¶ Intro / Opening
🎵 Music
¶ Introduction to Passion Narratives
Greetings, dragon slayers and giant killers, you
Ooh.
Are listening to the one hundred and thirty seventh episode of the Lord of Spirits Podcast. I'm Father Andrew Stephen Damick and the Tower of Podcasting, perched precariously atop a disused gateway to the underworld, and with me is Father Stephen Young from Lafayette, Louisiana, tunneling through the swamp via the infernal depths of the internet into your earbuds. And we're not live.
That Mike Emperor Penguin of Japan Dagan will not be taking your calls, but he will probably be editing this episode, I think. So the reason we're pre recording this one is that just when this episode airs for the first time, we're going to be beginning here in Emaus, the service of the Orthros of the Twelve Passion Gospels for Holy Thursday night.
And no doubt our friends there in Louisiana will begin shortly thereafter in the central time zone. And that's actually our subject for this episode. We're looking at the passion readings in all four of the gospels. But we're gonna look at them as a sort of a single big chunk for each. It's not gonna be divided up into twelve. Um and we're gonna focus specifically on the events directly surrounding the crucifixion. So
First a few words of prolegum, as it were. So what do you what do you have to say for us here at the
Super scholarly.
I know.
اشتركوا في القناة Prologom.
I mean friend of the show Bart Ehrman has been coming out with his comments on whether Jesus really rose from the dead, so you know, we we can be scholarly too, I think.
Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean by that standard lot lots of things are scholarly. But um
Uh
Like I get no, I mean th friend of the show, Bart Urban. Probably the foremost text critic of our time, right? But His discipline has nothing to do with the historicity of Christ's resurrection. Like
With frankly interpreting the
Right. Like r remotely to do with that.
Right. Right. That's like saying that's like saying if you're a an amazing car mechanic that you can win the indie five hundred. No. Yes. These are not the same thing. It you don't even you may not even know how to drive.
Yeah. You could be that guy who changes out the front left tire really fast, maybe.
Yeah. Yeah. The pit crew.
Yes. But but uh the driver has a different skill. Yeah. So nonetheless.
¶ Gospel Differences: Eyewitness and Purpose
We're gonna be pedantic and uh have a prologomena. And uh basically The reason for the prologomena and therefore the contents of the prologomena uh is gonna be dealing with what why we're gonna do what we're doing and why we're doing it the way we are doing.
So
It's really more like a forward or introduction to a book than a scholarly prologomena, but we're putting on air.
Yeah.
Yeah. Extra air. That's right. Gas bags. Um So yes, as you mentioned, we're gonna be going through basically the the the narrative of Christ's uh trials and crucifixion in each of the four gospels, one at a time. And that's the key element of the how we're doing it that we're now going to talk about why we're doing it uh that way.'Cause there are uh certainly other ways of doing it.
And you mentioned the service of the twelve passion gospels and the gospel readings there are interesting because to a certain extent it's going through each gospel separately. But not always. There there are a few that are composite. And then uh in the services for Great and Holy Friday, they are composite. Uh at Royal Hours, there's some composites and at Unnailing Vespers there's a composite rating. But even a composite reading. And what I mean by a composite reading is
You're reading part of Saint Mark's account and then you have a paragraph or two from Saint Matthew and then you go back to Saint Mark, right, for example. That would be a composite reading.
And and in some cases, you know, the readings will skip a few verses here or there.
Right. But even a composite reading is not a harmonization.
No.
Okay. And harmonization is the primary thing that we're rejecting in favor of how we're doing it. And harmonization is when you take the accounts from the four gospels. And you just kind of smoosh them all together. To make one big composite account, but it has pieces of all four accounts jumbled together.
Right, and you sort of choose in what order to jumble them, right? Because You're taking an element that only appears in Saint Luke's Gospel, you're plugging it into Saint Mark or Saint Matthew's gospel, and where you plug it in is sort of your own arbitrary choice in your harmonization. And you may be thinking, Well, I I've I don't know that I d I mean you may be aware, you know, if if you're into deep cuts, you may be aware of the diatesserin that that Haitian wrote.
Citation, yeah.
in the early church where he sort of harmonize the four accounts together. You may be familiar with more recent. You can buy like harmonies of the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But Many of you may be saying, Well, okay, yeah, I mean those things exist out there, but like That's that's not really something I hear re like you don't hear readings from Tatian's Deatesser in the last seventeen hundred years at least. Right. Uh or anywhere outside of Syria ever.
Mm-hmm.
So, like, you know, why why is this an issue to address? Well, actually you hear harmonizations all the time. Uh you just may not realize. So like one of the most popular versions is And we're actually recording this during Papal Holy Week. And for some reason, all of our Protestant friends celebrate uh Easter when the Pope tells them to. Um So if y if you drive around by town
This is probably true for Father Andrew. This is probably true for a lot of the listeners, uh, if you are hearing this in what is now your past. uh y you will see signs at some of these Protestant churches saying at their Good Friday service they're gonna be talking about the seven sayings of Jesus from the cross. Okay. That's a harmonization. None of the four gospels say that Jesus said seven things from the cross.
Yeah. Right.
Each of them records things that he said and And if you add up all the discrete things from all four gospels, you get seven, but none of them say he said seven.
Right.
So that's one way you get a harmonization. Uh there's a lot of casual harmonization. in sermons and homilies and stuff that you'll hear this time of year where as the story is just being recounted in the sermon or something, pieces from different gospels will all get sort of jumbled together. as as one one version of the story. And Here's the core problem of that. But also the genesis of it is uh pun intended, is that we have of the story of Christ's death. that are canonical.
Right. Meaning there are four versions of that story that have authority in the church. Saint Matthew's version, Saint Mark's Version, Saint Luke's version, and Saint John's Version.
Yeah, each one as its own coherent whole.
Right. Those four are authoritative. And I say it's the the the genesis of harmonization because especially in modern times, and by modern times I mean like the last 500 years. But even here and there before that. The fact that there are four has been seen to be a problem. Because they're not identical.
Like can't they get their story straight?
Right. Um and so harmonization is an attempt to sort of diffuse that criticism or solve that problem. But here's here's the thing. That's not really the problem. And it creates another problem. The problem it creates Is that when you do your new harmonized version, you are telling a fifth version of the story.
Yeah, and and in many cases where someone might s you know say, Oh, there's contradictions between these two, then they're either cutting one version in favor of the other, or they're coming up with a third version that attempts to include both.
Right. That's the more common. Right. You end up with this fifth chimera version. But that fifth version that you came up with to try to harmonize them is not canonical.
Yeah, yeah
That is not an authoritative version. You have created a fifth gospel essentially, which is not a which is a non canonical gospel at best. And if you're not careful, it could be heretical. Right? That's but at least, at very least, is is not canonical. If we're gonna set aside harmonization as not really solv not a good solution because it creates more problems, how how do we solve this problem? Well, there's there's a couple of things. Number one, the four canonical gospel accounts.
I'll claim to be or be based on Eyewitness testimony. They do not all claim to be eyewitness testimony. St. Luke does not claim to be a little bit more than a little bit. Claim his his eyewitness testimony. He claims it's based on eyewitness testimony, that he talked to people, he interviewed people, he had written accounts that he used as sources. So he claims it's based on eyewitness testimony. But St. John's gospel, for example, claims to be eyewitness testimony. Yeah.
And if you know anything about eyewitness testimony. And by that I mean you've you've ev even watched a good legal show, like like an not a recent episode, but an old episode of Law and Order from like the nineties. You know that eyewitness testimony, if you have multiple eyewitnesses to an event, their testimony is never identical. If they're real eyewitnesses.
Yeah. Well and and you know, you might think, well We don't have this problem anymore now because we have, you know, video recording. You know. So in some cases which say, Well just let's let's just go to the videotape. Um But in in some ways this has gotten worse, right? Like Witness every time some kind of confrontation happens between
you know, law enforcement and a protester at some event. Um in our day, and there's, you know, a hundred people standing there with their cell phones out, recording what's going on. And various recordings get spread around the internet, there's endless debates about what actually happened. You know, people slowing it down and pausing at a certain moment saying, oh no, but this this other camera angle shows this.
You know, so even even then, even with, you know, things that are being committed to digital media, you're still not getting the same story.
Right, because you're from different angles.
Yeah.
Right. And that's compounded with a human brain,'cause you remember certain things and don't remember certain other things, you notice certain things, you don't notice others, you focus on certain things, you don't focus on others, right? And that's gonna be different for every eyewitness. Yeah. And this isn't this isn't just some modern thing that we've come up with due to this objection. St. John Chrysostom pointed this out about the Gospels at the end of the fourth century.
He says anybody who's ever investigated a matter knows. That if all the witnesses give exactly the same testimony, it means they concocted their story.
Yeah,'cause they all got together and said, Okay, let's make sure we get this the same.
Yeah. I I got it straight. That if they're actual independent witnesses their stories are all gonna be I mean broad strokes the same, but there are gonna be little different differences in details they notice, different you know, some that might even seem contradictory. So then uh the other element then all all of that is sort of unconscious. W when you're watching something happen. Whether you're watching it directly or, you know, kids these days, you're watching it through your phone.
You're not consciously choosing, okay, what element of what I'm seeing should I focus on, right? Like what details do I want to remember? That's all stuff that's happening unconsciously. But when you later go to tell the story of what you saw. What what did you see? What happened? You were there. Then when you tell that story, there's another level that enters in of conscious choice.
Yeah.
Because when you tell that story later, you're not gonna sit there and try and remember every single little detail. And oh, by the way, the guy standing to my left was wearing a red sweater.
Yeah, I mean They're real, but they don't matter to the story. And what the decision about what matters to the story is is the decision that you make as the storyteller.
Right. And this is why, like, if you're offering testimony about something in a court case, this is why you get asked questions. They don't have you just come up there and tell the story and then leave. Right? Yeah. Because You when you tell the story are not saying every single little detail that you remember. There might be a detail that someone else thinks is important that you didn't think was important or didn't realize was important and you need to be asked about.
But you you there you're making conscious choices, which means that the gospel writers were not did not just sit down and try to record every single fact that they were aware of. about Christ's trials and death. They didn't record the relative humidity, the temperature of the day, right? Like they didn't you know what I mean? They didn't they like not every single fact they could possibly find or remember. They're choosing To tell the story in a certain way, to emphasize certain things about it.
That those are those are conscious choices and the four gospel writers make different choices.
Yeah.
So it's not that they're coming up with contradictory versions of the story. It's that number one, they have a different set of Eyewitness testimony facts. available to them. And then number two, they're making different choices about which of those to record and how to record them, what language to use, what words to use to describe things.
And and some of it is It's just, you know, who these these four men are. Their personalities, you know, their their own preferences. Like it's often been mentioned, for instance, the Saint Luke being a doctor. that, you know, he's very precise, um, in certain kinds of ways, very historical also. But also, you know, there are elements of choices they're making that are based on who their audience is. Who do they intend to communicate this to? You know. Yeah.
And they have very different levels of facility with the Greek language. Saint Saint Mark's Greek is notoriously horrible.
Ha ha ha.
People don't like to say that'cause it's in the Bible. So they don't like to say his Greek was horrible. They like y so when you read commentaries, you read scholarly literature about Mark, it's always like his Greek is rustic.
Yeah.
Rustic is like the most popular adjective. Like that means he he uses Greek like a hillbilly, right? That's basically what that means.
Yeah.
And and Saint John's Greek is horrible in a complete other w other way. Um English pri first language English speakers don't realize how bad Saint John's Greek is because his Greek is the easiest to read for English speakers. 'Cause he tends to write like subject, verb, object. Like he he uses a lot of constructions that are familiar to English readers syntactically.
Uh but that is not good syntax in Greek. That's really bad in Greek. But so English speakers don't always realize that. Saint Luke's is probably the best Greek out of the four. And say Saint Matthew's because Saint Luke is deliberately trying to he's deliberately aping like Thucydides and other Greek historians' style, like on purpose.
He's trying he's he's making it sound like Educated Greek to some extent.
And a historical text in particular.
Yeah, like like septuagentizing it to s to you know
Well no, that's more Matthew. Saint Matthew is using is using Septuagint Greek. So he's got all kinds of Hebreisms and stuff in it. That's why people Most people agree now erroneously think it was originally written in Aramaic. Uh it's because He has so many like Aramaiisms and Semiticisms in there in Greek, right? Where where they don't belong. But that that just is that's not an indicator that the text was originally in Aramaic.
Because someone translating an Aramaic text to Greek would have taken care of them. This is the mark of someone who is a native Aramaic speaker. Greek is their second language and they're writing sort of in Aramaic in Greek. Right. Right. In the way that a lot of people, you know, y you've met people who are immigrants from other countries, for example, and their first language is a language other than English.
And so they'll say things in English, but they'll use sort of weird syntactical constructions that come from their first language. I'm not gonna do quasi racist ethnic parodies here of it, but you know people know what I'm talking about, right? You've met people and they say something like their word order will be weird for English.
They'll leave out articles because the their language doesn't have articles.
Yeah, or does it use them that way? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So y you we've all encountered this. And the the syntax they're using is perfect syntax for their first language and just not correct for English, right? But they're still thinking in their first language and then speaking in English. That's what St. Matthew's doing. But so yeah, that that's gonna color things too,'cause their facility with language
is gonna open up or close off certain realms of description of things, right? Um And then and then finally finally and this is this is where the whole why this is a a mostly a modern problem uh thing enters in.
