Freedom Story Part 1 - The Prelude
Behind the scenes of a familiar story
It started a long time before the confrontation in the Garden. Politics, religion, power plays, bribes, manipulation, scheming, betrayal and superstition. The worst of humanity needed to play out for Gods plan of redemption for the world to take place. A personal relationship with him for everyone.
The Jewish leaders and Pharisees came after his cousin John way before him. John criticised them for their legalism and hypocrisy and their use of religion to advance their positions. The Pharisees and Saducees really didn’t like each other, however their fear and hatred of John brought them together in opposition to his teachings. Then John baptised Jesus and things rose to a whole new level.
Firstly the Sanhedrin, the very powerful Jewish version of the Supreme Court and its judges which created laws, interpreted Jewish oral traditions, appointed High Priests and Kings and held trials for major crimes. They could sentence a person to death, that was until the Romans arrived. The Romans recognised their power was too great for a conquered nation and removed their ability to pronounce death sentences to decrease their standing and authority.
Which brings us to Caiaphas. He was the Jewish High Priest of the time and a member of the Sanhedrin. He started to really feel the loss of influence, standing and power that the preaching of Jesus was bringing. Not only did John, the weirdo with the wild eating habits and camel hair robe, shout to anyone who would listen ‘prepare the way for the Messiah’, he baptised hundreds of people - so not Jewish! And he had a cousin who was supposed to be the fruit of his rantings.
This cousin, Jesus, challenged his authority, broke the Sabbath rules, was ridiculously articulate with the Talmud and the people were in awe of him. As the High Priest Caiaphas was responsible to Rome for maintaining peace and he saw Jesus as a huge threat to his being able to do it. The passion of Jesus followers could easily trigger a violent Roman crackdown and a loss of power for Caiaphas or even his place as High Priest. Mostly, Jesus was changing the established order of life which was where most of his power came from. Jesus was changing the established order, which was where most of his power came from and Caiaphas was angry and ambitious. This Jesus challenged the very authority of the Sanhedrin and the religious elite by calling them hypocrites, disagreeing with their religious interpretations, and beating their arguments and accusations leaving them with no come backs every time. Caiaphas knew he had to do something before he lost everything. Then, Jesus declared he was the Son of God. The greatest of blasphemies! But what could he do? How could he legitimately remove this threat?
His answer came with Lazarus. He simply died. However he was one of Jesus’ closest friends and Lazarus had two sisters, Mary and Martha who sent for Jesus. Four days after Lazarus died Jesus went to the tomb had the stone in front of it rolled to the side and shouted “Lazarus come out”. The dead man walked out of the tomb still wrapped in his grave cloths! This miraculous display of power became Caiaphas’ tipping point, his fear was that the people were really going to believe Jesus’ teachings now. This was going to openly decrease his power base so he started plotting Jesus’ death with the Pharisees and Annas his ex-High Priest father-in-law.Fortunately he already had a mole in Jesus’ camp - Judas.
