Caiaphas: Choosing Safety Over Salvation
Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
March 30, 2003 The Fourth Sunday of Lent
Matthew 26: 57-68
In her memorable book, Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather tells of the Acoma Indians who, after too many encounters with danger, decided literally to get away from it all. They left the valleys and moved to the high mesas, seeking safety among the rocks. The Acomas, she wrote, “born in fear and dying by violence, had at last taken this leap away from the earth, and on that rock had found the hope of all suffering and tormented creatures – safety.” They discovered too late, however, that there is more to life than safety. Cather concludes that in their flight to hoped for safety among the high rocks, these Indians somehow lost their vitality, their drive, their desire to live, and eventually died out. For the Acomas, safety was not salvation. I wonder, in these nervous days at the end of March, 2003, if it ever is.
We do not know much about Caiaphas, the high priest of the temple in Jerusalem. We perhaps would never have heard of him at all except for the fact that he happened to be high priest when Jesus made his final journey to Jerusalem. Indeed, it would seem that Caiaphas played a significant role in arranging for Jesus’ eventual execution at the hands of the Romans.
No, we don’t know much about Caiaphas, but we do know this. Here was a man who knew all about playing it safe. Biblical sources suggest that he served as high priest for 18 years! Generally, those who held this high office served three to five years at most. Understand that even though Caiaphas was a Jewish religious leader, he served only at the pleasure of Rome. So he knew how to get along by going along, how to keep the Romans happy, how to be appropriately submissive and do Rome’s bidding. If he had ideas, he kept them to himself. Rome didn’t like people who rocked the boat, who challenged the established order. And so it was that Caiaphas could last in this highly visible office for 18 years.
In the words of one colleague, “Caiaphas had forgotten why he had become a priest. He had forgotten what true religion is for…Though he may have begun his priestly career with the most sincere of intentions, he ended it with no other goal than simply to remain in place – comfortable, non-controversial, secure, but otherwise purposeless. He became more concerned for place than for purpose.”
And so who should walk into his tightly-controlled, duct-taped, safe little world? None other than Jesus of Nazareth; one who seemingly couldn’t care less about safety, who always was concerned about purpose and who never really paid much attention to place. For Caiaphas, it had to be a nightmare come true. And, hopefully, Jesus continues to leave each of us just a little uncomfortable as well.
Because, you see, it so easy to become like Caiaphas – to become more concerned with place than purpose, to become more than a little obsessed with safety. Former Governor of Idaho, John Evans, once told of driving into a service station in his official car. A teenaged attendant at the pumps – you can tell this is an old story – spotted the Governor’s license plate – Idaho, Number 1, and exclaimed, “Wow! I’ll bet you had to stand in line a long time for that one!” Evans replied, “You’ll never know, son, you’ll never know. And I’ve been wondering ever since why I stood all that time!” We should all wonder why it is we seek after the things we do and whether, again like Caiaphas, we may not be more concerned for place than purpose.
I actually had this conversation over lunch the other day. Two of us, middle-aged men, reflecting on our lives. We are so drawn to success and to money and position, but then we reach middle age – or older – and find ourselves wondering why? We expend so much energy to make sure that our lives are secure and comfortable and safe, but again the question haunts us...why? Sitting across from each other at lunch that day, we wondered…have our lives up to this point really counted for something? And with the time we have left, how can we make sure they do count for something? And as we talked we realized that just playing it safe, being more concerned with place than purpose, is really not going to get us where we want to be. How easily place becomes more important than purpose; how easily we mistake safety for salvation.
Which is why I believe we need to return, again and again, to our Biblical faith. For here we constantly meet individuals who refuse to play it safe, who find the strength, the courage, the faith, to put their lives on the line in service of some great purpose.
Here is Moses who surrenders a comfortable and safe life in order to risk his life pleading for the freedom of an enslaved people.
Here is Deborah, an heroic woman, who led her people in the earliest moments of their history, bravely facing a tyrant, sacrificing her personal safety for her people, remaining faithful to the word she has heard from God.
Here is Jeremiah, who weeps for a nation gone astray, who braves the jeers of the crowd and is called unpatriotic, but is willing to risk everything so that he may speak his understanding of God’s will, even when it goes against the “official” understanding of God’s will.