¶ Modernism and Historical Proof
is that there was this whole dynam dynamic. We've talked about this on the show before, where As you get into the 17th and 18th centuries, and modernism is taking hold in Europe, that you get the early liberal schools of biblical interpretation that are all based around At first it's okay, we need to come up with some scientific Explanation. For how the text is true that doesn't involve anything we're actually doing.
Yeah.
Right. Right. So so you get what used to be called swoon theory, for example.
Uh wow, yes. The idea that Jesus didn't die, he just sort of swooned and that you
Yes, he went into like a a a coma. And they thought he was dead and they buried him and he woke up on the third day. Because they didn't want to deny the historicity of the text. They just wanted to deny the point.
Yeah. I mean this is much like, you know, with a uh you know, friend of the show Bart Ehrman basically saying recently that the disciples of Jesus had visions that he was alive. So then they accurately reported what they saw in visions.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And John Dominic Crossett beat him to that by uh a a few decades. That was this whole thing. He's talking about, you know, oh, people all the time encounter have experiences where they believe they saw or encountered their dead loved ones and all this. Yeah. Like, yeah. So yeah, you come up with some suicide but then, you know, eventually once you once you get toward the end of the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth century, they're just kinda like
Well maybe we should just deny that this ever happened. Maybe that's easier. Right.
Right.
And so they just started denying that any of the things in the gospels ever happened. Yeah. Because they they didn't make sense with the scientific world. And the response to that, as we've talked about on the show before, was an equally modernist response. So the modernism fundamentalism debate was really between two sets of modernists. Because the fundamentalists
The Christian fundamentalists who later became evangelical fundamentalists and then just evangelicals and now who knows what they've become uh watching stuff on TV. The uh That group didn't try to go back to the way that the scriptures had been understood throughout church history, even by the Protestant reformers. They said, no, all of this did happen. It is true. And we're gonna use modern methods and modern modes of reasoning to prove that it all happened.
Yes.
Yeah. And so the bone of contention became Not what does this mean, what is this about, you know, what what did Christ do? What did he accomplish in his death and resurrection? From an Orthodox perspective, the Protestant reformers gave wrong answers in terms of that, but at least they were addressing the right question. But once you get into the late 19th and early 20th century The evangelical fundamentals are not even asking that question. They're just trying to prove it happened.
We gotta prove Jesus existed, we gotta prove he was crucified, and we're gonna try and use modern historical methods to prove that he rose from the dead.
Yeah.
And that's still going on to this day.
Yep. I mean this is the whole evidence that demands a b verdict, you know, Josh McDowell. Like this is the whole kind of low church Protestant apologetics factory is based on this question.
Yeah. And it is complete modernism. I mean it's complete modernism. Because you have accepted all of the modernist presuppositions. You have granted them everything in the argument. You're trying to use the same processes they use and pr and and arrive at the opposite result results. As if the methodology and the conclusion are unrelated. And so what that does to the text, and why we're talking about it again now.
What that does to the text is it says, okay, the what the text is claiming, what the text is asserting, the purpose of this text. is to tell you XYZ happened.
Yeah, no.
Right. And that then that then is what makes when when that's the debate, that's what makes What creates the problem of there being four different accounts? Because from that perspective, each of the four, each of the four is claiming this is exactly what happened. And so any discrepancy then means that one of them is quote unquote lying.
Right.
Or at the very least one o three of them got it wrong uh on some of these things. But that's based on these presuppositions. And so the fact is The tech It's not even on the list of things that it's claiming that this happened. At the time the texts were written, and at the time the texts were first read, there was no doubt in anyone's mind that these things actually happened. The things we're gonna be talking about tonight.
Essentially that Christ was was crucified by the Romans with the collaboration of the the Jewish leadership at the time. At the time. No one contested that for centuries and centuries and centuries, right? That was not a contested fact. And so since that's not a contested fact, none of the four gospel writers had as their purpose to assert that that happened.
Ня... Ня...
And still to this day. Still to this day, there is no doubt among anyone sane. That that Jesus of Nazareth existed and that he was crucified by the Romans in the early thirties AD.
Because And this is not just, you know, hyperbole here. This is the single best attested fact from the ancient world.
And you know who said that? Friend of the show Bart Urban.
There we go.
Yeah.
Did Jesus exist?
Yeah. I I understand there's people out there who want to say no. And and usually the motivation for that is I don't believe Christianity is true. You can it you know, Bart Ehrman doesn't believe Christianity is true. He doesn't. He does not. But he still says that. And and saying that basic and if you don't accept that, then basically what you're s what you're asserting then, and you may not know this because you may not spend a lot of time in texts from the ancient world.
If you say that that couldn't have happened, that it's not really you know true.
There's not enough evidence even. There's not enough evidence to believe that he existed.
Right. Then you basically have to say we can't know anything about the ancient world. Yeah. Because
You can't know Julius Caesar existed. You can't know Alexander the Great existed. Right.
All these things that are generally taken for granted by most people who are studying this stuff at all. Yeah. And and on the basis of much, much slimmer evidence. Much slimmer evidence.
Yeah. And so Bart Urban, you know, friend of the show. This is one of the reasons why he's friend of the show, by the way, Bart Urban. Is only regardless of our disagreements. He's try yeah, he is genuinely trying to be an honest broker. He was genuinely trying to look at this stuff honestly. And when he looks at it honestly, regardless of where his heart lies and what he might want to be true or not true. We don't have to psychoanalyze him.
Because he looks at it and he says, look, there's more evidence for the fact that Jesus of Nazareth existed and was crucified by the Romans, roughly these dates, than anything else in the ancient world.
Yeah.
Ну, да, да. That's just an assessment. So anybody who you run into online who who claims Jesus never existed is is not a serious person.
Yeah.
They are a flat earther.
Well it's just like I've gotten a bunch of comments on on a on a a little short video from a while ago because but because it's about Passover and stuff, it's suddenly getting paid attention to again. A bunch of comments about Ishtar and stuff, and I'm just like, Oh, there you guys are again.
That's not a serious person. That's a that's a flat earther. I get you don't trust the government at all, so you don't want to believe anything NASA says, okay, but like the ancient Greeks figured this out, man. Like.
They did.
Uh this isn't just NASA propaganda.
Yeah. It must be an exciting moment for those people. You know,'cause they just they launched some people back to the moon.
Oh, we're gonna get some YouTube comments that are mad. Because I have before.
I'm excited. I'm excited about all that.
But but yes.
That's a pretty good prologomina.
Yeah.
¶ Gospels: Significance Over Objective Fact
Right. So if if they're not so if none of them are claiming This is exactly what happened, quote unquote objectively. An objective like objective fact is not even a category they had available to them. In the first century. But they're not making that. What are they doing? They're making various claims, various because there's four different authors, right? About the significance of Christ trials and death. Okay. This is an event that these are events that everyone accepted happened.
The gospel writers are talking to us about why it's important that they happened. And so the j details they're choosing. To relate the way they're choosing to relate them, the language, even the words they're choosing to use, are all designed to convey things about Christ's death. About its meaning, about its purpose. about the the in the trials about what's going on in Christ being put on trial.
About the relationship between Christ and his kingdom and the Roman Empire. About they're saying things about this. They're not just asserting that it's real.
Yeah. Yeah.
Claims about the significance of an event. If I say, here's why this event, if or or let's take an example that could come up on the show, I could be like, you know, I think. Uh I was recently on a on a YouTube channel. I think Saint John Cashin is one of the most important saints of the Orthodox Church. And he has some of the most important writings for us as modern Orthodox Christians to read for reasons A B C. And Father Andrew could have gone on that podcast the next day.
Well gone on that YouTube channel the next day and said, I think St. John Cashin is one of the most important things we're going to read for reasons XYZ. And the fact that my reasons ABC and his reasons XYZ were not identical does not mean we disagree. We're not c we wouldn't be contradicting each other. Right. That can all be true.
Okay, so the claims of one gospel writer that here's what's really important about Christ's crucifixion, and then another writer says, Here's what's really important about Christ's crucifixion. Unless one of them says it's important and the other one says it's not important, which of course is not the case. Right. That th those don't contradict each other. That's additive. They could all be true. Christ's crucifixion can be important for A million reasons. Right.
You can have a million reflections on it. You've got dozens, maybe hundreds in the New Testament. Depending on how we want to categorize them. And there have been definitely hundreds, maybe thousands more since in church history. They don't necessarily contradict each other, ever. All that is why we're gonna be going through each account from each gospel.
And looking at what are the things that each author is emphasizing or pointing out that maybe the other authors don't, or saying in a different way, or interpreting in a different way. because that way we get a more full picture. Having four different accounts is a a feature, not a bug. Right this is yeah. This it gives us m a a greater and broader understanding. of Christ's death than just one account would. Yeah. Sort of by definition. So it's a positive thing. So that's it.
That's said.
Yeah.
That was a good uh thirty five, thirty six, thirty eight minutes of uh prologomona. So there we go. Yeah.
¶ Mark's Gospel: Peter's Account
We will begin. We will begin with uh Saint Mark's Gospel. Saint Mark's Gospel we're starting with, because it's the one that was written first. And I know there's gonna be angry comments about this.
Mm-hmm.
Because people have weird associations with with various ideas of the relationship between the gospels. Somehow being connected to completely unrelated doctrines. Okay. Saint Mark's gospel coming first the biggest reason for this people believe this in the pre modern period. Is because of the tradition that he is writing essentially the memoirs of Saint Peter.
Yeah.
Shortly after Saint Peter's death in the sixties AD. Okay. So what what caused the gospels to be written, right? The earliest texts we have in terms of when they were written. In the New Testament are not the gospels, it's the epistles, specifically Saint Paul's.
Yeah.
But then the other epistles. The epistles come first. They're dealing with things in the life of the church. But obviously, while the apostles are writing epistles, Q Danny K bit again. While the apostles are writing epistles, they're still alive. And they're still exercising their authority in the church through those epistles. Right. As the apostles are martyred, most of them, the church begins to lose the apostles, start to lose the eyewitnesses. There becomes a necessity to record.
Their testimony. In written form, For future generations. And so starting with when St. Peter is executed by Nero, Saint Mark, his disciple heads to Egypt, writes Saint Mark's Gospel, which is writing down Saint Peter's way of telling the story of that Saint Mark had heard from Saint Peter firsthand. That's what saying his is the first written is based on. Not anything modern, not Q, get Greesbach outta here. That's what it's based on, okay?
Um the whole Matthew being written first in Aramaic thing is based on people reading a second hand quote from Papius sideways that's quoted in Eusebius. We won't go down that rabbit trail now, but trust me, that's way more tenuous and modern than thinking Steve Mark was right. That's right.
Let's dive in. So we're gonna start with uh and we're gonna do this is I'm gonna read and then you know we're stopping at various points for commentary.
Let me give one more note.
Okay, we're not.
St. Mark's Gospel is going we're gonna see here the basic structure that we're gonna see in all four. in terms of just big bullet points. And and in terms of the section of each gospel that we're gonna be reading, there's gonna be at least two trials. There's gonna be a place where Christ is mocked. Christ is gonna be crucified and obviously Christ's death is gonna be at the end of the
the section that we're reading today. But that basic structure of trials, mockery, crucifixion, death, we're gonna see that here in Saint Mark's Gospel. That ba those basic bullet points are gonna be In in all of them. Okay.
All right, so we're going to start with Mark chapter 14, verse 43, and we're going to go all the way to chapter 15, verse 41. So here we go. And immediately while he was still speaking. J and that's Jesus, by the way, while he was still speaking. Judas came, one of the twelve. And with him a crowd with swords and clubs from the chief priests and the scribes and the elders. Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, The one I will kiss is the man, seize him and lead him away under guard.
And when he came he went up to him at once and said, Rabbi, and he kissed him. And they laid hands on him and seized him. But one of those who stood by drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his ear. And Jesus said to them, Have you come out as against a robber with swords and clubs to capture me? Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me, but let the scriptures be fulfilled. And they all left him and fled.
And a young man followed him with nothing but a linen cloth about his body, and they seized him, but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked.
So this this particular naked man, uh they call him the Streak.
With the flash.
Yeah. Subject of In some cases bizarre theories. But traditionally this is taken to be a a guest appearance by St. Mark.
Yeah, who who it should be reminded everybody, he's not one of the twelve. Not one of the twelve. Yeah. Yeah.
Yes. And would have been younger, right? So this is like a youth like a kid. early teens and uh yeah, so that's the that's the traditional understanding. Now, just a note here, because even though this has been thoroughly debunked, Every once in a while, round this time of year, in the documentaries. Someone will bring up the secret gospel of Bark.
We love a secret gospel here on Lord of Spirits, don't we? Yes.
That sounds terribly mysterious. Yes. So this is basically a a A fellow in the mid twentieth century. Way back in the nineteen hundreds, as the zoomers say, claimed that he had found a previously undiscovered text of Clement of Alexandria. In which he claimed that were these uh long excerpts from the secret gospel of Mark. That the regular gospel of Mark, they put that out to everybody. But if you became one of the initiates in Alexandria Egypt. They allowed you to read the secret guide.
Which had a number of other passages. about this naked man with the linen robe. Who it identified as Lazarus?
Ooh, such gnosticism, wow.
