Readings:
Ezekiel 37:21-28; Psalm 40; Jeremiah 31:10-13; John 11:45-57

‘I am going to take the children of Israel from the nations… I shall gather them together from everywhere and bring them home to their own soil… I shall rescue them from all the betrayals they have been guilty of; I shall cleanse them… they shall be my people and I will be their God… And the nations will learn that I am Yahweh the sanctifier of Israel, when my sanctuary is with them for ever.”
Ezekiel 37:21-23, 28

Many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary and had seen what [Jesus] did believed in him, but some of them went to tell the Pharisees what Jesus had done. Then the chief priests and Pharisees called a meeting. ‘Here is this man working all these signs,’ they said, ‘and what action are we taking? If we let him go… everybody will believe in him and the Romans will come and destroy the Holy Place and our nation.’ One of them, Caiaphas, the high priest that year, said, ‘You don’t seem to have grasped the situation at all; you fail to see that it is better for one man to die for the people, than for the whole nation to be destroyed.’ He did not speak in his own person, it was as high priest that he made this prophecy that Jesus was to die for the nation-and not for the nation only, but to gather in unity the scattered children of God. From that day they were determined to kill him.
John 11:45-53

These two readings are in striking contrast. Through Ezekiel God promises unity and peace to the scattered Jewish nation, to cleanse them from all past betrayals, to be their sanctifier, their God, making them a sign to the nations. In the Gospel, a few centuries later, the chief priests and the Pharisees, the legitimate authorities, are plotting to kill Jesus, the fulfilment of all God’s promises. ‘If we let him go, everyone will believe in him and the Romans will come and destroy the Holy Place and our nation’, so he is a threat to their national security, a point which Caiaphas sums up succinctly, it is better for one man to die than that our national security should be threatened. This advice has reverberated down the centuries. ‘Is it not better that a few hundred thousand should die in Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, than that our national security should be threatened?’ ‘Is it not better that we should retain the power to annihilate millions to ensure the security of our nation and its values?’ The minds and hearts of the chief priests and authorities have not changed, except in removing Caiaphas’ one-man limit.

We must pray to wake up, as individuals, as Church and as nation to the truth that Passion week is not just the commemoration of a past event to make us feel religiously good, but the unveiling of a present reality to make us feel so uncomfortable that we have to change our ways radically.

‘He did not speak in his own person, it was as high priest that he made this prophecy that Jesus was to die for the nation-and not for the nation only, but to gather in unity the scattered children of God.’ Caiaphas spoke cynically and murderously. His statement may be compared to a false note on a musical score which God, the master composer, takes and works into a new composition. His death will not only save the nation, but gather in unity the scattered children of God.

God works through human sinfulness. The Jews do not present themselves in the Scriptures as an exemplary people, but as a stiff-necked generation, an unfaithful and treacherous people. It is God alone who bestows greatness on them. As Belloc wrote, ‘How odd of God to choose the Jews.’ In the Gospels two of the twelve betray him, and all [the men] desert him in the final crisis.

We need to apply these readings to our own lives. We contain the scattered children of Israel in ourselves, our base inclinations and desires, our obstinate self-will and narrow vision blinkered to our immediate self-interest, betraying our own deepest longings. Come before God with them and listen to him say, ‘I shall rescue you from all the betrayals you have been guilty of; I shall cleanse you; and I will be your God.’ Present, too, the damage that has been done to us and the damage we have done, and beg him to take it all and work on it as he worked on Adam’s sin and on Caiaphas’, so that the wrongs we have done may be transformed by his power to become a source of blessing not only for us and our peace, but for the peace of the world.

Prayer
God, deepen our trust in you, source of all goodness, and drive out from our hearts all servile fear, so that we may always direct our defiled hearts to you to be cleansed and transformed into channels of your love and mercy. We ask you this through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen.