Spy Wednesday: Unholy Alliances
A Reflection by Jesse Steven Wheeler*
As we prepare to commemorate the Lord’s crucifixion on Good Friday, it is crucial to first revisit the specific circumstances leading up to his arrest, trial, and eventual execution:
Then the leading priests and Pharisees called the high council together. “What are we going to do?” they asked each other. “This man certainly performs many miraculous signs. If we allow him to go on like this, soon everyone will believe in him. Then the Roman army will come and destroy both our Temple and our nation.”
Caiaphas, who was high priest at that time, said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about! You don’t realize that it’s better for you that one man should die for the people than for the whole nation to be destroyed.”
He did not say this on his own; as high priest at that time he was led to prophesy that Jesus would die for the entire nation. And not only for that nation, but to bring together and unite all the children of God scattered around the world. So from that time on, the Jewish leaders began to plot Jesus's death.
—John 11:47–53 (NLT)
The Festival of Unleavened Bread, which is also called Passover, was approaching. The leading priests and teachers of religious law were plotting how to kill Jesus, but they were afraid of the people’s reaction. Then Satan entered into Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve disciples, and he went to the leading priests and captains of the Temple guard to discuss the best way to betray Jesus to them. They were delighted, and they promised to give him money. So he agreed and began looking for an opportunity to betray Jesus so they could arrest him when the crowds weren’t around.
—Luke 22:1–6 (NLT)
There exists a profound irony in the unlikely alliance formed between Judas Iscariot, for whom there are good reasons to believe held insurrectionist sympathies, and Caiaphas, a key collaborator (as high priest) within the Roman imperial matrix of control. Each for their own reasons—be it disillusionment, survival, or greed—rejected Jesus and the cruciform way of life he modeled. Jesus lived his entire life in light of the cross. Yet, the cold utilitarian calculus leading to his execution nevertheless stands condemned. Ultimately, Jesus fell victim to an unholy marriage of religion, violent power, collective self-interest, and greed—a “Babylonian synthesis” condemned throughout the pages of scripture. And, I can't help but draw contemporary parallels. Of the biblical challenge to this ungodly synthesis, comparative theologian Ida Glaser writes,
[The New Testament] challenges all religions: it shatters ties between religion and territory, and between religion and power, even more strongly than did the exile. It also shatters the ties between religion and the Jewish people and their culture. These are the ties that support the dangerous triangle of people, power, and land that has always characterized so much religion. It is the cross that shatters them.
To which she adds,
“It shows weakness as true power, and it inaugurates a people whose identity does not depend on state or land. It points to a new creation, in which people will live in a new land, with God as their king.”
Jesus continuously disrupted and denounced this lethal alliance as it found expression within his first-century, ethno-religious community and, as a result, would incur the wrath of its leaders. Consistently rejecting, however, the dual temptations of both imperial compromise and armed rebellion, Jesus models for us the narrow path of self-sacrificial, non-violent, redemptive love. And, to reiterate, this love culminates in his unjust death on the cross, where an instrument of imperial domination becomes the ultimate symbol of divine love and the power-reversing means by which God reigns.
Reflect
What, in your own words, contributed to the arrest, trial, and execution of Jesus? What led Judas to betray Jesus? Why did the religious leaders seek his assassination?
What is so deadly about “the dangerous triangle of people, power, and land that has always characterized so much religion?” Can you think of any modern-day examples of such unholy alliances?
Pray
We praise you, Almighty God, for your elect, the prophets and martyrs of humanity, who gave their thoughts and prayers and agonies for the truth of God and the freedom of the people. We praise you that amid loneliness and the contempt of men, in poverty and imprisonment, when they were condemned by the laws of the mighty and buffeted on the scaffold, you upheld them by your spirit in loyalty to your holy cause. Our hearts break within us as we follow the bleeding feet of Christ down through the centuries, and count the mounts of anguish on which he was crucified anew in his prophets and the true apostles of his spirit. Help us to forgive those who did it, for some truly thought they were serving you when they suppressed the light, but save us from the same mistake!
Grant us an unerring instinct for what is right and true, and a swift sympathy to divine those who truly love and serve the people. Suffer us not by thoughtless condemnation or selfish opposition to weaken the arm and chill the spirit of those who strive for the redemption of mankind. May we never bring upon us the blood of all the righteous by renewing the spirit of those who persecuted them in the past. Grant us rather that we, too, may be counted in the chosen band of those who have given their life as a ransom for the many. Send us forth with the pathfinders of humanity to lead your people another day’s march toward the land of promise. And if we, too, must suffer loss, and drink the bitter pool of misunderstanding and scorn, uphold us by your spirit in steadfastness and joy because we are found worthy to share in the work and the reward of Jesus and all the saints.
—Walter Rauschenbusch (1910)
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*excerpt from Jesse Steven Wheeler, Serving a Crucified King: Meditations on Faith, Politics, and the Unyielding Pursuit of God’s Reign (Eugene: Resource Publications, 2021)