Yes. And Lazarus was this sort of secret special disciple of him. They didn't let this on in the regular Gospel of Mark, but in the secret gospel of Mark you found out that that Christ taught him the real secrets of life and So yeah, pure gosticism. And you're like, okay, well, you know, yeah, middle of the twentieth century, they found a bunch of Gnostic texts. No, this is worse. This is just i it's a fame.
Yeah. Actual fraud.
Like it was straight up debunked. It was just straight up proven to be a fake. Like I'm talking new writing on old parchment. Fake. It's a fake. So it's real. Despite it being completely debunked, shockingly, history channel documentaries still bring it up once in a while. Yes. Was it really a fake? Was it aliens? Right. Um So yeah, but it is a fake. So if you see anything about that Just immediately whatever you're watching, you know is full of it. Because
Bust out laughing.
Yes, because that has been long debut. Okay. A whole century ago.
¶ Mark: Trials, Blasphemy, Denials
All right, picking up with verse fifty three. And they led Jesus to the high priest, and all the chief priest and the elders and the scribes came together. And Peter had followed him at a distance, right into the courtyard of the high priest.
And he was sitting with the guards and warming himself at the fire. Now the chief priests and the whole council were seeking testimony against Jesus to put him to death, but they found none. For many bore false witness against him, but their testimony did not agree. And some stood up and bore false witness against him, saying, We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another not made with hands.
Yet even about this their testimony did not agree, and the high priest stood up in the midst and asked Jesus, have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?
Let's pause here for just a second. So the problem here is of course If you've read your Deuteronomy, right, you have to establish aga establish everything by two or three witnesses. and their testimony has to agree. And so they're they're trying to Accuse Jesus of things and they've got people they've found who half heard things that he said or whatever who are who they're having come in and testify against him, but they're all testifying to different random things. So that doesn't help.
It's like reading a a re you know, a subreddit.
Yeah. And so they finally eventually they get two of'em who both talk about him saying he's gonna destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, some version of that.
Yeah.
And but even that th they it doesn't quite match. Like they both have versions of that, you know.
And for of course the high priest is just like, he said, What? What?
What? Yeah. What is it these guys made about for you? Exactly what that would be. Is that blasphemy?'Cause he's
It just sounds impossible and weird.
Yeah. From the Yeah. I mean uh well yeah, and especially when you bring in as Saint Mark does here, this idea of this one built with hands, this one built without hands. There were already Jewish traditions about the the third temple being made without hands and coming down from heaven. And that that temple that had been built with human hands was associated with Herod. So Like
Mm-hmm.
Uh arguably that could be a positive thing, right? He could be saying, like, we're gonna get rid of Herod's temple and have the true temple, you know, from heaven. That's not bad a bad thing to say, necessarily, right? So So the high priest is basically when he says to finally he says to Jesus, Have you no answer to make? What is this that they're all testifying against you? He's just sort of getting frustrated'cause he's he he doesn't have anything he can
Yeah. Looking for a smoking gun.
Yeah.
All right, picking up with verse sixty one. But he remained silent and made no answer. Again the high priest asked him, Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven. And the high priest tore his garments and said, What further witnesses do we need? You have heard his blasphemy, what is your decision? And they all condemned him as deserving death.
So So yeah, so this is an interesting passage, this this part for a for a couple of reasons. So he he finally asked Christ, are you the m the Messiah? Are you the Christ that said that's are you the Messiah? Are you the Messiah? And if he had just said he was the Messiah. If we understand Christ's answer as just meaning, yeah, I'm the Messiah, that's not blasphemy. That doesn't explain their reaction.
Yeah, blasphemy would require that he's claiming divine status.
Yeah. And and the general policy, and this is still true, by the way, of like very orthodox Jews who are the ones who are still expecting a Messiah. They will just look at someone and say, well that that could be the Messiah. That could be the Messiah. And you see some of that in the Gospels. You see people saying about Jesus, could this be the Messiah? Right. Like they're.
That idea they were not, you know, he might be, he might not be. Let's see what happens, right? They they that was their attitude toward it. Uh, the attitude was not how dare you claim to be the Messiah? That's blasphemo no.
So
It's very clear, as as Father Andrew said, it's very clear that the the rest of the answer, the You will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven. They understand him to be claiming to be the Son of Man.
Yeah. I mean this is a reference to Daniel. Right. Seen in Daniel.
Right. He was enthroned at the right hand. Of the most high. Uh, this is Christ claiming to be the second power in heaven. This is and they understand it that way. That's why they say it's blasphemy.
Yeah, which i it should be said by the way, these people who say Jesus never said he was God again, I mean, this they all understand him to be saying that he's God. You know.
At least divine.
Yeah, at least divine in some way. Like like you people say sometimes, well Jesus never claimed to be anything but a man or whatever. No. The people around him understood him to be saying different things than that.
And this is in St. Mark's gospel.
Yes, the one that was sort of supposedly low Christology.
Yes, the one with the supposedly low Christology. Yeah. Uh that has this. But the other the other interesting thing is, and it's hard to translate. Only partially because of Mark's St. Mark's creep. And I'm not saying that to disrespect him, as I say. I it's just the reality. His I'm sure his Aramaic was quite lovely.
is Greek not not so great. And if I was trying to compose in in first century Greek, I don't know that I would end up doing much better from the perspective of the first century Greek. Yeah. Um Yeah. So but It's hard it's hard to get into English. Like the way uh Father Andrew read it was, and you will see the Son of Man.
Seated at the right hand of power. What what it actually says in the Greek is something m like From now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven. Like henceforth I think I think the King James has henceforth.
I do love a good henceforth.
Henceforth you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power. So it's not just saying in the future you will see this. It's saying from now on You will see this.
Yeah, this is
Which is a little harder to understand. But In order to understand it we have to go back to Daniel. This is something we're gonna be doing a lot in this episode, actually going back to the Old Testament when it's referenced in this story. to see what's actually being referenced what happens right after the enthronement of the Son of Man. He comes on the clouds of heaven, he's enthroned uh at the right hand of the ancient days, and then he judges
the creation. Okay. So What Christ is saying here, by identifying himself with that particular Prophetic vision of Daniel is at this moment, Christ is under judgment. He is being judged. By the high priest and the Sanhedrin.
They're probably enthroned. Like they're s probably sitting in judgment. Yes. While he stands as the accused.
Right. From now on what Now it is going to be him. He is now going to be enthroned. He's going to his death, but he's also going to his enthronement. He is going to be enthroned. He is going to be judging the creation. He is going to be judging them.
Yeah. So that makes him mad.
He is gonna be sitting in judgment over them. So he's claiming to be this divine figure, and he's saying that he is going to be sitting in judgment over them.
which probably seemed laughable, but also made him mad.
Yeah. Did not diffuse the
That's why the next thing that happens, verse 65, some began to spit on him and to cover his face and to strike him, saying to him, Prophesy, and the guards received him with blows. And as Peter was below in the courtyard, one of the servant girls of the high priest came, and seeing Peter warming himself, she looked at him and said, You also are with the Nazarene Jesus. But he denied it, saying, I neither know nor understand what you mean.
And he went out into the gateway and the rooster crowed. And the servant girl saw him and began again to say to the bystanders, This man is one of them. But again he denied it. And after a little while the bystanders again said to Peter, certainly you are one of them, for you are a Galilean. But he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, I do not know this man of whom you speak. And immediately the rooster crowed a second time.
And Peter remembered how Jesus had said to him, Before the rooster crows twice, you would deny me three times, and he broke down and wept.
Starting It's it's interesting that so Saint Peter's denial is in all of the accounts in different ways. But remember this is based on Saint Peter's way of telling the story.
Hmm.
And what's interesting is This is the last appearance of Saint Peter in St. Mark's gospel.
Huh?
So this is uh in a sense, this is Peter's repentance.
Yeah. He doesn't include it's only Saint John who tells us about Saint Peter being reinstated.
It's interesting for multiple reasons.
Yeah. But Saint Saint Mark, Saint Peter As he told the gospel story, the Thought it was very important to say that he had betrayed Christ even more. I mean, we saw them all scatter when Christ was arrested. But St. Peter thought it was important to emphasize in his telling of the story the fact that he himself had. betrayed and uh and denied Christ.
Speaks very, very well of him.
¶ Mark: Pilate, Crucifixion, Mockery
Okay, picking up now in chapter fifteen. And as soon as it was morning the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council. And they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate. And Pilate asked him, Are you the king of the Jews? And he answered him, You have said so.
And the chief priests accused him of many things, and Pilate again asked him, Have you no answer to make? See how many charges they bring against you? But Jesus made no further answer, so that Pilate was amazed. Now at the feast he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked, and among the rebels in prison who had committed murder in the insurrection there was a man called Barabbas.
And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he usually did for them, and he answered them saying, Do you want me to release for you the king of the Jews? For he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up, but the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release for them Barabbas instead.
And Pilate again said to them, Then what shall I do with the man you call the king of the Jews? And they cried out again, crucify him. And Pilate said to them, Why, what evil has he done? But they shouted all the more, crucify him. So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.
And the soldiers led him away inside the palace, that is, the governor's headquarters, and they called together the whole battalion, and they clothed him in a purple cloak, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on him.
and they began to salute him, hail, King of the Jews. And they were striking his head with a reed, and spitting on him, and kneeling down in homage to him, And when they had mocked him they stripped him of the purple cloak, and put his own clothes on him, and they led him out to crucify him.
So this is Notice there's these two mockery right. Both both trials end uh in him being mocked and rejected. So we have this parallel between the Jewish leaders and the Roman authorities.
Yeah. And it's interesting to me too, like In in this reading, Pilate seems to think the crowd's gonna go one way, but then it says that the chief priest stirred up the crowd to have him release for them Barabbas instead. So it's like Well, you know, th maybe the chief pre maybe the the elite have a problem with him, but you know, the average person I'm sure doesn't. Is that seems to be what his his uh reasoning is.
Um okay, picking up now with verse twenty one. And they compelled a passer by, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross. And they brought him to the place called Golgotha, which means place of a skull. And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them to decide what each should take.
And it was the third hour when they crucified him, and the inscription of the charge against him read The King of the Jews. And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left. And those who passed by derided him wagging their heads and saying, Aha you who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross.
So also the chief priest with the scribes mocked him to one another, saying, He saved others, he cannot save himself. Let the Christ the King of Israel come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe. Those who were crucified with him also reviled him. And when the sixth hour had come there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, Ali Ali Lamasbachtani, which means My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
And some of the bystanders said, Behold, he is calling Elijah. And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed, and gave it to him to drink, saying, Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down. And Jesus uttered Go ahead.
¶ Mark: Jesus' Cry and Temple
A few things here, right? Um So Christ Says uh Elama Sabak Dani, my God, my God, why hou forsaken me? And certain people base Their whole theology. On this.
Yeah. Right. This one line. The idea that they'll say I mean, I was raised with this idea, you know, God the Father turned his back on the Son. That's what they'll say.
As if Christ is just here in in agony, uttering a logical proposition.
Yeah.
Right. Um which is of course absurd. It's especially absurd since this is the first verse of Psalm twenty two. Psalm twenty one.
Yeah, and I mean, and also, frankly, you know, this idea that the father could be in any way separated from the son. Oh, yeah.
Either request we won't go down too far down the anti PSA rabbit hole, don't we?
I think it should just be mentioned though. That's since it's here. Should just be mentioned. That either suggests you have a messed up Trinitarian theology. Right. You know, essentially that you're some kind of tri theist, basically. Or You don't believe that the one on the cross is truly God.
Well you have a messed up Christology. Yeah.
A Nestorian or an Aryan or I don't know what something, something weird. You know? So
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. No, he's a neo Apollinarian.
Yeah.
Anyway, yeah. So like just just don't go there, kids. Like it's just it's just messed up. But as you said, yes, this is the beginning of one of the actual psalms.
Right. Just the very presupposition that this is a logical proposition. About the state of the relationship between our Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father. Is absurd.
Yeah. Yeah.
It is absurd in context. Okay. Christ is in agony. Christ is beginning to pray.
Psalm twenty two
21 in the Greek. The reason I'm going to keep saying 22 is because as the text makes clear over and over again, he's praying it in Aramaic, where it's Psalm 22.
Yeah.
Uh so And that's also important. Right? He's not making a logical proposition in Greek. He's praying in Aramaic. This is the colloquial language. He's not just like Hey here's some targum for y'all.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Al also, it this is a little another kind of a side comment, but it's worth pointing out here because this is this is the place to point it out, is there are some people who will say that the um the Bible translation that is called the Peshitta, which is an Aramaic Bible, um, they'll say, well, this is the original. And the reason they'll say it's the original is because it's in Aramaic.
Right. The idea like, well, that's that's the language being spoken there, you know. So of course that would be the original and the Greek must be a translation of that. But here's the problem, is if you actually open up the Peshitta and look at this passage. It will say in Aramaic. Uh, you know, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, Eli Eli Lama Sabacthani, which means Eli Eli Lama Sabacthani. Which it would only say that if they were trans if they were translating from Greek.
Because in the Greek, what it says, it it it transliterates these Aramaic words into Greek characters and then it translates it into Greek. And the Peshitta, slavishly following the Greek. Just repeats the Aramaic and then translates the Greek into Aramaic. And that's why it appears twice. So like this that that just shows that the Peshitta is a translation, which is fine. I mean, that's perfectly fine. Yeah.
Um the other really important thing about the fact that Christ is here praying Psalm twenty-two is that Psalm twenty-two includes Verse twenty four of Psalm twenty two was
Yes, which says For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard when he cried to him.
