Monday, April 18, 2022

Easter 2022

It’s getting close to Passover, and I’ve been watching this man for some time now. I don’t know just who he thinks he is, but he has the crowds right under his thumb...hypnotized even, the way they hang on his every word! Telling them just what they think they want to hear, while all the time, he treats them like sheep, and him, of all things, their shepherd!

Why, the people of Israel are God’s chosen ones, not just one more victim nation of the Roman war machine! Israel doesn’t need a shepherd...we’re in need of a king...one who has the authority to lead us out of oppression, not simply lulled into a state of self-satisfaction, roaming around in greener pastures!

We need to return to the old laws of the fathers, and work on rebuilding the temple, and restoring the old sacrificial system, and get the people swarming again to Jerusalem, that gem in the crown of God! The capital of Judaism! And most of all, encouraging a greater respect for real Jewish leadership.

Why, I’m a Pharisee...maybe even the best of the lot of us, educated from a child by some of the greatest of the rabbis, sages, scholars and philosophers ever to stand before an audience. For centuries now, we’ve worked our way up the ladder of Jewishness, and we’ve paid our dues alongside the scribes, and even those miserable Sadducees, as much as I can’t stand even the sight of them.

And now this man, Jesus, out of Nazereth, wherever that is, come out of no-where and headed only God-knows-where, has decided he’s going to take us on! Why just the other day, some of my friends and I decided to come down from Jerusalem to see him for ourselves, and found his so-called disciples eating bread with unwashed hands! Well let me tell you, we told them off in no uncertain terms, what our tradition has to say about that!

Now get this...this Jesus began quoting scripture at us...that bit where Isaiah had been yammering against the hypocrites. I don’t know where he gets off, using our own scriptures to make us look small in front of our own people! Why, he even went so far as to accuse us of making God’s word ineffective, because of our love for of tradition! And next he began pronouncing woe against us, just as though we were the enemy, rather than the friends of God.

But that’s not the worst of it. It’s come to light that even some of our own Pharisees are beginning to be taken in by him! Just this morning I heard through the grapevine that one of our own, by the name of Nicodemus had snuck off after sunset last night to meet with him, asking about his teaching and his miracles. And do you know what that man’s response had been? You won’t believe it! That “God so loves the world that He gave His only begotten Son, and that whoever believed in Him, would never perish, but have everlasting life.” Now what do you suppose he was getting at...that he was God’s Son?! Blasphemy, I say! A man who equates himself with the very person of God, on any level, deserves to die! So we had only one recourse...to meet with the high priests and devise a plan.

Of course, I took it on myself to go to Caiaphas, and he consulted with Annas, and they both consulted with the scribes and the elders, who counseled together to put him to death. From there it was just a matter of convincing Pilate, the Roman governor, that he was guilty of crimes against Rome, calling himself a king. At first, Pilate objected, and sent him over to Herod, who only made sport of him and sent him back to the governor. But from there, it was only a matter of time.

It wasn’t long before a cross was constructed, and Jesus, that self-proclaimed king of the Jews, was nailed fast to it, pierced and bleeding like a sacrificed lamb. And then, I heard it. At first I thought I’d been mistaken, but others confirmed it...”Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!” They know not what they do?! Those words are ringing in my ears yet! All I could think-of, in that moment, was that one day, I too would die, and after that? Judgment! And this man was praying for my forgiveness!

But day after week after month, I carried on, breathing out heresies and chasing down Jesus freaks, until I began to lose the heart for it. I could bear it no longer, when finally, on my last manhunt, I was literally struck down along the way by the voice of the crucified One. I don’t remember much about what happened after that point...only that a friend told me later, how he had had a vision as well, that seemed to confirm my own...in which he had been told that I, Saul the Pharisee, had been chosen by God from eternity past, to experience forgiveness for the worst crimes known to man, being a vessel to be used by the Lord to bear that most blessed Name to all peoples!

Now years later, as I sit reflecting on these things, I cannot help but think how foolish I had been. So I'm penning my confession to the little church in Corinth, that I, a former Pharisee, the greatest of the great have been made anew, because… “...the word of the cross, which is foolishness to them that perish, is unto us which are saved, the very power of God.”        Thank you, Jesus.


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