Hitting hard:

Matthew listening in the temple

When the Pharisees withdrew on Wednesday morning, they left Jesus with a massive crowd and I wondered what would happen. I didn’t have to wait for long. It was as if the absence of the authorities had released a passion he had held in check.

‘There’s nothing basically wrong,’ he told the crowd, ‘with what the teachers are teaching – it’s what Moses told our people back at the start. The problem is what they’re doing with it. They package up what Moses said in a way that makes it a massive load for every one of you to carry.

‘And as for your leaders’ lives: look at them. You’ll see one instance of showing-of after another – the best seats at the feasts, the finest-looking clothes and the desire to be seen so that everyone can greet them with respect. They just love it!

‘If you really want to stand out, you must be a servant to everyone else. Whoever sees themselves as important is heading for a fall. Whoever reckons they deserve hardly anything will find they receive far more than they ever imagined.’

Listening to this, I thought it was a good job the Pharisees and the teachers of the law had left. Otherwise my master would have been in even deeper water than before. What I didn’t realise was that he’d only just begun.

‘Hypocrites!’

‘Hypocrites!’ he declared. ‘That’s what these people are. All their behaviour achieves is to lock the door to heaven. Not just for them but for those who follow them. Blind guides!’

He talked more then about how complicated they make the rules and how much they love the detail. Not the rules that Moses gave but the detail they’ve made up and added in so they can seem holier than the rest of us. They know how to be strict and exact in their giving, he explained, but then don’t have the generosity of heart to fill the world with fairness, faithfulness and mercy.

By the time he’d finished, a ‘blind guide’ was definitely not the only thing he called our leaders. ‘Whitewashed tombs’ was the phrase that hit home with me – getting the outside looking neat and tidy while what the place actually contained was decaying bones and rotting corpses.

It was hard hitting stuff!

It was hard-hitting stuff, yet it was a fair comment. Jerusalem had always been a place where the prophets were ignored at best and killed all too often. That Jesus loved the city was never in doubt. It made his declaration that one day everything would come crashing down even more tragic.

As for my master’s future, I shuddered as I listened to him. The ordinary people might like what he was saying but with our leaders he’d be even less popular than I’d been as a tax collector. Being spat upon is bad enough. I knew that. But he was risking something a whole lot worse.

Where to find this story in your Bible?

Matthew 23:1–39
Mark 12:37b–44
Luke 20:45–47; 21:1–4

A quiet safe place: Caiaphas plans his move

They had left Jerusalem by the time the council met on that Wednesday; disappeared into the countryside yet again. Not that we didn’t have a very good idea where they were likely to be. But Bethany would have been almost as much of a problem as Jerusalem if you wanted to arrest this thorn in our flesh. What we needed was somewhere that the lunatic fringe who followed him wouldn’t make it difficult for us.

Actually, the word ‘fringe’ doesn’t do justice to the challenge we were facing. What he’d been saying and doing meant that we were dealing with a whole lot more than a fringe. There were hundreds who would fall in behind him if he decided to rise up against our authority.

The council has invested hours, months and years in order to maintain a modicum of independence in the face of the Roman imperial machinery. It requires tact, compromise and, most of all, it demands that we keep a lid on the hotheads who might undermine our hard-won position.

The problem with Jesus of Nazareth

Part of the problem with Jesus of Nazareth lay in the fact that he wasn’t a hothead in the normal sense of the word. He was a classic reformer: the sort that wants the heart and soul of our religion to be transformed and renewed. There were people among the Pharisees and even on our council who felt much of what he said made sense.

That’s all very well but this wasn’t the time for such matters. The balance of power was delicate and unstable. It was the job of my family to hold things in check so that balance remained. Not easy, I can tell you.

And this provincial preacher threatened to undo all my good work in the space of a few days. From the moment he overturned the tables of the traders in the temple, I knew we’d end up having to deal with him in one way or another. However it was what he had said on Wednesday morning which really drove home to me the seriousness of the matter.

After the Pharisees were so neatly wrong-footed by him on the question of King David and the one who will come to save us, they withdrew. Frankly, I sometimes wished we had the Galilean preacher on our side – he was so much brighter and more incisive than most of the crew I have to work with.