So the whole movement of the psalm is that it appears to everyone. that God has forsaken this person. But it is not the case.
Right
Okay. So once again, right, this is true countless times. Throughout St. Paul's epistles, throughout the Gospels, the easiest way to rebut any Calvinist assertion. is to flip to the Old Testament and look up the quote.
Yeah. Yeah.
But so this is Christ is praying this in his agony in Aramaic. Right, praying this song. Though it looks to everyone like he's been abandoned, God has not abandoned him, has not turned his face away from him. Right, and is going to deliver him out of this, is going to deliver him from death itself. God the Father is. That's that's what Christ is saying. The other interesting note is that the bystanders so
This never made sense to me as a kid hearing it in English,'cause I'm like, Ellie, Ellie, and they're like, he's calling Elijah. What?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yes. So in Hebrew, Elijah's name is Eliyahu. Or Eliya short, right? Right Eliya Eliyahu that gets brought over into Greek. Greek names have to end with a sigma. Yeah. So it becomes Elias.
Yes, yeah.
Right. Yeah.
So it gets it gets changed. So, you know, Eli kinda sounds a little bit like Eliyahu or Eliah. You know, especially if it's a man who's frankly going through crucifixion.
Yes. So he's saying El E, they think he's saying Eliya. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Then he's calling to a legend. Why would they think that?
Why would they think that Father?
Let's take a pause. Isn't that a weird thing to assume?
Yeah.
Yeah. Wouldn't wouldn't wouldn't the natural assumption be wouldn't wouldn't Occam's razor, he's saying Ali, my God. He's calling out to God. Right? Like wouldn't wouldn't that be right? Unless Unless and frankly this is the only way this makes sense. In the first century, people, Jewish people, commonly invoked the prayers of the saints. Like Elijah,
I mean he'd be a big one.
Who had got up to heaven in a chariot.
Still one of the most popular saints of the Middle East. Big time. Huge.
Right. Does it? Does it? Right? That's the only way to really make sense of the passage. Why would anyone guess that?
Yeah.
Yep.
All right. Right. Today, average American sees a Jewish person have a heart attack and drop in the street. A Jewish person is going Elie Elie, right? Would you assume he was calling out to God in Hebrew or would you assume he was calling Elijah? You'd assume he was calling out to God. That's because the average American is a Protestant. It doesn't inv doesn't invoke saints.
Yeah, it's just not a thing.
But it was such a common thing that that's their assumption.
Yeah.
And the last thing here, this is this is just a note to hold on to for later. Okay. Okay. Um here Saint Mark presents the stuff that's put in the sponge and put on the stick. This is them try this is put toward Jesus to try to finish him off. Essentially it's being used as a sedative. When someone is crucified, um, basically it often takes days. uh for them to die. But basically what they're forced to do is use their badly injured legs to lift their body up in order to breathe.
Their body is put in this stress position where they can't breathe. They can't fully take in oxygen. And so they have to push up and their bare, usually scourged back is up against the wood, so every time they do this, they're ripping more flesh off of their back. Right, uh in order to take a breath. And eventually just your strength in your body gives out and you suffocate to death. uh sometimes thrashing violently. So that's
This the crucifixion is such a horrible way of dying that we came up with a word, a new word, to describe that level of pain and torture. It's excruciating.
Yeah. It's literally the idea that it's like being crucified.
Yes. Um so this was the worst form of public humiliation because people were crucified naked and torture that the Romans could come up with, and they were pretty inventive. And they do it in different ways. That's how St. Peter ends up getting crucified upside down, peop sideways. All kinds of different horrific things, right? But so the idea here in in Saint Mark's Gospel is what they're they're putting on the sponge is essentially a sedative.
Right? That sedative will make him unable to push himself up and he will die. And so when they go to give it to him, these uh these onlookers who are watching this horrific public torturous execution, uh, say, no, no, don't give it to him yet. Let's see if Elijah comes to help him. They ought to let his suffering go on. Right. Um so that was something of a mercy killing, but still it was offered in order to attempt to kill him more quickly.
Okay. And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the centurion who stood facing him saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, Truly this man was the Son of God.
So, uh if any of you have seen the movie Quo Vatis, you know they cast John Wayne as the centurion. Uh.
Really this man was the son of God.
Right. To just pull everyone right out of the movie.
It's my last John Wayne right there.
Now the w the way it's usually Translated uh like this. This was the Son of God. I get why they do that, but realistically at the time, and if you actually read it It's more like surely this was the son of a god, right? This is a pagan centurion.
Right. Yeah, he's saying that this guy is divine in some way.
didn't have the concept of the son of God, the Messiah, right? That's not a thing. Yeah. For him, at least at this point. At this moment. And so it's probably more just him acknowledging from the darkness, from the right, the all of these these signs. Um The the the curtain of the temple getting torn in two. Is the subject of a lot of frankly weird interpretation in Protestant circles?
Yeah. I think the the going Protestant interpretation seems to me that this was to let everyone into the Holy of Holies.
Not a thing.
Literally didn't happen.
Not a thing. Yeah. And well I mean this is like And and this is often aimed at the veiling that's going on in traditional Christian churches, whether you know, the super amount of veiling that we have in the Orthodox Church or even the lesser amount of veiling that exists in you know Roman Catholic churches.
With it all.
Just like they'll say the whole call no man father thing is basically to say to Catholic priests you shouldn't be going by father. I mean there's a completely anachronistic interpretations and suggests that oh wait, all these Christians didn't read those Bible verses?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just ignore them.
Yeah. So the the key problem with that interpretation that this is everyone being allowed into the most holy place is that that that curtain that we're talking about was between the holy place and the most holy place. So only priests during their time of service were allowed into the holy place. So at most, this would be giving priests other than the high priest during their time of service access to the most holy place.
Yeah.
Women couldn't even go to the gates of the outer court of the temple.
Yeah, this is so many layers in.
They were in the court of women at this point in history. And then men who weren't Levites could go to the gates of the courtyard of the temple. There were a number of barri this isn't the only barrier between The people. and the most holy place. Yeah. So that interpretation makes no sense.
It'd be like saying, you know, that the that the door of the oval office was smashed into pieces and so now everyone in America can enter. Oh no. Nope.
Yeah.
A lot of layers.
You still have to get into the w White House and into the West Wing and into the right.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
What's actually happening here, right, this is a this is judgment. This is not a positive sign. Right? This happens when Christ dies, not when he rises. Okay, this is a sign of judgment. The curtain is ripped open and opened to reveal what? What would be revealed in that case? But there's nothing there. No Ark of the Covenant, no presence of God. Remember, the presence of God never came and filled the second temple.
There's nothing there, this is judgment, said Against the temple, said Who ran the temple?
Sadducees.
And in particular the high priest.
Yeah.
Right. This high priest who condemned Jesus, this high priest who went out among the people and agitated for him to be crucified unjustly. Right. The whole base of his power was that he was the only person who had access to that most holy place. And therefore to the presence of God. And now, by ripping open that curtain, God has revealed that the emperor has no clothes. Right. So this is a judgment against the high priest and against the temple. And so when the temple goes away.
Forty years later, the Who needed it?
Yeah. All right. Well, that completes our reading of Saint Mark's account of the Passion. Oh, excuse me. Right. Excuse me. I'm so sorry.
Yeah.
All right, verse forty. Verse forty, this is important. There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James the younger, and of Jose and Salome. When he was in Galilee they followed him and ministered to him, and there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.
So and that's the reason it's important to get those verses and we'll note a couple other things here. Remember we said in the in the prologomina uh that this is being presented as being based in eyewitness testimony. That's why these people get named. Right. These are people who were still around at the time. Right. So like it seems like a super random detail. That that Simon of Cyrene is identified as the father of Alexander and Rufus.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, which suggests you could go to Alexander or Rufus and say, Right, hey, did your dad do this? And be like, Yeah.
Yeah, he did. Unless these are members of the early church. Right? Who people could You know, and this is saying, hey, he they these these two were there, right, and and saw this and and talked about it. And the same thing with the women who are named, right, who were there and saw these things.
All right. Well, that concludes our reading of the Gospel of Mark, uh, focused on Christ's passion. We're gonna take a quick break and we'll be right back.
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¶ Matthew: Judas's Fate and Prophecy
Hey, welcome back everybody. Um we're doing a special edition, pre-recorded edition of uh Lord of Spirits podcast, and we're talking about the passion narratives in the Gospels. Um and we just did the Gospel of Mark, so now we're heading on into the Gospel of Matthew.
So this narrative picks up in Matthew chapter twenty six, uh beginning with verse forty seven. And just as we did the last one, we're gonna read through and commentary along the way. This is almost like a an episode of the whole council of God, Father. Except you got me in the background.
Well, and we're not doing verse by verse'cause otherwise this would be like an eight hour episode.
It's true.
That's true. Okay. All right. Matthew twenty six, uh, verse forty seven through we're gonna be going through chapter twenty seven, verse fifty six. While he was still speaking, Judas came one of the twelve, and with him a great crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priest and the elders of the people.
Now the betrayer had given them a sign saying, The one I will kiss is the man, seize him. And he came up to Jesus at once and said, Greetings, Rabbi, and he kissed him. Jesus said to him, Friend, do what you came to do. Then they came up and laid hands on Jesus and seized him. And behold, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his ear.
Then Jesus said to him, Put your sword back into its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then should the scriptures be fulfilled that it must be so? At that hour Jesus said to the crowds, Have you come out as against a robber with swords and clubs to capture me? Day after day I sat in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me.
But all this has taken place that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled. Then all the disciples left him and fled. Then those who had seized Jesus led him to Caiaphas the High Priest, where the scribes and the elders had gathered, and Peter was following him at a distance, as far as the courtyard of the high priest, and going inside he sat with the guards to see the end.
Now the chief priests and the whole council were seeking false testimony against Jesus that they might put him to death, but they found none, though many false witnesses came forward. At last two came forward and said, This man said, I am able to destroy the temple of God and to rebuild it in three days. And the high priest stood up and said, Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you? But Jesus remained silent.
And the high priest said to him, I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus said to him, You have said so, but I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven. Then the high priest tore his robes and said, He has uttered blasphemy. What further witnesses do we need? You have now heard his blasphemy. What is your judgment? They answered, He deserves death.
Then they spit in his face and struck him, and some slapped him, saying, Prophesy to us, you Christ, who is it that struck you? Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard, and a servant girl came up to him and said, You also were with Jesus the Galilean. But he denied it before them all, saying, I do not know what you mean.
And when he went out to the entrance another servant girl saw him, and she said to the bystanders, This man was with Jesus of Nazareth. And again he denied it with an oath. I do not know the man. After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, certainly you too are one of them, for your accent betrays you. Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear I do not know the man. And immediately the rooster crowed.
And Peter remembered the saying of Jesus, Before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times, and he went out and wept bitterly. Now chapter twenty seven When morning came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death, and they bound him and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate the governor.
Then when Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, I have sinned by betraying innocent blood. They said, What is that to us? See to it yourself. And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed and went and hanged himself. But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, It is not lawful to put them into the treasury since it is blood money.
So they took counsel and bought with them the potter's field as a burial place for strangers. Therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom its price had been set by some of the sons of Israel, and they gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord directed me.
Right. So um Here we get another Old Testament quote, right? And this is something that Saint Mark didn't tell us about was about Judas uh Not really repenting?
Yeah. I I think another doesn't another gospel say he had regret, which is not the same thing as repentance. Like he felt bad.
Yes. And so this is a a good a good object lesson, right? And Especially since it's put here in sort of this contrast with Saint Peter. Of the difference between Saint Peter's tears of repentance and Judas's guilt. Right. Those are the th those are two different things. Uh that repentance has to do with a desire to be healed and Has to do with the sorrow over what one has done? Whereas just guilt It has as its only goal to be rid of guilt.
I feel bad about it. The solution to the problem is I don't want to feel bad about it anymore.
Yeah.
The solution for St. Peter is not just him not feeling bad. Uh he he can't take back what he did because it's done. Right. But He wants to be healed from he wants reconciliation and we know from Saint John's gospel, as we already said, that he's he's gonna receive it. But here, Jude and so Judas just tries to give the money back. Like, you know. Well, if I give the money back, maybe I won't feel so bad about it. And they of course refused to take the money back, right? Um
Because they they don't even feel bad about it. Right. Um
They even know what they've done. They're like, This is blood money. Like they know they know what what that means, you know, like
Um so yeah, and so that's why it just for Judas just ends in self destruction. very literal self destruction. Um Where uh He may have thought So there is within the Jewish understanding if someone received the the uh The death penalty. Right, under the Torah. And like for having committed murder. and they accepted it, then the shedding of their blood was seen to atone for that sin of murder. Like that was
th that life for a life, that was the way of making it right. And so that obviously did not apply to Self termination We'll try to keep this up on YouTube.
Hmm.
Right. So clearly Judas knew enough of the Torah to know he had sinned. And had blood on his hands, but not enough to to be able to understand what the solution to that might be. Um And so it just it just drives him to despair. But there's this Jeremiah quote. Right, that uh we get here. And again, if you go back and you read that passage in Jeremiah. What you discover is uh the idea here is that the thirty pieces of silver That was the price for a slave.
And so the idea in Jeremiah's prophecy is that That was the value that they had assigned to God.
Hmm.
