What Are You Looking For?

Read Matthew 26:57-67

It’ s been said that “What we see depends mainly on what we look for.” (John Lubbock)

In this passage the high priest Caiaphas is looking for a way to condemn Jesus. It was Passover, a time when the Jews celebrated their deliverance from their ancient oppressor, Egypt. It was a time of great zeal and passion for a desperate people looking for an excuse to rise up in revolution and throw off their modern-day oppressors, Rome.

But Caiaphas and the priests are in league with Rome and not at all interested in an armed conflict with them. Rome always wins it wars, and if the Jews rise up against them – as they wanted and expected Jesus to do as their Messiah – then the status quo will be challenged, and the priests will lose their power, and their wealth and their privilege.

So they tried to bring false witnesses against him and none could be found. They provoked him and mocked him, and as the old spiritual says, “He never said a mumblin’ word…”

Why is that? Why would Jesus not defend himself? Why wouldn’t he explain that while he definitely God’s Messiah, the anointed one who’s come to establish God’s kingdom on earth, he is most certainly not going to do it through armed revolution against the undefeated superpower of the day.

Why doesn’t he tell Caiaphas that the kingdom of God is all about God’s love and forgiveness for the sinner, compassion for the outcasts and justice for the poor and oppressed? Why doesn’t he tell him the kingdom has come not to defeat Rome, but to defeat Israel’s real enemy – sin against God, neighbor and self? Why doesn’t he just explain himself?

Well, Jesus has already been explaining himself, but the religious leaders have routinely displayed their lack of ears to hear and eyes to see the truth of what God is doing in their midst. They haven’t listened then. They most definitely will not listen now. They are not looking to be forgiven or loved. They are not looking for social or economic justice. They are not looking to be liberated from the power and guilt of sin in their lives.

If these things are what the kingdom of God is about, and what Jesus is about, then what are they looking for?

They are looking for power and coercion, military threats and political intrigue – because that’s the language of the powerful. It’s no wonder they didn’t understand Jesus, no wonder they wanted to crucify him. He represented the way of love – peace and justice, compassion and empathy – and that is in direct contradiction to the way of power of which the world has invested so much.

I wonder… when we look at this “man of sorrows,” are we looking for someone who’s going to swoop down from above and rescue us from all our problems and fix everything? Or do we accept Jesus as he is (and as he calls us to be): willing to sacrifice our lives for the sake of others?

What are you looking for today?