Perhaps he thought that when they were gone he could say what he liked but there’s always someone lurking in the shadows to report back to me. I didn’t mind his different interpretation of Moses. Rabbis have been doing that for centuries. It was his personal attack on the Pharisees that spelt out the danger.

Between you and me, the word ‘hypocrites’ is fair comment on some of them but the phrase ‘whitewashed tombs’ crosses a red line. Mind you, that’s not as damaging as ‘blind guides’. Someone has to lead the people and keep them safe in this unstable, occupied land of ours. If the Jewish Council starts to be ignored or rejected by people, it will be a short step to chaos and bloodshed. I know how the Romans work even if others choose to ignore it.

I called a meeting for late afternoon to discuss what was to be done. Actually, it was more a matter of how it was to be done. We needed this troublemaking preacher out of the way. The challenge was how we could do it.

We couldn’t arrest Jesus in the city. The moment people knew we had done it, there would be massive unrest: exactly the kind of thing we were trying to avoid. Bethany was a slightly better bet but, if there was resistance and someone got killed, the news would filter back to Jerusalem in next to no time with the risk of unrest probably even greater than before.

What we needed was a safe, quiet place where we could take the man without too much resistance. Given what he’d said in his teaching, I suspected he’d come quietly. He’d spent enough time talking about himself as a peacemaker.

There was also the problem of the Passover Festival itself – the arrest would need to be before or after it. Otherwise, we might even have a full-blown rebellion on our hands.

Our meeting solved nothing. But it did come to an agreement that all of us would look at ways and means by which we could do what was necessary. What none us of guessed was how that would actually happen or how close we were to a possible solution.

Where to find this story in your Bible?

Matthew 26:1–5
Mark 14:1–2
Luke 22:1–2

Thirty pieces: Caiaphas makes an offer

We’d finished our meal and my fellow leaders were just getting ready to leave for the night when it happened – a knock at the door.

‘Who on earth can that be now?’ complained Annas. He’s getting too old to have patience with any out-of-hours business that comes our way. And it does in this city, believe me.

One of the temple guards who was on duty came in and whispered a message to me. ‘Who?’ I demanded – not quite believing what I was hearing. ‘Well, don’t leave him outside. Get the man in here!’

It was Judas

It was Judas, the one called Iscariot. I knew of him because that was the disciple who usually dealt with the temple taxes for Jesus and his group. He was also one of the radicals within the Galilean’s raggle-taggle team.

‘Welcome,’ I said, as he came in looking cautiously from side to side for any suggestion of danger. ‘You’re quite safe here,’ I told him, ‘and what you say will stay within these walls.’

It wasn’t true of course but I felt the man needed reassurance. He told me he’d had enough, was willing to hand his master over to us. I was not sure I believed him. 'What will you give me if I hand him over?’

‘One moment,’ I told him and gathered my close colleagues in a corner. They were more than eager to make an offer. We decided to start at thirty pieces of silver.

He took it immediately, rather too hurriedly for my liking. The agreement was that he’d look out for an opportunity to pass Jesus over to us quietly when no crowd was present. Easier said than done I thought, but we were only risking thirty silver pieces on it. In my view, that was cheap… if it worked.

But would it? Were we being lured into a trap? I didn’t like it at all but the rest were delighted with the deal we were making. I’ve been in this work too long to get excited until a problem is finally put to bed.

I couldn't read him

I looked long and hard at the man with whom we were cutting a deal and I realised I couldn’t read him. He was a closed book. Perhaps he had come across to our side and wanted a new chapter in his life. Or perhaps he was up to something I hadn’t yet worked out. Only time would tell.

Where to find this story in your Bible?

Matthew 26:14–16
Mark 14:10–11
Luke 22:3–6

Easter Inside Out is available here

David Kitchen is an award-winning writer, broadcaster, teacher and storyteller who has been making the Bible come alive for longer than he cares to remember. In Bible in Ten he combines his down-to-earth writing skills with almost 50 years’ experience in church leadership and worship. His hobbies include music, poetry and playing crawling-up-stairs games with his grandson.