So the idea of the prophetic action with the money in Jeremiah is that you know, a a slave was sort of the bottom of the human hierarchy, right? And the Israelites uh in this case the the Judahites who were because uh the Northern Kingdom was already gone, ha were devaluing God to the point that they were treating God as if he were the least valuable human. And despite their sort of despisal of God, right, and their devaluing of him.
He nonetheless, because that money is taken for the Potter's Field, right? Um despite that. God still benefits them. So the idea here is not like, oh look, here I found this verse at Jeremiah that talks about thirty pieces of silver and Judas betrayed Christ for thirty pieces of silver.
야, 야.
Add this to the list of prophecies fulfilled by Jesus. Right? That's not what's happening here.
Yeah, it's not like oh w y because because no you know, no one in the first century thinks that way. You know, it's not like, Oh, we have to come up with this big list of prophecies that Jesus fulfilled. That proves he's the Messiah.
Right. And that's not what fulfilled means.
Right, right.
Right. Um the idea here is In this passage in Jeremiah. There is this pattern. that the prophet is pointing to, because this wasn't the only incident. It's this pattern throughout Israel's history and Judah's history and Judea's history of them devaluing and disdaining God. Who had given them all these benefits? and done all of this good for them. Right. And in uh and despite that, even in their despisal of him, even in that devaluing, God continues To give them good things.
and to help them and benefit them, right? He takes even their despisal of him and turns it to good, right? And Christ's death, Christ's crucifixion at their hands. And everything, all the benefit that comes from that for them is the ultimate example of this pattern. Right. What could be a more full version of devaluing and disdaining God than murdering him?
Yeah.
And what could be a greater benefit received in return than the salvation that comes in Christ? So that pattern is filled to overflowing in this event. This pattern that's been true all the way through. Right. What the the St. Matthew here is doing, and this is the way St. Matthew does prophecy and fulfillment all the way through his gospel. Uh, he is just exhibit A of this pattern. But to one degree or another, all the gospel authors are doing this, right? We have this.
In certain ways unexpected and Right. Not whether they should have understood the scriptures differently or not, your average Jewish person in the first century did not think that the true Messiah was going to come and then be crucified by the Romans. That was not their expectation, regardless of whether it should have been. It wasn't. And so Uh, this is and that's why, you know, even as Saint Paul is writing his epistles, he says that the crucifixion is a stumbling block for the Jews.
Passages like this, with Jeremiah and and Saint Matthew citing it, are trying to show that this isn't this the Messiah being crucified is not this radical departure. Right, from what you see in the Hebrew scriptures. In the Old Testament. In fact, it is just the biggest most clear example of a pattern that you see all the way through the scriptures. That it is totally in keeping with it. Not only should it not be a stumbling block, you should look at it and say, Oh, yeah. That makes sense.
If you look at how Israel all the way along the way devalued and disrespected God despite all of his blessings, and he still continued to bless them, yeah, this would be the ultimate example. Yeah.
¶ Matthew: Pilate, Barabbas, Blood
All right. Um yes, so picking up now with verse eleven. Now when Jesus stood before the governor and the governor asked him, Are you the king of the Jews? Jesus said, You have said so. But when he was accused by the chief priests and elders he gave no answer. Then Pilate said to him, Do you not hear how many things they testify against you? But he gave him no answer, not even to a single charge, so that the governor was greatly amazed.
Now at the feast the governor was accustomed to release for the crowd any one prisoner whom they wanted, and they had then a notorious prisoner called Barabbas. So when they had gathered, Pilate said to them, Whom do you want me to release for you, Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ? For he knew that it was out of envy that they had delivered him up.
Besides, while he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, Have nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have suffered much because of him today in a dream. Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and destroyed Jesus. The governor again asked said to them that Which of the two do you want me to release for you? And they said Barabbat.
Pilate said to them, Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ? They all said, Let him be crucified. And he said, Why, what evil has he done? But they shouted all the more, let him be crucified. So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, I am innocent of this man's blood. See to it yourself.
And all the people answered, His blood be on us and on our children. Then he released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, delivered him to be crucified.
Okay. Let's talk about Barabbas a little.
Yes.
Uh'cause we get we get some more details here that are important. That's why we waited till here to d to talk about.
Yeah, yeah. Because he came up earlier. Yeah, and it it really used to be more like bar a bus, right? Or something like that. Bar a bus.
Yeah, bar being the Aramaic for son of. Yeah.
Like you know, Saint Peter's called Simon Bar Jonah, son of Jonah. Right.
Right. And so Bar Barabas means uh son of his father. That's obvious, right? Ever everyone is the son of their father, uh by definitionally. Um but normally you would have like Simon Barr Jonah. Jonah is the name of his father.
Yeah.
Right. Uh and so most people understand this to be an indicator that that Barabbas was illegitimate.
It should be noted by the way that that the idea that someone would be commonly called son of so and so rather than necessarily their first name, like Barnabas, I mean that's the same kind of name, right?
That's
Um, but I mean this is still a thing in the Middle East. Um, I don't know about in Hebrew, modern Hebrew culture, but definitely for Arabic culture, there are people who are called you know, Ibn Samir, Ibn Fu'ad, or whatever. Like the people commonly call them that. And indeed the fathers are often called, you know, um Like the the a famous leader of the in the in one of the p the Palestinian um
um a Palestinian people is he's called Abu Mazan is what most people call him, um, meaning father of Mazin. So even fathers are sometimes called by their oldest son's name, but you know, father of that guy. And m and you know, mothers, same thing, mazin, m Samir, you know, whatever. So like this is not a weird This is not a deeply weird thing that someone would be called by the by their father's name in this way, or son of that guy, basically. But in this case it's some o son of who?
You know, yeah.
Yeah.
what's going on yeah yeah
Yeah. And since uh He is a notorious prisoner, right? Like there's certain Things culturally that check out there. Uh notice also remember Saint Mark said that he had uh committed murder during the insurrection. Meaning he had been part of a failed revolution. He had been part of the quest of a failed Messiah.
So he's he's an illegitimate man who committed murder in the name of a failed Messiah, right? And so in a certain way Barabbas actually is all of the things that they're accusing Jesus of being. Jesus is accused of being throughout his life.
Yeah.
Right. Barabbas actually is is those things. Um this person who's set up uh over on the other side. Also, and and A close reading of St. Matthew's texts will show you this. So there's this thing about Pilot letting someone go every Pasca, every Passover? Uh that's not real. Quite the opposite. Right. Remember there's Christ at one point talks about the hundred and fifty people who Pilate had mingled their blood with the sacrifices. Yeah. Um that was in a previous Passover.
There had been rumblings that there was gonna be some kind of insurrection, and so he grabbed a hundred and fifty. Jewish men, women, and children at random and crucified them along the roads, leading into Jerusalem, so all the pilgrims. who were heading to Jerusalem for the feast would walk past them on the way and know not to start any trouble.
Yeah.
So he was not in the business of like I'm gonna release a notorious prisoner.
Yeah, so what does this mean? Now at the feast the governor was accustomed to release for the anyone who
Yeah. Right. So They have this prisoner named Barabbas, but they get Pilate said, Do you want me to release Barabbas or Jesus who is called the Messiah? Right. Because he knew that it was out of envy that they had delivered him up. So this is what I meant by a careful reading. Pilate made this offer to the crowd because He knew that the charges against Jesus were not legitimate. But if this was really a custom, wouldn't he have made this offer anyway? Right?
And then we can tell besides is how it's translated. But additionally, so this is the other reason he makes this offer. That his wife had sent word to him that she'd had this dream.
Yeah, and in some traditions, it's worth pointing out, by the way, in some Orthodox traditions, she's a scene. Procla, the wife of Pilate.
That she actually converted.
I don't think it's all I don't think it's all Orthodox traditions, but I but it is a thing.
But so this detail makes sense of a lot of things. If you understand Romans, not the book like Roman people.
Yeah.
Robot officials. Okay. Uh Terrified of Omen. How many stories? Life of Julius Caesar, beware the Ides of March, and he didn't, and look what happened.
Right.
Right. Like uh on and on Greek tragedy, right? What is it all about? Somebody doesn't pay attention to the signs and the omens and they end up getting, you know, dragged into Hades by the Furies and stuff, right? So Your wife tells you, I had this dream, have nothing to do with this man. He's righteous. Right? Don't get his blood on your hands. Yeah. Pilot, right, is like, oh, okay, I need to dispose of this, right?
Yeah, a first century Roman guy is not gonna go, Oh, go back to bed, honey. You just had a bad dream. Yeah.
This is this is not based on some virtue of Pilates that he would never condemn an innocent man. He executed innocent people all the time. Yes. He didn't consider Jews to be people.
Yeah, as any Roman wouldn't. They're they're non personae.
Yeah. Yes. So that's not the issue. Right. And people have brought this up. People who want to attack the historicity. Of these texts that we're reading today, uh bring this up and say there's no way Pilate would have even given Jesus a trial. Do you know how Pilate operated? Right. He would not give a trial to a Jew. Why would he do that? Well this explains why. This is the only reason.
It's worth uh I should also add, by the way, since we're pausing about uh procla. She's so she's sometimes called Claudia Proc Procula or Cl or Claudia Procla. And there they're uh obviously that she converted to Christianity in these traditions. Um, some say she she reposed in peace, but others say that she was actually an early martyr. So uh interesting, you know, traditions about the wife of Saint of uh Pontius Pilate.
Uh the cops have pilots.
Yeah yeah that's pretty interesting. I don't know what you do with that.
So Yeah, so so this is not again, this is not any virtue on Pilot's part. This is superstition. Right, and cowardice and moral cowardice. Right. That's motivating him here. Uh and so he sets up this sham like, Well, who's like who's the worst guy we've got correct in the prison?
Surely they will pick Jesus over that guy is sort of the thing going on here.
Right. You know, see who's the worst guy we got? And then this'll get me out of it. And then when that doesn't work, right, then he does the whole performative hand washing, right? Um But so that's the That's that's the thing that's going on here. Uh that's why there is a trial with Pilate. That's why Pilate asks any questions to Jesus. That's why there's any is because of Roman superstition. That's what explains it.
¶ Matthew: Scapegoat Ritual, Saints
Yep. Yep. All right. Picking up with verse twenty seven. Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor's headquarters, and they gathered the whole battalion before him, and they stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and twisting together a crown of thorns they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand.
And kneeling before him they mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews. And they spit on him and took the reed and struck him on the head, and when they had mocked him they stripped him of the robe, and put his own clothes on him, and led him away to crucify him.
So um Some of you thought we were uh Skipping the the blood libel verse, but no we were waiting for this. Yes. So You've probably heard us on this show make reference to uh Christ fulfilling both goats from the Day of Atonement, and how Saint Matthew in particular makes this point. Uh and this is where. uh that point is made now that we've read this whole section. And it's it may not be obvious. From what we just read. That that that's what he's doing. Um
So let's let's poke a little more because um in particular this version of Christ Mocker, right? Everyone describes Christmacher. Right? Everyone does. But as we said, the purpose of these texts is not just to affirm as a historical fact that Christ was mocked by the Romans whole time. It's to say something about it.
Yeah. These details mean something.
And one place to start when you're assessing that, right? Um And this is again why harmonization isn't helpful, is that the places where the details are different That's where it clues you in that something is going on. Mm. If you just jump to like, oh, we need to try and make all the details agree with each other. Right, then you're gonna miss the points that that each are making. So what what difference am I talking about here? Well, we're gonna start with A scarlet robe.
Instead of a purple robe.
Mm-hmm.
And if you get bogged out it, well, which was it? Right, you're you're missing the point. Okay.
Well, also purple and scarlet are Kind of almost the same thing at this point in history on some level.
Almost. Yeah. Almost. But there's an important thing here, right? In using the word scarlet. Um and that is that. And and additionally, in the Greek, it doesn't just say they put it on him, it says they encircled him with it. So it uses a kind of weird word, right? Or at least not not
Not the normal word for just, you know, putting a robe on someone. Right. Um And then there's also this bit with the reed, where they not only put the reed in his right hand like it's a scepter, but they put it in his hand and then they take it away from him and hit him on the head with it.
Yeah. Right.
Um, which is kind of a weird series of events, right? And that's in the context of them spinning on it. Um But so here's the thing. We have accounts. from the first century of how at that time they performed the scapegoat part of the Day of Atonement ritual. The goat for his hazel. One of the places where we have it is in the Epistle of Barnabas, which is in Greek. And that makes it especially helpful for this.
Uh Epistle of Barnabas describes how they once the goat had been designated as the goat for a Zazel, they tied a scarlet thread around its neck. to identify it as the gopher is azel. So that once it's wandering around outside of town you know what it is as opposed to any other goats, right? Either wild or just that somebody lost that got away, right, that might be wandering out there. um to designate it. So they tied it around its neck. And specifically a scarlet thread.
Um so there's an interesting connection. Not only that. It talks about how when they drove the scapegoat out of the city of Jerusalem, because it's coming from the temple. the people would light up and would spit on it and would strike it with a reed. To drive it out of the city. And the Epistle of Barnabas even uses the exact same word for a read. as Saint Matthew does here. The read that Christ is struck with as he's being spit upon
Right. In terms of and this is all in terms of Christ being led away outside the city to be crucified. So that's that's one goat. That's the skeleton.
Продолжение следует...
