waited a half-hour or so.
I see this same care for propriety in the phrasing by which Mark relates the question Caiaphas poses. “Are You the Son of the Blessed?” It’s interesting that in Peter’s recollections (if that is what Mark’s account relates) this circumlocution for the name of God is what really stood out in that question. Matthew, on the other hand, takes particular note of the way in which Jesus is enjoined to respond this time. We could speculate as to why this was so striking a matter to Matthew, but the greater point is that both accounts combine to give us a sense of the theatrics here.
First, Caiaphas is being very careful to maintain appearances. Bearing in mind that the Sadducees were the less pietistic group, more interested in the politics and prestige, perhaps, than their Pharisaic brethren, it is the more telling that Caiaphas would, on this occasion, take such care to not speak God’s name. He speaks of the Living God, as Matthew relates it, but of the Blessed according to Mark. I’m not certain how the Greek Theos would have fit into the Jewish sensibility about God’s name at the time. Perhaps, since it was not The Name, it was permissible. Perhaps, given this is the Jewish court, they were speaking Aramaic or Hebrew, and what we have here is the translation to Greek. But, I suspect if we heard this as “Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed, the living One?” we should not be far off. We want to make clear whose son we are asking you about, but we would not wish to slip up and speak His name directly, lest we be accused of sin ourselves!
The issue is well known even to this day, that the Hebrews will even go so far as to record the word God with the o struck out, lest by writing it in full, they unintentionally cross the bounds and take His name in vain. Such concern for honoring His name is admirable in many ways. Would that we still held His name in such high regard. The issue comes when it is all about appearing to honor His name while in reality having little to no concern for Him at all. And that is a disease too common to us all.
Holy Lord, I pray Thee, grant us to hold You truly in so high a regard that not only in word would we seek to give You the honor that is Your due, but also in thought and action.
There is another aspect of this which is relayed to us by Matthew alone, and that is the strong language by which Caiaphas sought to force an answer from Jesus on this question. “I adjure You by the living God”. This has its weak reflection in our own judicial system, where witnesses are called to swear upon the Bible that they will give only true testimony. (I would note that no such terminology is mentioned in regard to the testimony of those two other witnesses.) But, this business of adjuring is a stronger thing. It is putting under oath, but one might notice that there is no opportunity given the oath taker to decide whether or not he will accept that oath as binding. It is self-binding. It is a full-throated claim to the power and presence of God in the matter. He is hear. He, with me, demands that you answer.
Now, one could argue just how powerful a thing this would be in the midst of a society such as ours. Most would probably find it a matter of little concern. But, a person of true godliness, one for whom the presence and power of God as judge and witness was a given? Oh, this would matter greatly to one such as he. Don’t suppose that Caiaphas hadn’t considered that. You are set under oath, Jesus, compelled to answer by the very name of God Himself. Are You the Messiah? Silence, on this occasion, would be answer in its own right. You cannot be the Messiah, as You do not reverence God.
This may seem a bit of a sidetrack, but I do take note of the actual Greek word used here: exorkizoo. Does that look at all familiar? It does to me. In English, we arrive at the term exorcism from the same roots as this which we translate adjure. Indeed, the two are very closely related conceptually. By what authority, after all, would one exorcise the demonic spirits from out the man, if not by that of God Himself. By what authority is Jesus required to answer here? By that of God Himself. Surprisingly, at least to me, this word never appears elsewhere in Scripture. For all that Jesus was driving out evil spirits, we do not hear that action described as an exorcism. The nearest we come to this is mention of some Jewish exorcists encountered during the earliest years of the church. Acts 19:13 takes note of the case, where they were attempting to exorcise spirits in the name of Jesus. Note the quote of their incantation. “I adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preaches.” This introduces the story of the sons of Sceva, who were amongst these practitioners, sons of the priesthood, even one of the chief priests. But, the spirits upon which they attempted this exorcism were unimpressed. “I recognize Jesus, and I know about Paul, but who are you?” (Ac 19:15).
