This week I welcome guest blogger, Emerald Scaffe. Emerald is married and together with her husband, has three children. She also serves on the teaching team at Faith Church.
This painful irony of Jesus’ arrest and trials continues as in John 18, verse 19, “Meanwhile, the high priest (still referring to Annas, here) questioned Jesus about his disciples and his teaching. ‘I have spoken openly to the world,’ Jesus replied, ‘I always taught in synagogues or at the temple, where all the Jews come together. I said nothing in secret. Why question me? Ask those who heard me. Surely they know what I said.’”
“When Jesus said this, one of the officials nearby struck him in the face. ‘Is this the way you answer the high priest?’ He demanded. ‘If I said something wrong,’ Jesus replied, ‘testify as to what is wrong. But if I spoke the truth, why did you strike me?’ Then Annas sent him, bound, to Caiaphas the high priest.”
Annas wants to know about Jesus’s disciples and his teaching. Displaying the faithfulness of his character, he does not say anything about his disciples, coinciding with his desire to protect them. Jesus said that they should talk to the witnesses of Jesus’s teaching, the standard practice in a normal trial. He responded to the questions with full transparency and directness, and he was met with physical assault.
As the interrogation is fruitless, Annas sends Jesus to Caiaphas. One commentator wrote that this was because, in order to eventually get Jesus before the Roman Governor, he needed to be accused by the reigning high priest.
Before we see the trials continue, John shares with us the heart wrenching moment from Peter. Verse 25, “As Simon Peter stood warming himself, he was asked, ‘You are not one of his disciples, are you?” He denied it saying, ‘I am not’. One of the high priest’s servants, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, challenged him. ‘Didn’t I see you with him in the olive grove?’ Peter denied it, and at that moment a rooster began to crow.”
Another commentator describes the juxtaposition well by saying, “John has constructed a dramatic contrast wherein Jesus stands up to his questioners and denies nothing, while Peter cowers before his questioners and denies everything.”
Let us remember that Jesus asked his disciples, more than once, to pray lest they be tempted. In this we see God show his faithfulness to Peter, by bringing him to a place that he can no longer deny his own depravity. Peter needed to see that he was weak, because now he needs a Savior. In the coming weeks we will follow Peter’s story to see the redemption that takes place in Peter’s life after this series of dark denials.
In the midst of the domino effect of betrayal, our High Priest, Jesus Christ remains calm and connected to God. The very peace displayed by Christ is a display of God’s faithfulness to his children, the peace that surpasses all understanding. Christ is deeply connected to his anchor, and his preparation of prayer was a major part of that, a component that was doubtless natural given his oneness with God, but equally an example to us as we seek to be more Christlike.
In the first trial Jesus was calm and honest in his answers. As we will see, John does not give an account of the dialogue in the second trial, however you can read about that trial in Matthew chapter 26, where you will see Jesus’s responses are a very similar tone to that of the first trial that we read.
Let’s pick up in John 18 at verse 28, “Then the Jews led Jesus from Caiaphas to the palace of the Roman governor. By now it was early morning, and to avoid ceremonial uncleanness the Jews did not enter the palace; they wanted to be able to eat the Passover.”
Pause there. The Jews wanted to make sure that they were ceremonially clean, while they were trying to execute the Son of God. The God they claim to revere and worship, the God who instructed them to celebrate Passover. They are so concerned with ceremony that they stopped listening to what God was saying through Jesus Christ. It can be very easy to let things distract us from what God wants to show us.
Photo by Terren Hurst on Unsplash
Engaging Scripture 