Yeah. The other goat, remember the blood is used and To purify the sanctuary. The blood that purifies, that wipes away since Go back a couple verses. His blood be on us and on our children. So think of Moses sprinkling the people with the blood of the covenant.
Yeah, on signal.
And think of the purifying blood of the goat for Yahweh.
Yeah, so... You know, the people saying this. probably would not have been thinking, He will inaugurate the new covenant by dying here and his blood be on us and our children. That's probably not what they're thinking. Um and then and then the people who who read this in our time and use this as a frankly, in the mid in the medieval period as well, and, you know. Um, I mean this has been a thing. Read this to say, you know, everyone who is of Jewish ancestry is guilty of the death of Jesus.
Like they they read it that way. That's completely missing the point of what you just said, Father, that this is a reference to the way that the blood is used in the Day of Atonement, the way that the blood was used with the formation of the first covenant. You know, it's not about these people and everyone descended from them are guilty forever. Right. That's not what it means.
And this idea, this is all through the gospels, right? Where we see people saying things. that are prophetic in ways that they don't realize.
Yeah, it's a kind of dramatic irony. You know, the reader knows because the reader knows the scriptures, theoretically, the reader knows something that the people in the story don't.
So when Caiaphas, for example, this is another example of this, the high priest decides that he's going to get Jesus killed in the first place. Do you remember what he says to the Sanhedrin? says it is good for one man to die on behalf of the nation. Right.
Right. Which, yes, yes it is kind of this.
It it kind of is, right? He made a prophetic statement. But that's not what he meant when he said it.
No, no, he just meant let this guy die and and not us all at the hands of
Yes. Yes. Um and this is the same kind of thing. Right. The people kind of don't know what they're saying. Yeah. Right. What they're saying tends to turns out to be more true and true in a much bigger, more full way than they can comprehend. Yeah, exactly. And again, remember the pattern from the Jeremiah quote. That's not that many verses ago. That God takes His people's hatred of him and turns it into blessings for his people. That's kinda the whole point of what's going on there.
It turns out God really does love everyone. All right, picking up again now in verse thirty two. As they went out they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. They compelled this man to carry his cross.
And when they came to a place called Golgotha, which means place of a skull, they offered him wine to drink mixed with gall, but when he tasted it he would not drink it. And when they had crucified him they divided his garments among them by casting lots And they sat down and kept watch over him there, and over his head they put the charge against him which read, This is Jesus the King of the Jews.
Then two robbers were crucified with him, one on the right and one on the left, and those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself. If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.
So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, He saved others, he cannot save himself. He is the king of Israel, let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God, let God deliver him now if he desires him, for he said, I am the Son of God and And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way.
Now, from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, Eli Eli Lama Sabacthani, that is, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And some of the bystanders hearing it said, This man is calling Elijah. And one of them once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.
And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up his spirit. And behold the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, and the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.
When the centurion and those were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, Truly this was the Son of God. They were also Oh go ahead.
Let's talk about the quote unquote zombies.
Yes. These people the Saints, it says Saints.
Yes. What's in their head? No. Um
Mm-hmm.
Um
Mm-hmm.
So yeah, uh the reason I use the word zombies is is not to be flipping it's is that's you your average dumb dumb internet atheist when they bring up Yeah. Yeah. Um which is clearly not what's going on. But uh this is a greatly misunderstood passage, uh in part because it's a weird Couple of verses.
And it doesn't and and nothing more is done with it in the scriptures after this.
Right. You don't you don't hear anything more about it. Saint Matthew's the only one who talks about it. Um
There are other traditions about it, like the Gospel of Nicodemus, the frame narrative for the whole heroing of Hades is a conversation with a couple of these people.
But the the biggest weird thing about the verses is not that, oh, some people come back to life. I mean, that happens in the Bible at various points. People are raised from the dead, right? Uh the the really weird part if you read it closely is that They're raised from the dead, When Christ at the moment of Christ's death. So at the moment that Christ dies. Curtain of the Temple's torted too, earth shakes, rocks are split, tombs open.
Saints come back to life, but then they don't come out of the tombs until after Christ's resurrection.
Yeah. So it's like they're They they're raised from the dead and they sit in their tombs.
All day Saturday. Rest for the Sabbath and then On Sunday after Christ rises, then they leave, right? So yeah, that that seems weird. Again, if you read it super literally. Okay. But there are some keys to understanding this that sometimes I think people skip over. And so they're raised and it's the same word in a different form, obviously, but it's the same word that's used for Christ's resurrection in the next verse when it says his resurrection.
Um and so a couple of ideas here. The first idea is that this is St. Matthew's witness to the harrowing of Haiti.
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Because these aren't just random people. Who are raised? These are saints who are raised. Holy men, righteous men. Right. Uh Zedekim. Who uh from of old, right? Who who are raised. So we're talking about Old Testament saints. are raised from the dead. So this is his testimony of the harrowing of Hades. They're raised from the dead.
Um the whole idea that they don't sort of emerge until after Christ's resurrection is that the idea is that Christ is then after the herring of Hades leading them out of Hades. Right, like sort of an exodus from Hades, from Shaol. Right? Christ is leading them out. That's why they don't come out first. Christ is is leading them. But the the other important language here, because a lot of the questions about this that people ask are, well what happened to this? Yeah. They die again.
Right. Um and very well meaning people get asked this question and give what I think is the wrong answer. Um So This doesn't say That these revolt were raised by And then like Right. It doesn't even say these were saints who were recently departed.
Yeah, it doesn't there's no detail like that.
We're not told which saints they were. I mean, this could have been King David. This could have been some of the people on the harrowing of Hades icon. This could have been the prophet Ezekiel. Right. Um It it's not like they had families or a trade to go back to, right? Where they just show up at home and be like, Hey, honey, I'm back from the dead, right? And then live with their families for a few more years and then die again, right? That's not what
Being said here, right? These are identified as saints. And notice it says they went into the holy city, they went into Jerusalem. And appeared to men. It doesn't say they lived there, they dwelt there, right? They active people, it said they appeared to many. This is the language that's used about Christ after his resurrection. Literally appeared to many is the exact language that's used in some of the summaries.
Yeah.
During the forty days before Christ's ascension. Right, he appeared to people. These saints from of old appear to people, they have experienced the first resurrection. This is like. We had a couple weeks ago uh Sunday of Saint John uh Climachus. Moses appeared to him, Other saints appeared to him. Right. So this is the context. These people have experienced these are saints, Old Testament saints, who experienced the first resurrection that St. Matthew is talking about.
They've been set free from Hades by Christ. And the saints from of old appeared in Jerusalem. two people over the course of this uh of of the forty days as as Christ did. That's what St. Matthew's telling us. So this is a different and maybe in some senses crazier phenomena than you thought it was. Uh Yeah, this isn't just like somebody's husband had died and now he comes and knocks on the door, right? And
He's with the family for a few more years. Uh this is no, this is like Isaiah and Ezekiel and King David and King Josiah appearing to people in Jerusalem. That that's what St. Matthew is talking about. So
Yeah. Okay.
Maybe more interesting than the way you used to read.
¶ Luke: Unique Details and Herod
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolute case. Um, all right. We're gonna we're not gonna take a break. We're actually gonna continue on with Luke's gospel.
You're you're also not gonna leave off the murrh bearing women again.
I'm not. I'm not. There were also many women there. See you did this the thing is is that you don't have any notes for this part. So that's what's throwing. There are also many women there, looking on from a distance, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him, among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.
So there it is. All right, we're going to continue on now with Luke's gospel. And this is in Luke chapter twenty two, verse forty seven through twenty three, verse forty nine. All right, verse forty seven. While he was still speaking there came a crowd, and the man called Judas, one of the twelve, was leading them. He drew near to Jesus to kiss him, but Jesus said to him, Judas, would you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?
And when those who were round him saw what would follow they said, Lord, shall we strike with the sword? And one of them struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his right ear. But Jesus said, No more of this, and he touched his ear and healed him.
Then Jesus said to the chief priests and officers of the temple and elders, who had come out against him, Have you come out as against a robber with swords and clubs? When I was with you day after day in the temple, you did not lay hands on me, but this is your hour, and the power of darkness. Then they seized him and led him away, bringing him into the high priest's house, and Peter was following at a distance.
And when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat down among them. Then a servant girl, seeing him as he sat in the light and looking closely at him, said, This man also was with him. But he denied it, saying, Woman, I do not know him. And a little while later someone else saw him and said, You also are one of them. But Peter said, Man, I am not.
And after an interval of about an hour still another insisted, saying, Certainly this man also is with him, for he too is a Galilean. But Peter said, Man, I do not know what you are talking about. And immediately while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed. And the Lord turned and looked at Peter, and Peter remembered the saying of the Lord how he had said to him, Before the rooster crows today you will deny me three times. And he went out and wept bitterly.
I notice um remember Saint Luke at the beginning of his gospel says he had done all this research. Right. He had talked to the all these people, he had read all these written sources. And notice how he has a few of these extr already a few of these extra details.
Yeah. I mean Jesus looking at Peter, I mean that's so That's so powerful. It's yeah, yeah.
And um and the the actual healing of the ear Of the high priest servant. Where so he's he sort of picked up these uh these little extra details that is bringing that that bring more so certainly Christ looking at at Saint Peter, right, is sort of making more emphatic sort of the power of that moment, right? Um the uh the the healing of the ear uh sort of also emphasizes the fact that Christ sort of goes with these people voluntarily.
Yeah.
Yeah. Right. By by having this this sort of display uh of his power. Right. And so these aren't just Sort of random oh hey, I found this cool little detail, I'm gonna add it to my version. Right. He's he even in these cases where he has these he he ha does it with a purpose in the narrative and the way he's telling the story.
Yeah. Okay. Um now the men who were holding Jesus in custody were mocking him as they beat him. They also blindfolded him and kept asking him, Prophesy, who is it that struck you? And they said many other things against him, blaspheming him. When day came, the assembly of the elders of the people gathered together, both chief priests and scribes, and they led him away to their council, and they said, If you are the Christ, tell us.
But he said to them, If I tell you you will not believe, and if I ask you you will not answer, but from now on the Son of Man shall be seated at the right hand of the power of God. So they all said, Are you the Son of God then? And he said to them, You say that I am. Then they said, What further testimony do we need? We have heard it ourselves from his own lips.
Notice notice the difference here. How first of all, how stripped down this whole thing with the high priestess. And how St. Luke presents it, where it's just, Oh, there's the chief priests and the scribes.
Yeah.
you know, uh less detail like
Um
And even in how Christ expresses it, he just says, the Son of Man, nothing about coming out of the clouds, nothing like the the explicit reference to to Daniel is kind of stripped out, right? Mm and Saint Luke just kind of focuses on the fact that he's identifying himself as this divine figure. In general, right? Uh, the way he frames it. And this is this is one of several pieces, but I think this is a good place to indicate this, right?'Cause it's kind of obvious here.
Saint Luke's audience he's writing this for the Greco Roman world for you know, the the churches that Saint Paul had planted and other apostles, right? That he had travelled with Saint Paul. So he's aiming this for a much broader audience that wasn't familiar with sort of the details of how the chief priest of the Sadusaic family existed. St. Matthew is very clearly there's all kinds of
as we saw, Jewish details and things that someone who's familiar with the Hebrew scriptures and stuff would immediately click with, right, i in what he's writing. Saint Luke is is writing to a broader audience where he can't assume that. Yeah. And so he's trying to describe it in terms that sort of anybody could understand without having to know much about Judaism. Um and this this is a place where we really see that.
All right, now we're in Luke chapter twenty three. Then the whole company of them arose and brought him before Pilate, and they began to accuse him, saying, We found this man misleading our nation and forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ a king. And Pilate asked him, Are you the king of the Jews? And he answered him, You have said so.
Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, I find no guilt in this man. But they were urgent, saying he stirs up the people teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee even to this place. When Pilate heard this, he asked whether the man was a Galilean.
And when he learned that he belonged to Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him over to Herod, who was himself in Jerusalem at that time. When Herod saw Jesus, he was very glad for he had long desired to see him, because he had heard about him and was hoping to see some sign done by him. So he questioned him at some length, but he made no answer.
The chief priests and the scribes stood by, vehemently accusing him, and Herod with his soldiers treated him with contempt and mocked him. Then, arraying him in splendid clothing he sent him back to Pilate. And Herod and Pilate became friends with each other that very day, for before this they had been at enmity with each other.
So
Saint Luke has this whole extra trial with Herod.
Yeah, so you got three trials.
Yeah. Um and you notice he he brushed past the thing with the high priests again, as we were saying, because of the audience. Notice also when they when they bring him to Pilate. What the ch the charges are? Right. So the whole idea of him being the Messiah w wouldn't mean a lot to right, like your broad Roman audience. But They would totally get like, Oh, they accused him of not paying taxes to Caesar. Well, yeah, that'll get you
Yeah. Um and also you notice he's uh Saint Luke explains that he's the Christ, meaning he's claiming to be a king.
Yes, he's a political threat pilot.
Yeah. Well, not just the political y w one thing a lot of people don't realize is The word king, the word rex. Oh right. In in Latin. Uh was uh not a positive word.
Yeah, it's a it's a dirty word even from the basically from the Republican period.
Right.
Yeah.
It's in pigs before the establishment of the Republic.
I don't think Caesar ever Caesar's never called a king.
No, no, he would never
That's the one thing that that's because we have a grander idea of a king. I think. And whereas for them king in context meant a tyrant who rules by violence, sort of thing. Uh. You know, rather than reason and you know, with the with the people of Rome and the Senate and all this kind of stuff.
