+Z’ev

Today’s assigned readings:
1 Samuel 11:1-15, Acts 8:1-13, Luke 22:63-71

They said, “If you are the Messiah, tell us.” He replied, “If I tell you, you will not believe; and if I question you, you will not answer. But from now on the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God.” All of them asked, “Are you, then, the Son of God?” He said to them, “You say that I am.”
Luke 22:67-70

How do you read this passage? I’ve heard it said that when Jesus says, “You say that I am” he’s saying “you said it, not me”. (In other words, “don’t blame me for something you’ve said.”) I’ve also heard that he’s saying “You said it, Buster.” (In other words, “Bingo!”)

But then it has that line in the middle (after he’s already refused to answer the question once), “the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God.” Is he talking about himself? Or is he using a colloquialism for “John Doe”, “Everyman”, “All of Humankind”?

Do these questions even make sense?

The Trial of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels boggles some folks. I’ve had good dinner conversations with non-Christians that began with, “Can you make sense out of this?” The answer (on my part) is, “Not really.” Most people don’t read Jesus making many claims in these texts. Most people wonder if anyone else was actually in the room - especially the Disciples. The reports got back second and third hand, although maybe even as it was happening. But certainly they were not written down until later. So we have faithful but possibly garbled accounts… and no other witnesses are talking. (It would be great if there were transcripts from the Sanhedrin, yes?)

Some question not the content itself but the setting: legally there could be no trial in the middle of the night. Are the Gospels correct? Was it an illegal trial? Or are the Gospels fudged to make the time flow from Passover to Easter more dramatic?

Who has the Authority to answer these questions in a final, once and for all way?

What is the possibility that, if we don’t know at all there is some truth in all possible answers and, taking them all, we find Truth, himself?

When I look at the trial of Jesus in just one light what I see is Religious Leaders abusing one of their own. This is because of my own issues with Authority - it’s use and misuse and my own misunderstandings of it.

The struggle over authority makes the wooden planks on the boardwalk of my faith journey and I take a grim, ironic satisfaction in knowing the Truth of the statement, “We walk by faith, not by sight.”

Sometimes, like Jesus - ministering to Gentiles, Pig farmers, Centurions, tax collectors and prostitutes - I end up in the most surprising of places: standing with my friends and my Mother, an Episcopal Deacon and a Christian singing group in a rented worship space, along with my Wiccan elders, while two Gnostic priests ordained me in their order; or standing in a Roman Catholic chapel, with my best friend at the time - a Methodist exploring Buddhism, and a Lesbian - holding the bread and the wine out to the Priest. No one else would take it up that Wednesday at noon. Father Charles, a friend to both of us, leaned forward and whispered, “What is this? Minority day?”

Yet I also end up in wonderful places: preaching at St John the Divine in NYC; sharing my growing and changing faith over and over in speaking groups at NYU (invited to come in as part of “Diversity Training”) - or online; serving the “Grail Mass” to a room full of my closest friends and family; deaconing around the altar at St Gregory of Nyssa Church; finding healing at the Monastery of the Protection of the Theotokos, here in Asheville. This, too, is like Jesus: who’s faith journey took him into the homes of the rich and poor, into the hearts and friendship of many people…

Still, finally his struggle with authority brings him here. To this trial - illegal or crafted, unwitnessed by any save his enemies (or maybe a couple of secret friends). What are we to make of such a kangaroo court, filled with enemies scheming to entrap him?

Sadly… sometimes, like Jesus, we too might end up here. It may be a martyrdom, or a sacrifice, or emotional abuse at the hands of elders: the NYC priest who derided me in front of a room full of people because I couldn’t afford to purchase the “right shoes” to wear when serving at “his altar”; or the priest who kept me in confession because I’d voted the wrong way on the parish counsel; or the Wiccan priestess who couldn’t bring herself to say out loud that she didn’t like me because (as a gay man) I wasn’t sexually attracted to her - and so she and her husband spent quite a lot of energy and time in an abusive, passive/aggressive “friendship” with me.

John Cougar says “I fight authority, authority always wins… I been doing it, since I was a young kid: I’ve come out grinnin.”

But what are we to make of such a kangaroo court, filled with enemies scheming to entrap him… when the “him” in question is Jesus? Is there some home in the idea that even the Son of God walked his own road, not listening to religious elders, his parents or political authorities?

Or do I say rather that, well, HE was the Son of God. I’m just a mere mortal; a human being: what right have I to question anything?

When we were teaching a class on St John’s writings, my friend, Leesy, a reader of these pages, noted that she had trouble with the teaching that Jesus was God in the flesh because if she was supposed to follow in Jesus’s footsteps it seemed to give him an unfair advantage. I don’t remember what I said: but I know it’s a logical statement. Yet reading these stories of abandonment, injustice and clergy abuse: I’m glad God’s gone through it too. Humans continue to treat each other the same way… But God’s been here.