Jerusalem, James, and whose really in charge.
Over the last few months I’ve been doing a livestream conversation with a friend through the book of Judges. In pretty much every episode of “The Bible is Metal”, I’ve found myself going to maps and geography of the Bible. It got so bad I ended up ordering what we refer to on the show as “Chad’s Nerdy Book of Bible Maps”. And since then, I’ve found myself going deeper into not just geography, but asking questions about other historical and cultural situations around the Biblical environment (even more so than usual) than I ever would have thought of.
I’m currently preaching through the book of James, and I wanted to know a little bit more of the context of James, and what Jerusalem was like during the decades James was in charge of the fledgling Jerusalem church. This led me to several biographies of the city of Jerusalem. As I was reading through the chapters of most of them involving the Babylonian captivity, Maccabean revolt, and Greek and Roman control, I became fascinated by the stories of deception and politicization by the Jews as they attempted to maintain control over the city. It is on the level of a cable television series.
I was also reading in the book of Matthew, going through the account of Jesus’ trial and passion and realized that all of these people, such as the high priest, Sanhedrin, and Pharisees play a much bigger political role inside of Jerusalem and the story of Jesus than I had ever recognized. Between the stories of how Jesus’ brother James was killed by a High Priest trying to gain the favor of a Roman Official and his own brother’s death, it started me thinking deeply about the role of the high priest.
In the Old Testament, we find the high priest beginning in Exodus (some could argue for Melchizedek in Genesis in the city of Salem, but there is enough weirdness in that story already). Aaron, Moses’ brother became the first high priest and worked alongside his brother leading the Israelites out of Egypt. For most of the rest of the Old Testament, we see the job being handed from father to son and rarely involved in political deals.
After the exile, while the Babylonian king Darius allows the Jews to start going back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple and city walls (Ezra and Nehemiah in the Bible), the role of the High Priest began to change. At this time the High Priest starts taking on more and more civic authority. This grows over the next hundred years as the High Priest becomes the defacto ruler of Jerusalem, functioning as a sort of Governor over the city and surrounding area, depending on territories, other rulers, and “kingdoms”. Pilgrims, primarily Jews who had been dispersed across the Mediterranean during the various conquests, came to Jerusalem for worship, and with them came their money which was stored inside of the Temple Treasury as payments for sacrifices and other religious fees. The High Priest was more like a modern mega-church pastor with political control over his constituents than religious or pastoral authority and the Temple Treasury became a prize to every king and tyrant who wanted a quick buck. It was also during this time that the appointment to High Priest between Father and Son and in the priestly line of Zadok began to stop. High priests as well began serving shorter and shorter terms, and by the Roman days, it was typically a year. During this time we find political assassinations, murder within family members, and all sorts of other wild stuff in order for people to secure the title as high priest. The High Priest also led the Sanhedrin, a governing body made up of religious leaders.
What was once a position designed to model holiness and to serve as an intermediary in a sacrificial system turned into a political possession with the result of controlling great wealth and a super easy way to make a name for yourself.
Sounds a little familiar…doesn’t it?
And it is with this information the story of the trial and death of Jesus we find a much thicker story than we realize.
“Then the people who had arrested Jesus led him to the home of Caiaphas, the high priest, where the teachers of religious law and the elders had gathered. Meanwhile, Peter followed him at a distance and came to the high priest’s courtyard. He went in and sat with the guards and waited to see how it would all end. Inside, the leading priests and the entire high council were trying to find witnesses who would lie about Jesus, so they could put him to death. But even though they found many who agreed to give false witness, they could not use anyone’s testimony. Finally, two men came forward who declared, “This man said, ‘I am able to destroy the Temple of God and rebuild it in three days.’” Then the high priest stood up and said to Jesus, “Well, aren’t you going to answer these charges? What do you have to say for yourself?” But Jesus remained silent. Then the high priest said to him, “I demand in the name of the living God—tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.” Jesus replied, “You have said it. And in the future you will see the Son of Man seated in the place of power at God’s right hand and coming on the clouds of heaven.” Then the high priest tore his clothing to show his horror and said, “Blasphemy! Why do we need other witnesses? You have all heard his blasphemy. What is your verdict?” “Guilty!” they shouted. “He deserves to die!” Then they began to spit in Jesus’ face and beat him with their fists. And some slapped him, jeering, “Prophesy to us, you Messiah! Who hit you that time?””
Matthew 26:57-68 NLT
Here is what I learned
Whenever politics and money attaches itself to spiritual leadership…the tendency for sketchy things to happen is really high.
Jesus’ death was most likely as much a political fear of upsetting the power system of the current high priest as it was an issue of doctrine or dogma.
This was also pretty much everyday business for the High Priest in the first century (and a couple of them before that).
The High Priest was typically recommended by the secular governor, and elected by (and out of) the Sanhedrin. This would mean every person in the Sanhedrin (usually 23) could also be jockeying for power.
Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin, was a hidden follower of Jesus and buried Jesus. (Mark 15:42-47) Even inside of this group, we find multiple expressions of religious thought and devotion.
So what does this mean?
Perhaps nothing.
For me, it is at the intersection of nerdy Bible stuff but also understanding how power systems have always been in play, especially when politics and religion meet. It is also a fascinating background understanding of the world of Judaism that Jesus was navigating in the gospels.
What it can mean is a call for us to understand and discern what power systems we are tempted by. Where do we find ourselves on the spectrum of wanting power? Do we find ourselves trying to use faith to manipulate power? All of these are fantastic questions that reflecting on this cultural and biblical information gives us.
And finally, when have to remember that everything we think is “religious” is usually informed by the culture and behavioral patterns of the things around it. That might take some getting used to when looking into the historical situation of the Bible…but it also means our world now. The things we call religious or religion are rarely ever 100% theological. We are going to bring all of our cultural assumptions into the mix. The things that we like, and don’t like. We are going to bring levels of justification into the conversation that honestly have nothing to do with religion, but we think they do. We have to begin learning to peel back the layers of our own personal experience and how we allow all sorts of other thoughts and decisions to influence the way we interact with Jesus, Religion, the Church, and all of the other related ideas. As Alan Krieder says in his book Leadership, God’s Agency, and Disruptions,
God meets us in this space-between, where things can be neither power nor control.
We can either be in the space where we are listening and realizing the work of God, and how it is entirely different from our world. We become aware of our assumptions, and instead of spending energy building them up, we redirect this energy back into the presence of God and the discernment it provides.
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