King essentially meant tyrant.
yeah yeah yeah
To them, in a very literal way. Right. There wasn't the idea of a good king. A king meant tyrant. That's why Imperator. which we turn into emperor. Right. That's a new title that was invented for Caesar, that he's the conqueror. He's the conquering general. He's the one who took all of this territory on behalf of the Senate and the people of the city of Rome. Yeah. Right. But it was the Senate of the people. The Senate of the people.
Right. Even when there's an emperor who is a tyrant, he's not gonna call himself a king. Right.
Right. It's still the idea of some kind of democracy, at least they at least as a front.
You know?
All right. So anyone claiming to be a king is immediately right like this is this is the worst thing you could be.
Guy's a thug, basically. He's he's a violent thug.
Right. But so but even though this heron thing isn't mentioned, this is g in keeping, right? Because remember what Saint Matthew is trying to do, and remember what uh Samuel's trying to d do with the figure of Pilate. Pilate is trying to find a way out of him having to condemn Jesus.
Yeah.
Says, Well, we'll get Herod to do it. Right. Uh And Herod had he could crucify people, but he had the ability, I mean, as we saw with St. John the Forerunner, he could execute a Jewish person. The Romans didn't care.
Yeah.
All right, continuing on with verse thirteen. Pilate then called together the chief priests and the rulers and the people, and said to them, You brought me this man as one who is misleading the people, and after examining him before you, behold, I did not find this man guilty of any of your charges against him. Neither did Herod, for he sent him back to us. Look, nothing deserving death has been done by him. I will therefore punish and release him.
But they all cried out together, Away with this man and release to us Barabbas, a man who had been thrown into prison for an insurrection started in the city, and for murder. Pilate addressed them at once more, desiring to release Jesus, but they kept shouting, Crucify, crucify him. A third time he said to them, Why, what evil has he done? I have found in him no guilt deserving death. I will therefore punish and release him.
But they were urgent, demanding with loud cries that he should be crucified, and their voices prevailed. So Pilate decided that their demand should be granted. He released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder for whom they asked, but he delivered Jesus over to their will.
¶ Luke: Pilate's False Innocence
So part of Part of uh in St. Luke's gospel this this issue of audience is he's sometimes accused of being overly soft on the room.
Or at least.
presenting a more neutral picture of the Romans uh than uh the other gospel writers do. Um because of where his text is intended to circulate. And part of that is people will argue By this I mean scholars will argue that He especially, that to some degree all of the gospel writers, but he especially in what we just read is trying to sort of exonerate Pilate. trying to let Pilate off the hook uh for his part in in killing Jesus. And that's
It it sounds plausible at first, right? Because as we just read, right, he keeps trying to To not do it, and they keep insisting that he crucify him. Right he's trying to find all these ways. In St. Luke's gospel, he tries to find even more ways than he did in the others to not be the one, right, to uh To execute him, right? Um and we have the whole not here, but in the others we have the hand washing thing and all this. Oh, this is trying to let him off though. But let's slow down a second.
He's not just saying I want i in St. Luke's gospel that we just heard. He's not just saying, I want to let him go. Over and over again. I don't want to crucify him, I want to punish and release him.
Yeah.
What does that mean? That means he was going to and he did in addition to crucifying him, right? As uh before the crucifixion, but he wanted to scourge him and let him go. That's what he wanted to do. Okay. And again These are things that are now considered so barbaric and horrible that we don't have a an understanding of what this is, right? Uh So when someone was scourged Right. We think oh they got whipped.
Uh no, it's way worse than that.
So they the the scourges had a number of leather straps coming off of them that were used sort of like whips. But at the end Of those uh leather straps were uh shards of glass. Sharp rocks, sharp bits of metal.
It's awful.
Right. And so when someone was scourged, they weren't just whipped. They would whip the scourge. The scourge would wrap around the person's body. And those those pieces of glass and rocks and uh shards of metal would dig into their skin and then they would rip the scourge off of them.
Yeah. I mean people died from this.
Yes, no, most people died from this.
Yeah.
Most people who were scourged by the Romans died within 24 hours, just from the scourging.
Yeah.
If they didn't die at the spot for blood loss, they died of infections. Massive infection and blood loss the next day. Right? Like Shortly thereafter. Okay, we're we're talking about huge chunks of skin and muscle being ripped off of someone's back. Yeah. And then they just throw their clothes on them and send them on their way. In a world with no antibiotics. No sterilization, no way to deal with this. Okay. So i the other option was not let him go. Yeah. It was do I scourge him?
Which will probably kill him, and if not, will leave him disabled for the rest of his life, which will probably not be that long. Or do I just crucify him and viciously torture him to death? Those are the two options Pilate is choosing between. For a man he has said is innocent of all wrongdoing.
Amazing.
That's how Pilot is being presented here.
Yeah.
That's not letting him off the hook. Okay. Pilate is being presented here as a profoundly evil, perverse, unjust, cowardly, superstitious Roman. Which has complete verisimilitude, right? Like that that checks out on all levels.
Mm.
Right. Right. That's how he's being presented. So none of this is letting him off the hook. Right? The w hand washing is an act of cow moral cowardice. I'm gonna torture this man to death, but I don't want to be held accountable for it. You gave the order, pal. You can't just ceremonially wash your hands after giving the order. Virtually.
All right. Um okay, picking up with verse 13. Uh sorry, not thirteen. Eighteen. Twenty six, sorry. I've read the I've now read so many similar passages in a row that it's hard for me to remember exactly where I am. See, this is why when it comes time to do this, you know, on Holy Thursday night, you just turn the page and read the next thing.
This is why lectionaries were admitted. Yes.
¶ Luke: Daughters of Jerusalem, Dismas
Exactly, exactly. And as they led him away, they seized one Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and laid on him the cross to carry it behind Jesus. And there followed him a great multitude of the people and of women who were mourning and lamenting for him. But turning to them Jesus said, Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.
For behold, the days are coming when they will say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed. Nurst, then they will begin to say to the mountains, Fallen us, and to the hills, cover us, for if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?
Yeah. This conversation between Christ and the women of the city was Does not get the attention it deserves, I don't think.
And there's something of a I was gonna say it's it's it's in some ways it's kind of like like in a Greek tragedy, you know? Like Um, often the main character will kind of address the chorus, and the chorus is often like women of the city. There's something kind of th like that going on here too. Like that's what it reminds me of. I don't know if that's what's in St. Luke's mind.
But there's something like that. And it's usually usually when when the main character dresses the chorus directly, it's this kind of thing. It's the state of things. You know? That's that's what it's about what's going on essentially.
Yeah. Yeah. Because So there there are people who take uh seventy A D and then the Barkok Rebellion uh a little too serious seriously. They're called preterists. Um But there are also a lot of people who who don't realize the the part that it plays. in scripture. Um This is what Christ is immediately referring to here in this address, and which he had referred to just a couple of chapters ago in both St. Matthew's Gospel and St. Luke's Gospel. Well it was gonna happen in A D seventy
is used as again, we we've talked about this a lot in in Hebrew prophecy, you have the sign and then you have the the sort of full fulfillment, right? Yeah. Uh later on. And so the sign of Christ's glorious appearing, the sign of him coming to to judge the heavens of the earth, is what happened in eighty seven. So having seen that, we know that what Christ said about his
Glorious appearing is second coming. We know that that's true because we saw that what he said about seventy AD actually happened. Yeah. And A D seventy, what happens in Jerusalem is an image of what will happen to the whole world when judgment comes because it's also fulfilling in the pro prophets of the Hebrew Bible that judgment comes first. comes first on the Israelites. And then upon the rest of the world.
And this is what um the fact that that judgment is coming to Judea is what Saint John the Forerunner is talking about at the beginnings of the Gospels, when he talks about the axe being at the root of the tree. and the fire being kindled. And it's what Christ is talking about when he says here, that right now the wood is green. It's alive, right? after Christ's resurrection and his ascension, right? Once those Jewish leaders have thoroughly and completely rejected him.
Right. After multiple opportunities, right, that's when the judgment is going to come. Because they will have become dry. They will have cut themselves off from life. By their faithfulness they will have cut themselves off from the root. Right? And so they will be dry branches. And what happens to dry branches? They catch fire very quickly. Unlike green ones that are still alive. Right. And so what Christ is saying here is ultimately a call for repentance. Right.
Don't weep because of the tragedy of the fact that he's about to be crucified. Right. Weep tears of repentance. For what's happening here? Um because judgment is coming.
Yeah. Yeah. All right. Picking up in verse thirty two. Two others who were criminals were led away to be put to death with him, and when they came to the place that is called the Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. And Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
Uh see that's a new detail in this one. And they cast lots to divide his garments, and the people stood by watching, but the rulers scoffed at him, saying, He saved others, let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his chosen one. The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine and saying, If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself. There was also inscription over him, this is the king of the Jews.
One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us. But the other rebuked him, saying, Do you not fear God since you under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds. But this man has done nothing wrong. And he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And he said to him, Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.
Right, so here we get St. Dismas.
Yeah.
Why is the town of the thing?
San Dimas, California. For all of you Bill and Ted fans, San Dimas is named after the state.
No I see no connection between him and water parks. Um
Mm-hmm.
But uh
Mm-hmm.
So uh there are a lot I don't know if you want to say how much you want to say about this. There are a lot of traditions about Saint Dismas.
Yeah, I I'll just briefly say that there is a tradition That this is not the first time that Saint Dismas met Jesus. That when Jesus and his mother and Saint Joseph the Betrothed and um Saint James went into Egypt. Um when Jesus was quite young. that um that Dismas is one of it was one of a band of robbers that met them and were going to um rob them. But then when the face of Jesus was revealed at that meeting,
Uh Saint Dismas said, leave them alone and don't, you know, don't rob them, right? Because he had seen Christ. And um and so then this is like I said, th th that's obviously it's not in the scriptures. Um, but then this is given as uh a kind of a frame for then he sees Jesus again at this point and um you know, uh there's this connection that has already been established between them as a result of that. Yeah.
Yeah. So we d we don't hear about this. uh from the other two. They just make a general comment that those being crucified with them. mocked him. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And so there'll be your a so there's a contradiction. Um it's not. Right. Like Do you think everyone there heard in detail all the words exchanged between them and Christopher.
Yeah.
Like there you there be maybe a few people close enough to maybe hear some of it, right? And one of them was mocking Jesus. Right. So if that's all someone heard, if they didn't hear Saint Dismas, right, like this isn't This isn't complicated, guys. Like Um but also uh St. Dismas. is a a wonderful saint of the church. There are beautiful icons of him in paradise holding his cross. Uh but he is not Our example of the normal means of salvation is
Right. Why do I have to say that? Because as far as I can tell, From every discussion I've ever had with a Protestant, Our Protestant friends think he is the example of the normal means of salvation.
I yeah. You know, just say the words and you're good.
Yeah. But not even in that positive sense. In the sense that anything you say Right. Well you should be baptized. St. Peter says baptism now saves you. What do you get? Well the thief on the cross wasn't baptized.
Yeah. I mean all to to me what that demonstrates is not That you don't ha that you know, that that is not normal. I think it does demonstrate something important, which is that God can save people. Through whatever way he wants. You know, it does show that. Right.
And...
It it shows that the idea that well, if you're not baptized, then you are going to Hades, to hell. I mean and and frankly, I think it even discounts this whole idea of limbo. You know, because a lot of people will will Although this is not an official Roman Catholic doctrine, but I literally saw a video of an Orthodox priest basically yeah, not any nor I I literally saw a video of an Orthodox priest basically preaching limbo the other day, which was very kind of surprising to me.
Uh, but if the idea that, well, you can't you can't possibly have paradise without baptism, that's just not the way it is, folks.
I think there was some faulty logic going on there.
You know.
But yeah. But yeah, but not even to litigate baptism. It's anything, right? It's you you talk about, you know, you'd be need to be faithful the way you live your life. Well, they're the thief on the cross, right? Like, you know Yeah. The situation being crucified next to the Son of God, that situation applies to two people in the history of the world. And only two. And never more than two for the rest of time.
Yeah.
Because Christ isn't going to be crucified again. Okay. Yeah. One of those people did the right thing in that situation, one of them did the wrong thing in that situation. That's not the paradigm for the vast, vast majority of people.
Yeah, exactly.
Okay. Okay. And when we talk about what I need to do to find salvation. I'm not implying that if I don't do that, God can't save me. Right? I'm saying that these are the things that I need to do if I want to seek salvation from God. God can do whatever He wants. Okay. God can do whatever he wants. I hope he gives salvation to lots of people who don't deserve it because that's the only hope I have of finding salvation. Okay.
That doesn't mean, though, that there aren't things that I do, if I want to pursue salvation and work out my salvation. As Saint Paul says.
Yeah.
Yeah. Right. So come on guys, just stop using St. Dismas as an example of the norm. For salvation. He is very clearly a very exceptional and beautiful case. Yeah. Right? But exceptional.
All right, to finish out the passage, starting with verse forty four. It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun's light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. And having said this he breathed his last. Now when the centurion saw what had taken place he praised God, saying, Certainly this man was innocent.
And all the crowds that had assembled for this spectacle when they saw what had taken place returned home beating their breasts, and all his acquaintances and the women who had followed him from Galilee stood at a distance, watching these things. We're gonna take our second and final break and we'll be back with the Gospel of John. So we'll see you in just a minute.