Now, this is rather interesting. The demons, by their response, would seem to demonstrate that the authority claimed by the adjuration had no further validity than the faith of that one who adjured. In other words, if the adjurer did not consider Jesus his Lord, then his attempt to use the name of Jesus had no binding quality whatsoever. Yet, Jesus, by His example, finds the words binding in spite of Caiaphas through whom the word comes.
Is there a lesson we can draw from this? Perhaps. One thing we can say with some certainty is that oath-taking is not in itself ruled out by faith. If Jesus was willing to accept this oath upon Himself in spite of the apparent permissibility of dismissing the oath emplaced by one with no real authority, then surely we, who hold God as the Authority, ought likewise to recognize and properly value the oath taken in His name, whether the one demanding the oath does so or not.
Let me phrase that a bit differently, and perhaps we arrive at something. The power of the oath is not dependent upon the one making the oath, but upon Him in Whose name the oath is made. That power persists whether the man by whom oath is demanded or by whom the oath is taken truly recognizes the force of his oath or not. There may be legal grounds for dismissing the oath in such a case, but the one who truly knows God for Who He Is cannot, it seems to me, appeal to those grounds.
I would draw two points from that. The first application is perhaps the most obvious. As Jesus behaves before this court in Jerusalem, so we ought to model our own behavior before the courts of our land in our day. Whatever one may think of those in authority, if we truly accede that all authority comes from God, then we ought find ourselves duty bound to honor that authority in spite of the man in whose hands it currently resides. I have commented on this often enough before, I believe. Leave it at this: There are certainly boundaries beyond which our submission to God demands that we do not submit to laws imposed by earthly authorities. We see an example of such in the early church, when the Apostles were dragged before the Sanhedrin. “Whether we should obey you or God, you be the judge.” When the dividing line is that stark, then our proper allegiance is clear. On any lesser grounds, however, our allegiance is equally clear. We might choose to hear it from Paul, “I was not aware this was the high priest, for it is written that we must not despise our rulers.” Or, we might take it from the response of Jesus, Himself, Who, though so spitefully used, and so wrongfully accused, yet behaved honorably before the court, yet upheld the high esteem of the office of the high priest.
The other aspect of this ought perhaps to concern us more. The oath, as I said, has its power not from the speaker of the oath, but by Him in Whose name it is spoken. This, it seems to me, gets at the heart of the commandment, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain” (Ex 20:7). While it certainly behooves us to avoid all cursing, and particularly that which invokes God’s own honorable name, that is not what is really being pointed to here, or at least not the sole point. The larger point has to do with the taking of oaths, a matter which I fear we have come to take far too lightly.
Consider this. Jesus, as we see in the subsequent verses of these three accounts, answered in response to this oath. It is not a question of His having voluntarily taken oath, for adjuration forces the oath upon the not necessarily willing. It is not a question of the valid authority which speaks the oath, for Caiaphas has, by this very arrest and trial, violated his authorized bounds, and forfeited all legitimacy. In fact, that Jesus answers is due to His obedience to God’s Law. Leviticus 5:1 instructs that the person who has sinned, when publicly adjured to testify as a witness, must tell or bear his guilt. I am paraphrasing, true, but that’s the gist of it. Did Jesus, then, see Himself as a sinner? No. But, He would abide by that Law, given that He was made to appear as though a sinner. And, in that appearance, He is now being called to testify. A stickler for the letter of the law could certainly find several reasons to wheedle out of obedience, here, but Jesus is more earnest than that.
What it is, is that He honors the oath itself, for the oath itself is from God, in spite of the situation, in spite of the speaker. It is, in this regard, similar to prophecy. True prophecy does not necessarily demark true prophet. A true prophet must necessarily prophesy truly, but the reverse does not hold. Caiaphas can hardly be counted a true prophet, yet he prophesied truly on one occasion. Balaam, certainly, was not to be deemed a true prophet, yet he could not but prophesy truly when it came to Israel. The list goes on. What is shown here is that the oath is much the same in this regard. It matters. It matters, and it matters because it invokes God, and reflects God.
