Friday in the Octave of Easter, April 14, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Caiaphas at the moment of decision
If we are being examined today about a good deed done to a cripple, namely, by what means he was saved, then all of you and all the people of Israel should know that it was in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead; in his name this man stands before you healed.
And the leaders, elders and scribes, all that high and priestly class, quaked in their sandals. Or at least they would have if the others around them weren’t pretending to be calm. Since they all pretended to be calm and disturbed (shocked!) by Peter’s speech, their own special Courtly Mob saved a little face. For a little while.
Jesus Christ is the stone rejected by you, the builders, which has become the Cornerstone! There is no salvation through anyone else.
Peter and the Holy Spirit, what a team! Peter blew right by any decorum of the court, silencing interruptions by not allowing them. Not many defendants approached their elders like this, and Caiaphas (famous for this: “You know nothing at all! You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish” John 11:49-50) didn’t say a word. He recognized the references to Psalm 118 and Isaiah 28, and he hadn’t been sleeping well at night anyway. How could he have made such a mistake?
Caiaphas thought he wanted to be a leader of men, even a leader of leaders. His personality guided him through uncertainties and disagreements, and others followed him. But now his position backfired, and he was unable to consider even the possibility that Jesus was who he said he was. This reduced him to foolishness. “Cornerstone? We don’t need no stinkin’ cornerstones!”
The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes. The Lord has done it this very day; let us rejoice and be glad.
In Texas, in Illinois, in the USA, there are governors and a president. It is difficult for them, as it was for Caiaphas to be confronted with a new truth. How can they back away from what they’ve already claimed to be the ultimate truth, even if it turns out they are wrong?
I want to imagine Caiaphas, or any of those governors or presidents or prime ministers (maybe Netanyahu for example) going to sleep fitfully and having a dream like Joseph had a dream, and then the next morning turning themselves right around and surprising the lobbyists and inspiring the people. I want an image of Mr. Caiaphas having something like this to say on the morning after:
                  Low Jesus
My Beloved Jesus, my Healer and Savior
I do not look up to the heavens to seek you.
I look down, down to the lowest place, beneath me.
For you have come, with all the sorrows of the world,
come fresh from death row, from the starving child,
the bombed apartment, the locked ward,
from the bleeding street and the dusty camp,
with the despair of those dying alone—
you have come and knelt beneath me and washed my feet.
With a world to save, you come to me,
with such attentive tenderness, taking your time,
holding my wayward feet in your hands,
you bless me, heal me, wash me, anoint me.
You take the lowest place and serve me.
I will never find you up on the podium or pedestal,
but down on the ground, harvesting, cleaning,
invisible, among the unseen, unsung, unsavory.
You, my Lowest Christ, my ground beneath, my earth,
you hold my feet. I need never look higher.
Call that a cornerstone? Oh, yes! Call that a cornerstone, Caiaphas Get over yourself. Come now with me and guide us all into worship, now and forever, looking down at the solid rock on which we stand.
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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