Doubt, Recognition, and the Question of Justice

Holy Week Reflection - 2022

Every year on Palm Sunday, I choose to deliver a reflection on some part of scripture that is relevant to the struggle for justice in our own current lives. Last year, I had written on the law and its limits, citing the scandalous Jesus who dared to talk back to unjust authority. The core concern I had asked us to reflect on then was the question of how much we are willing to spend in the pursuit of adherence to the law, even a moral law? This year, I follow up on this question and would like to meditate on the failures of morality, and the hard question of doubt and faith in the pursuit of justice.

This year, I direct our attention to the Gospel accounts of the trial before the Sanhedrin, where Jesus is questioned by the religious, moral, and legal authority of the Jewish nation and ultimately was condemned to death. In each account, though there is some difference in the Johannine account, Jesus is brought before the high priest and is asked a single, crucial question: “Are you the Messiah?” (Matthew 26:63, Mark 14:61, Luke 22:67, John 18:19-21).

This question was a critical one. To answer in any way insinuating that he was in fact the Messiah was to have committed blasphemy, a crime punishable by death. Again, this question was critical, and clearly a desperate move by Jesus’ accusers; if he responded affirmatively, he blasphemes, if he denies, he’s accused of lying. The accounts given in Matthew and Mark both make note that false witnesses were brought against him. Yet, even still their accounts did not add up (Matt. 26:60, Mk. 14:57-59).

Jesus, knowing the impossible situation he was in with this question, answers in the affirmative, whether saying, “You say that I am,” or “Am I?” or even more prophetically with the, “I am,” that resounds the divine name. Jesus goes forward to call himself the Son of Man, quoting the vision of Daniel and the Psalms. Appalled, Caiphas tore his garments, taking offense, and solidified the verdict of the Sanhedrin: that Jesus should be put to death.

The trial is a turning point in the drama of the Christ’s Passion, and the careful Christian reader is attentive to the dark irony of the high priest confronting Jesus. The high priest was the elected religious authority of the year, but more than simply being a moral authority and legal arbitrator, the high priest’s main function was to offer sacrifice and prayer in the temple on behalf of the people. However, the high priest was not like any other priest who could offer sacrifice at the temple, he was the only priest with the exclusive authority to enter into the holy of holies and to speak directly to God on behalf of the Jewish people, just as Moses and Aaron did when God had chosen his dwelling place amongst his chosen people.

Yet, here, for the Christian, the irony is plain as day if we are attentive enough to details of the scene. Jesus, God incarnate, stands before the high priest, and is questioned and condemned by him. This masterpiece of literary drama highlights this divine tragedy where God looks his priest in the face, and like he did with Moses in the burning bush, announces his identity, naming himself: “I am.”

As a literary piece, each account of this story sends shivers down my spine. For the biblical reader, this stark juxtaposition of the story of Moses and the story of Caiaphas highlights the Christian gospel writers’ attempt to situate the story of salvation in the religious history of the Jews, highlighting a continuity with the story of liberation and the struggle for the survival of their nation.

Caiaphas is often read as the villain in this story, so blithely blinded by his own moral commitments that he cannot be open to the God to whom he is uniquely privileged to speak actually speaking to him. This frustrating confrontation between Caiaphas and Jesus reveals something essential about the faith of Caiaphas (and even Annas in the Johannine account): that being bound up in moral imperatives and the law has blinded the high priests to divine revelation. For the Christian, the message should be clear: that divine revelation does not stem from the law, it even does not stem from scripture alone, yet rather directly from a face to face interaction between God and man. Where once with Moses God revealed himself in the burning flames on Mount Horeb, Jesus revealed himself to Caiaphas as one of us, the lowliest of us, in chains and humiliated.

So the command to charity is pertinent and taught here as well: “Whatever you do to the least of my people, you do to me.” We are tasked to recognize God in the face of our neighbors and in the face of destitution, two inextricably linked social categories in Christian taxonomy.

Here, I would like to offer another reading of this scene between Caiaphas and Jesus in the context of the rest of the Passion drama. At the same time that Jesus is brought to the house of the high priest to stand trial in front of the Sanhedrin, we see that Peter follows them to the high priest’s courtyard. (Matt. 26:58, Mk. 14:54, Lk. 22:54-55, Jn. 18:15-16). The account in Mathhew makes explicit that Peter had followed and sat amongst the guards, “to see how this would end.” Here, I’d like to offer a uniquely Catholic perspective, which is the perspective I am most familiar with.

