Preemptive Strike
Do we think it is a good thing to stop a movement by eliminating its leader?
Many of the Jews who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what he had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, “What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.” He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God. So from that day on they planned to put him to death. - John 11:45–53
Obviously, Caiaphas saw Jesus as a threat.
Tomorrow, we will begin our Palm Sunday service with Jesus entering the city as a king, mounted on a donkey. The crowd will honor him, hoping his presence will bring about a change, but the change the leadership fears is that Rome will come in and destroy everything.
This does eventually happen, even though Jesus was crucified, something they hoped would stop the movement he started.
So, how effective is their strategy?
You can give them credit for seeing a threat and trying to do something to remove it. We look for blame whenever there is a mass shooting, asking why someone didn't see it coming, why someone didn't act to stop the madman beforehand. So, we may tend to agree with the approach.
But who is good at predicting the future?
We cannot just take drastic action against someone who we suspect may do something, right?
From our perspective, the leaders were wrong to set out to kill Jesus. Their preemptive strike was not justified.
But in their eyes, it looked a lot different.
The next time we are faced with a situation where we ask why someone didn't do something, we might want to think back to how we see the leaders in Jesus' day.
More to come...