Sermon: Caiaphas and Christ

The ancient Greeks told of the legendary blind seer from Thebes, Tiresias. It would be indelicate in a Christian pulpit to go into the precise details of why he was blinded; let us just say that it was as a result of being asked to intervene in a dispute between Zeus and his consort Hera. Tiresias decided for the female to please her. Little did he know the capricious goddess. She turned on him in fury and blinded him. But Zeus recompensed him with a long life of seven generations; more than that, he endowed him with the gift of prophecy. In the gritty Yorkshire verse of Ted Hughes,

Jove consoled him. 'That same blow' he said 'Has opened your inner eye, like a nightscope.
See: The secrets of the future - they are yours.'

The blind man who sees what is hidden from ordinary mortals: it's a powerful, even archetypal, theme. Perhaps there's a twist on it in this morning's gospel reading. Jesus' raising of Lazarus from the dead has perplexed the Jewish authorities. They foresee anarchy if Jesus and his followers are not checked, and then the Romans will sweep down like a wolf from the fold and destroy them. So the high priest Caiaphas makes the speech of a lifetime. 'You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.' The mob knows now what they have to do. The die is cast. 'From that day on' says John 'they planned to put him to death'.

St John makes much of this unconscious prediction of Caiaphas. 'He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God'. The picture is of a man who sees yet does not see, speaks a truth deeper than he knows, yet is blind to its real meaning. This trouble-maker must die, and this is how the people will be saved from destruction: it is as simple as that. And St John says yes, this is indeed the truth, this is how it will be, but those with eyes to see will understand how there is another layer of meaning in this death. So here is a blind prophet who tells the truth. But Caiaphas is not like Tiresias, nor the sibyls, still less the Hebrew prophets or John the Baptist. They could 'see into the life of things' like Wordsworth at Tintern Abbey. But Caiaphas never. He saw only the surface, lived on the carapace of life, could never probe its depths, grasp its complexity, gaze into the light of God and the darkness of his own soul.

Caiaphas strikes me as a peculiarly modern kind of person with the superficial cast of mind that thinks only of the job, or the organisation, or the body politic and is untroubled by questions of justice, compassion or truth. Every nation, every society, every business, every organisation, every church has its leaders whose task it is to make sure that the boat is not rocked. No doubt from time to time, in the watches of the night, some Pilate's wife will worry her husband with anxious talk of bad dreams and the risks of toying with the lives of just men and women. No doubt from time to time even a Pharaoh, an Antiochus, a Herod will feel the stirrings of conscience, the undertow of self-doubt even as they abuse their power: what is integrity, what is humanity, what is right? But such naggings are readily suppressed. Political pragmatism, street-wisdom, says that the braying crowd must be heard and placated: 'not this man, but Barabbas!' 'Better that one man should die for the people than that the whole nation is destroyed.' It is a polished speech by a man of the world who knows his audience, knows what they are afraid of, and at the same time holds them in contempt: 'you know nothing at all.' And underneath the contempt? A barely concealed self-interest in dealing swiftly with dissent and neutralise it. And above all, the smell of fear.

Into this ambiguous world of political savoir faire comes Jesus bearing witness to the truth. His kingdom is not from this world. As the Word incarnate, he speaks a different rhetoric, the rhetoric of love to expose and challenge and subvert the web of lies, the smoke and mirrors, the compromises and refusals embodied in the pathetic and lonely figure of Caiaphas. We who have read St John's Gospel up to this point already know who he is, this Word made flesh, this lamb of God, this bread of life, this light of the world, this good shepherd, this resurrection and the life, this true and living way. We know what is coming, what his destiny is before Caiaphas announces it, because St John has hinted at it many times. We know that not many days hence comes the cross, where blood and water pour from the pierced side of the saving victim, whose sacrifice takes away the sins of the world, our sins, mine.

The Sanhedrin in our reading also speaks with a wisdom they do not have. 'We know that 'this man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him.' Sign is a key word in St John. At Cana in Galilee, Jesus perfomed the first of his signs, 'and revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him'. The great series of signs that follow are St John's pointers to the meaning of Jesus and his coming: the healing of the official's son, the paralytic man by the pool, the feeding of the crowd, the healing of the blind man and finally, in today's gospel, the raising of Lazarus. But the last and greatest sign is yet to come. It is the sign of Golgotha, the hour that is coming when the son of man must be lifted up so that he can draw all humanity to himself. Here he takes up his kingship, completes the work he came to do and cries in triumph: 'it is accomplished!' Here we see his glory 'full of grace and truth', 'in all his words most wonderful, most true in all his ways'.

Today is Passion Sunday. We are at the threshold of our celebration of the paschal mystery of the cross and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. As we enter these days of awe and ponder the mighty sign of love poured out for the world, we are open, as Caiaphas could never be, to the possibility that this story of tragedy and triumph will open our eyes, purify our motives and ambitions, redirect our hungers back to their source in God himself so that the cross may shape our practice of truth, integrity and Christian discipleship. In St John, the finished work of the cross on the sixth day echoes the finished work of creation in Genesis when 'God saw all that he had made, and behold it was very good'. But now a greater work is here, for in Jesus' cross and crown is love's new creation, the dawning of a new day for us and for our world: sins forgiven, hope restored, our life given back to us once more.