Here we see Peter, the first among the apostles to whom Jesus would hand the keys to heaven, who would soon become the first high priest of the universal church. (At least in Roman tradition, as I acknowledge that under the banner of catholicity exists many churches who claim legitimate apostolic succession). Peter had always doubted. He was the practical thinker, the calculating fisherman, concerned with survival and doing what it certain. He followed Jesus, but only ever after Jesus had proven to him that he was in fact useful to follow. (Luke 5:1-11, Matt. 14:25-33).

It was not unknown that Peter was the utilitarian of the group. He was a practical leader, and demanded evidence always before he gave his faith, but we see that this faith only comes at the price of doubt. Peter watched unhelpingly as his friend was sentenced to death, even denying his relation with him, as it became immediately clear that following Jesus meant walking towards his own death. Peter knew that to confess his relationship to Jesus was to confess his faith, and that this faith meant death, and surely death would be the end of it all; for what redemption could possibly follow? Peter becomes aware of this hubris in himself; that his faith is always disrupted by fear of failure or fear of the end. And so he wept bitterly. (Matt. 26:75, Mk. 14:72, Lk. 22:62)

There are lessons to be learned here that go well beyond matters of faith and religion, but about the central message of practical Christianity. Jesus was a man deeply concerned about the plight of his people; who did all he can – even handing himself over to death – in pursuit of the disruption of the status quo. Jesus’ concern quite literally privileged the despised and outcast of society: the sick, the sinners, the poor, the queers, the liars, the thieves, the jealous, the foreigners. His entire adult life was dedicated to preaching a message of salvation for those who were in desperate need of liberation from the bonds of human failure.

While there are many lessons to be learned from the drama of Christ’s Passion, I highlight here the lesson to be learned from the juxtaposition of the faiths of the two high priests: Caiaphas and Peter, who are not too unalike.

In my last Holy Week reflection, I had discussed the idea that Jesus came to challenge the law’s rigidity. Again in the character of Caiaphas, we see how strict adherence and commitment to the law can blind us to the most important truths and lead us to the most abhorrent evils.

But on the other hand, we have Peter, who refuses to believe anything unless there is some measure of certainty that things will work out. Peter – a fisherman, a peasant nonetheless – does not care for the law insofar as it does not benefit him or his cause, but the true aporia in Peter’s faith is his inability to commit to a plan where failure is not only possible, but a reality that abounds. Peter, like Caiaphas, demanded the same rigidity and certainty of proof that the law provided.

I ask us to reflect on whether we find ourselves to be not unlike Caiaphas or Peter. Are we so blinded by our own morality that we fail to see the truths of injustice before us; that we lose sight of care for those who are unlike us in body or mind, in situation, in religion, or in politics? Or are we Peter, casting our aims aside because we see before us the dangers that await us in failure?

Yet, there is redemption for Peter, but not without its cost. When Peter sees the resurrected Christ, there is no more room for doubt. His own eyes have witnessed the most inscrutable evidence of Jesus’ divinity: the overcoming of death. Yet, experience tells Peter that death is still real, and that there will be moments of failure in the pursuit of truth and the pursuit of justice. The difference here is that Peter now knows that there is hope beyond death.

For us, the lesson here is that there is hope beyond death, and more concretely that there is redemption beyond failure. When Peter had asked Jesus that one time, “Where are you going,” and Jesus had said that he cannot come with him, but he will later, we see the summation of the tale of Simon Peter in his martyrdom; only after he truly has found his faith does he go to the cross.

I ask us, in our current political climate, are we Caiaphas, or are we Peter? And like Peter, when will we be willing to die for what we believe in? Even when doubt and failure in the pursuit of justice abounds, what are we willing to die for? Peter soon learned that even in the face of uncertainty, faith meant to die for the mission Jesus sent him to carry on: the liberation of the least in our communities. Even when we see that we are set to fail, are we ready to take a leap of faith and go to our deaths so that others might be saved?

Caiphas and Peter represent two branches of the same vice: steadfast commitment to an ideal. Caiaphas was blinded by his reluctance to see past the structures of the law, and Peter was reluctant to carry on where there was no certainty. These vices rear their heads today still: do we condemn those who do not believe what we believe solely on account of our pre-existing beliefs? Or do we give up on those who cannot reach our demands for certain success?

There is wisdom to be gained from confronting these tendencies, in accepting failure as a part of life, and understanding that there is a place for doubt and loss, here and now, in the pursuit of justice.

Whether you are Christian or not, I wish you peace and comfort in these often difficult and surely polarizing times, and I hope that I have allotted you some time for reflection as the Christian world enters into the contemplation and remembrance of the most solemn events of our faith’s foundation. Be mindful that even in the face of death and destitution there is hope, and so there is always the possibility of justice.