And here is Jesus in Jerusalem, armed with nothing but love and good will, with a vision he calls the Kingdom of God. He offers an alternative wisdom, which drives the defenders of conventional wisdom into a murderous frenzy. He stands up to the leaders of his own people and the representatives of Rome, surrendering every worldly source of safety and security, trusting only God for the outcome. And curiously, those who have so much worldly power, have no power over him. “You do not take my life; I give my life.” Those who are obsessed with position and place, with security and safety, seem impotent when faced with one who couldn’t care less about such things.
I am reminded of a comment by Abraham Lincoln. In 1866 a man named Francis Carpenter published a small book titled, Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln. In it he told of a conversation with the President, who was then being abused by critics, attacked by fellow politicians, and having fun poked at him in the press. Asked if he was not concerned about how he appeared to others, what political handlers today would call his “image” – Lincoln responded, “I do the very best I know, the very best I can, and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference!” Today a politician with the honesty of Abraham Lincoln would be a spin-doctor’s worst nightmare. Public opinion polls? Purpose, not place, is what mattered to Lincoln, and playing it safe never really entered into the equation.
Jesus, standing alone before Caiaphas and all the religious and political power of both Jerusalem and Rome, tells me that when you get down to it, down to the nitty gritty, safety is really not what life is all about, not if it means never being vulnerable, never risking your feelings on anyone else, never letting yourself be exposed to the possibility of hurt or disappointment or failure; not if it means never standing up for what you believe, even when such a stance is unpopular or risky, never being willing to sacrifice yourself and your security in order to make a difference. Are we willing to lose our lives to find true life? Let’s be clear, Jesus never offered safety. Ah, but as he faces Caiaphas, which of the two is most alive?
And might this also be true in the life of a nation? In a post 9/11 world, a world where evil seems to lurk behind every tree, or at least behind everyone who looks different than us, are safety and security going to become our sole national purpose? Are we only going to relate to the world now through military muscle and threat? In the words of Christian Century’s James Wall, “With its security obsession and xenophobia, the United States resembles a castle on the hill, with a king who is digging a deeper moat and filling it with alligators…We are in danger of placing our trust in the forces of security instead of turning our energies and passion outward toward the service of others. After all, a hungry mob is more likely to pose a threat to the castle than are people who have hope for the future...Security must not be our sole purpose. We need to look outward to a starving, battered world. The energy we waste reorganizing our national security system would be better spent finding ways to correct the root causes of terrorism.” It is a word most Americans don’t want to hear, but I fear we ignore it at our own peril.
For nations, for individuals, what is it going to be? Purpose or place? Safety or salvation? As one friend had said, “Salvation is a relationship. It is discovering that you are not alone…It is taking the chance and opening yourself to others and to God. It is having the courage to be vulnerable, and to find that life is not most lovely when it is least dangerous, nor most beautiful when it is only safe. The Divine truth is this: there is no salvation without a cross. The human truth is this: there is no salvation apart from other persons, other persons who bring us both joy and sorrow, both laughter and tears.”
Never forget…the baby whose birth we celebrate each Christmas was born at a very inconvenient and dangerous time; the parents were far from home, there was no room for them in the inn, within days his life would be threatened. There was no safety in Bethlehem. But there was salvation, for the whole human family.
I think of the moving scene from Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, where Jean Valjean confronts the kindly bishop from whom he stole silver candlesticks. Valjean was on the run, a fugitive from the law, when the bishop had befriended him, cared for him, had seen in him a man of worth. He crassly repaid the bishop’s kind – and risky – hospitality by stealing the candlesticks.
It is not long, however, before Valjean is apprehended and brought back to the bishop’s home, along with the stolen candlesticks. The bishop opens the door and sees Jean Valjean standing there in the custody of two police officers. Without missing a beat, he says, “Ah, there you are! I told you, you could have the candlesticks. Why have your returned them?”
Neither the police nor Valjean can believe what they hear. The police reluctantly depart, leaving Valjean face to face with the bishop. The bishop speaks slowly, “Jean Valjean, you no longer belong to evil but to good. I have purchased your soul with these silver candlesticks.”
There you have it, nothing less than the spirit of Christ himself. A bishop whose exalted place in life had not blinded him to his purpose and who knew that life was more than playing it safe. He was not a keeper of candlesticks. He was called to care for persons. He was here to plead for the poor and the put-upon, to reach out to the hurt and the hungry, to give a man’s life back to him with hope, and with trust in God.
My hope is that the same can be said for you and me, indeed for our country.