Recall the teaching Jesus has delivered on this matter. There was, it appears, a habit in that time of taking oaths by anything but God’s name, and supposing that by doing so the oath was made less binding. One could break that oath without offense to God. But, Jesus declares that whatever circumlocutions you may try, the oath inevitably calls upon God as witness, whether He be named or not. Therefore, the oath matters. It matters regardless, as I have noted, of who spoke the oath. It matters, whether the oath was taken willingly or solely by force of law. It matters, dare I say, whether it was spoken earnestly or carelessly or in jest.
That, to me, is the big point here, the one we ought to take to heart. The oath is taken seriously in heaven even when it is not taken seriously here. In this regard, those who would seek to avoid connecting God’s name with anything even vaguely oath-like or curse-like are pursuing a good thing. They do better who seek to avoid both oath and curse altogether. I am not certain that I could contain all such things as are termed curse words in our culture under this heading, for not all such words seek to invoke an actual curse, do they? Or perhaps they do. Some, it seems to me, are little more than exclamations, not much more than a far cruder form of saying, “ouch!” or, “aha!” But, whether this particular aspect of God’s law covers such terms, I think we do well to seek their eradication from our own vocabulary at least. They would certainly seem to come under the category of coarse language, against which Paul advises.
Yet, even when we are inclined to be careful of cursing or using such coarse curse words, the opposite seems to be lightly viewed; the speaking of oaths. “By God, I will!” “By goodness, that’s a lovely sky.” “By Jove!” “I swear upon my mother’s grave.” The list goes on. Can I just say that for the Christian, “I will” bears the force of oath even when nothing further is audibly attached. Let your yes be yes and your no be no. This is not some proclamation against indecision! It’s a statement about trustworthiness. It’s a recognition that oaths ought not be necessary for us. They are implied by our every word. If I said I would, I will. If I said I would not, I won’t. Therein is sufficient evidence for contractual obligation. God has heard us as you have, and that’s an end to it. It shall be as I have said.
Now, I am aware, of course, of that incident in the Old Testament, the man who felt bound to slay his own daughter because of a foolish oath he had taken. Do I suppose that God would have condemned the man for breaking his own oath on that occasion? I cannot see that He would support compounding foolishness with destruction, honestly. That the man took his oath as seriously as all that does bespeak a healthy concern for the God Who witnessed the oath. But, it seems to me that the follow up on that event bespoke an unhealthy misunderstanding of that same God. There is and ever has been mercy upon us for our ignorance. Surely, that would have applied in such a situation!
The call is not for mule-headed stubbornness in standing unchanging on every word we speak, however ill-informed, however downright stupid. The call is for care in what we speak, in what we commit ourselves to, for we are to be an honorable people and trustworthy in all things. For God is honorable and trustworthy above all things, and we are here as His representatives. We must, then, recognize that the taking of oaths matters and, even where there is no oath, our words matter. What we say certainly does not have the power of shaping reality around us, as some choose to believe, but it most assuredly has consequences. Indeed, let us be a people whose yes is yes, whose no is no, who can be counted upon to act as we speak, but with the wisdom to know when acting on our own words would be more foolish yet than having spoken in the first place.
A bit of an aside, given the political season we are in: We are inclined to make a huge fuss over a politician whose views appear to change, particularly if they appear to change with an amazing correlation to public polling. Perhaps we are right to be suspicious of such a one, particularly if a pattern emerges of no strong convictions. But, we ought also to consider the possibility that these changes in perspective are in earnest, and really do come as a consequence of developing thought, of reconsidered opinions. The politician who never modifies a single opinion, never finds himself or herself seeing the error in what once was felt accurate and right, is, it seems to me, a politician with no real thought life, no conscience. Given the landscape of our system, where it seems we have entered the era of perpetual campaign, it would be a very difficult thing to express a change of heart on one issue or another without it appearing carefully timed to events or polls. This is not to say that politicians are generally guileless in their pronouncements. Hardly that! But, somewhere in that pile of altered statements, there are probably a few that are earnestly held. The mere fact of having changed positions ought not, I think, to mark the man as untrustworthy, perhaps quite the opposite. If it is all change all the time, that’s one thing. But, if there has been no change at no time? That seems to me far darker evidence as to the character of the man.