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¶ John: Deliberate Additions and Authority
Hey, welcome back. It's the third half of this um this Holy Week episode of the Lord of Spirits podcast. We're talking about the passion narratives that are in the four gospels. And uh in the first half we talked about Mark, and then we just did Matthew and Luke in the second half, and now into the home stretch with
Yes.
The gospel according to Saint John. So this is I mean, this has been really powerful for me so far actually, honestly. Like to to simply read these accounts one right after the other, the differences really stand out. And I think that's probably the idea here, yeah?
Um
And it it's it's fascinating. It's fascinating. And often like in my head there's a harmony. Right. Like, you know. But what's also interesting is that we're going to be able to
But it kinda pulled apart.
Yeah, exactly. How many details that I'm noticing that kind of aren't in my the gospel harmony in my head, which is interesting to me. So anyway. Okay, uh starting with John's gospel, chapter 18, uh, verse one, all the way through chapter 19, verse 37.
When Jesus had spoken these words he went out with his disciples across the book Brook Kidron, where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered. Now Judas who betrayed him also knew the place, for Jesus often met there with his disciples. So Judas, having procured a band of soldiers and some officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees, went there with lanterns and torches and weapons.
Then Jesus, knowing all that would happen to him, came forward and said to them, Whom do you seek? They answered him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus said to them, I am He. Judas, who betrayed him, was standing with them. When Jesus said to them, I am he, they drew back and fell to the ground. So he asked them again, Whom do you seek? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus answered, I told you that I am he, so if you seek me, let these men go.
This was to fulfill the word that he had spoken of those whom you gave me I have lost not one. Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest's servant and cut it off his right ear. The servant's name was Malcolm. So Jesus said to Peter, Put your sword into its sheath, shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me? It's interesting that I think the other ones don't don't identify this as being Peter, but John says it was Peter who did this, yeah.
Right. And don't name the servant and
Malcus said.
that last quote about uh drinking the cup is new here. And so that's why it's a good place to discuss. Um scholars pretty much all agree now. You could always only say pretty much. But there have been so many examples sort of demonstrated from this by so many different scholars and so many different journal articles and stuff. that there is a broad acceptance of this now that St. John had access to the other gods.
Right. And again, this is this is the main reason why people say Saint John's Gospel was written last of the four. Right, at this point. Um also of course that fits with the church's tradition that Saint John ended up being the longest lived of the apostles. Right, and and did most of his writing in in the late eighties and early nineties. Without a nineteen in front of it, just for the record. Um
Right. Um and so that sort of all fits together, right? Uh and when the church's tradition and modern scholarship fit neatly together, I think that's a pretty good sign of accuracy, right? Yeah. Um And and so what that means is the the way that was demonstrated and the meaning and the purpose of bringing that up is that Saint John has access to the other gospels and so he is deliberately adding in detail. and connective tissue that aren't found in the other.
Right. So he's able to look back and say, you know, what are the things that Saint John thought were important that weren't already recorded? Right in in those other gospel accounts from the other apostles and add them. And so I mean the the biggest example of this that isn't in what we're reading tonight is the whole story of the raising of Lazarus and that being the motivation. for the sort of fervor on Palm Sunday.
Right, of the entry into Jerusalem, there's just sort of this weird th in the other gospels, right, they describe it happening, but it's sort of like okay, Jesus is this itinerant preacher and then he goes into Jerusalem and everyone goes crazy and then the next day they all want to kill him. Yeah. Right. And it's sort of whiplash, right? And so St. John adds all that detail about the raising of Lazarus in Bethany that's just outside of Jerusalem, basically this one of the slums of Jerusalem. Um
Uh bait an e means the house of the poor, for those who don't know. Uh So th there's yeah. So he he gives that connective tissue, that sort of explanation, right? And so we're gonna see a lot of that as we go through St. John's account where he's dropping in these details.
Right. That it was actually Saint Peter who cut off the ear. By the way, the servant's name was Malchus. A little bit more of what Jesus said during these events that wasn't recorded, right? We're gonna see a lot of that sort of deliberately. added to St. John's account, which ends up being the longest account also of the four.
All right, picking up with verse twelve. So the band of soldiers and their captain and the officers of the Jews arrested Jesus and bound him. First they led him to Annas, for he was the father in law of Caiaphas, who was high priest that year. It was Caiaphas who had advised the Jews that it should be expedient that one man should die for the people. There's that reference there.
Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple. Since that disciple was known to the high priest, he entered with Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest, but Peter stood outside at the door. So the other disciple, who was known to the high priest, went out and spoke to the servant girl who kept watch at the door and brought Peter in. The servant girl at the door said to Peter, You also are not one of this man's disciples, are you? He said, I am not.
Now the servants and officers had made a charcoal fire because it was cold, and they were standing and warming themselves. Peter also was with them standing and warming himself. The high priest then questioned Jesus about his disciples and his teaching.
Jesus answered him, I have spoken openly to the world, I have always taught in synagogues and in the temple where all Jews come together, I have said nothing in secret. Why do you ask me? Ask those who have heard me what I said to them. They know what I said. When he had said these things, one of the officers standing by struck Jesus with his hand saying, Is that how you answer the high priest?
Jesus answered him, If what I said is wrong, bear witness about the wrong, but if what I said is right, why do you strike me? Annas then sent him bound to Caiaphas, the high priest. Now Simon Peter was standing and warming himself, so they said to him, You also are not one of his disciples, are you? He denied it and said, I am not.
One of the servants of the high priest, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, asked, Did I not see you in the garden with him? Peter again denied it, and at once a rooster crowed. And they led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the
Let's pause there just a second. So you notice so this this other disciple is of course Saint John. And he has some more details here because as he says, he's sort of a distant relative of the the high priestly family. So he tells us about Addis at Caiaphas. Annis being the father in law. We actually now know this was only fairly recently discovered when we discovered the the uh burial site of this family. Uh Which uh has been found. Huh. Uh in Jerusalem. It is under a park.
They did not tear up the park. The tomb is under the park, but they have like a a pipe that they permanently installed and they send cameras down the pipe.
Okay.
That have laid out like the whole tomb. And they have like the ossuaries of Caiaphas and his family. Yeah. Um And they now know that uh there was a period of time, which St. John suggests here, when Annas and Caiaphas were sort of both high priests. that was not known until recently to be the case, but Saint John here suggests it. So Saint John n knew more about the going ons of this family. He had access, right? And so again, we get these these additional details about the goings on
Yeah, yeah.
During this trial before the high priests and the uh and the elders.
All right, verse twenty eight. Then they led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the governor's headquarters. It was early morning. They themselves did not enter the governor's headquarters so that they would not be defiled, but could eat the Passover. This governor's headquarters, by the way, this is the way the ESV translates the praetorium. Um but yeah, they didn't want to be defiled so they could eat the Passover.
So Pilate went outside to them and said, What accusation do you bring against this man? They answered him, If this man were not doing evil, we would not have delivered him over to you. Pilate said to them, which is I mean, what a what a dumb thing to say. Like oh yeah.
We wouldn't bring him here.
Yeah. Pilate said to them, Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law. The Jews said to him, It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death. This was to fulfill the word that Jesus had spoken to show by what kind of death he was going to die, in other words, crucifixion. So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, Are you the king of the Jews? Jesus answered, Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?
Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done? Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting that I might not be delivered over to the Jews, but my kingdom is not from the world.
Then Pilate said to him, So you are a king. Jesus answered, You say that I am a king, for this purpose I was born, and for this purpose I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice. Pilate said to him, What is truth?
After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, I find no guilt in him, but you have a custom that I should release one man for you at the Passover, so do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews? They cried out again, not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber. We're in chapter nineteen. Then Pilate took Jesus and flocked at him. And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe.
They came up to him saying, Hail King of the Jews, and struck him with their hands. Pilate went out again and said to him, See, I am bringing him out to you, that you may know that I find no guilt in him. So Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, Behold the man who When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, crucify him, crucify him. Pilate said to them, Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.
The Jews answered him, We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has made himself the Son of God. When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid. He entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, Why?
Where are you?
From but Jesus gave him no answer. So Pilate said to him, You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you? Jesus answered him, You would have no authority over me at all, unless it had been given you from above. Therefore, he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.
From them on, Pilate sought to release him, but the Jews cried out, If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar. So when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called the stone pavement, and in Aramaic Gabatha. Now it was the day of preparation of the Passover, it was about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, Behold your king. They cried out, Away with him, away with him, crucify him.
Pilate said to them, Shall I crucify your king? The chief priest answered, We have no king, but Caesar. So he delivered them delivered him over to them to be crucified.
So the ending there is one of the actually most if you really understand what's going on, one of the most chilling verses in the Bible. where the Jewish authorities reject God in favor of Caesar.
Я, я, я, я.
Um but it comes at the end of A discussion. That runs all the way through this sort of extended, we have this much more extended and detailed discourse between Pilate and Christ. Here in Saint John's gospel, that veers into the philosophical at a couple of points. But that also is in a lot of ways about authority, about rule and kingship and what it means. Um And the reality of who Christ is and and and what his kingdom is. Um So we get, you know
This is very uh despite the extended discussion, this is very consummate with the figure of Pilate we've seen in the other gospels, right? He scourges Christ and then says, you know, I find no guilt in him. Then why did you you know, right? Like this is the same kind of brutal figure, um kind of tortured by his his wife's uh dream. But we also get this
this dialogue. And there are there are two main places where it turns totally to the philosophical. One is, of course, Pilate's question, what is truth? Um but to understand what's going on there, we have to look at, you know, the discussion leading up to that. Which right starts with right, are are you the king of the Jews? Right. Uh, because this of course is the accusation that he has made himself he has said he is the king of the Jews, uh, which you could argue is treason.
Uh I say you could argue as treason because And this may be related to why we saw Herod pop up here in in St. Luke's Gospel, is that technically Herod was the ethnarch of the Jewish people.
Right.
So
That's why there would be further investigation, right? If you're just claiming you should have Herod's job, well, you know, whatever. Right. You know, maybe you should. Um or are you opposing Caesar? Right? That's that's the idea here, right? And so you get the you know, are you the king of the Jews?
And Gry says, you know, are are you saying this or have you heard people say it about him? Right. And of course Pilot's response is, Am I a Jew? Right? Like it's right. You're not my king either way, basically. Um It's the you know, it's it's supposedly your people, right? You're supposed if if you're the king of the Jews, it's the Jews who have turned you over to be killed.
Uh and that's when Christ says that his his kingdom is not of this world, but that importantly, if his kingdom were of this world. My servants would have been fighting that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world. And it's interesting that they that it's translated as from there and not in not and of in the other place. Of is just a less committal way of translating the genitive. But it's really from in all the places.
Right.'Cause and you have to remember in in Saint John's Gospel and the Johannine literature in general, what the world is. The world is one of the enemies, right? The world, the flesh, the devil. Right. So this is not the world is in the creation. This is the the world is in the domain and the kingdom that's been subjected to the devil.
Right, as as he says in first John, the whole world lies under the power of the devil at this point, right? And so Christ is saying that's not where his kingdom comes from. Right. His kingdom is the kingdom of God. But the way Christ says you can tell the difference. Right, is that if he his was a worldly kingdom, then his followers would be using violence. This differentiates Christ very directly, right, and very pointedly at a surface level.
Right. So there's the surface level of what he's saying to Pilate is hey, you know, you've executed your fair share of would be Jewish messiahs. Every one of them tried to have a violent insurrection. That was their MO.
Yeah.
And that is what marked them as false messiahs. 'Cause they were just doing things the way the world does things. They were just trying to set up another tyrannical government. That's not what Christ is doing. What Christ is doing is something fundamentally different. And so then Pilate asks, right, so so you're a you you are saying that you're a king of some sort, right?
Christ says, You say I my king, for this purpose I was born, and for this purpose I come into the world to bear witness to the truth. Right? So he is of the world to bear witness to the truth. And everyone who is of the truth hears him, hears what he has to say. Okay. That is his purpose. His purpose as a king is the my witness to the truth. So what is opposed here By Christ is truth. And violence. Right. Truth and domination. And so Pilate concluding that discussion with what is truth?
For Pilate as a Roman governor, truth is violence. Truth is force. Right? The one who is able to enforce their will, that makes their will the truth.
Yeah, I mean that what's happening.
Yeah. Yeah. The the truth is what the emperor says the truth is. And anyone who says it's not true is Gets disposed of.
Yeah, you raised it.
Now it's the truth,'cause we all agree. Whereas Christ is pointing out, remember he also says elsewhere in St. John's Gospel that he is the truth. Right. And here he bears witness to the truth. This is about the relationship between him and and his father. Right. And so Christ is pointing to the truth as being God. No, that is what truth is. A human person does not get to decide what truth is. It doesn't matter how much force and violence you put behind it, you can't make something true.
Yeah.
And that's why when this discussion gets recontinued. Right. And Pilate says, Don't you know I have the power to either let you go or crucify you? I have I have that authority. Christ says
Ja.
Kinda. But the reality is, right, that that any authority pilot has is delegated.
Alright, alright.
Right.
So that's that's the the the first place where it turns philosophical. The second place where it turns philosophical is uh at the point where um Christ has been scourged and beaten and mocked and dressed as a fake king, and he brings them out before the Jewish crowds. and says, Behold the man traditionally uh eke homo, right, in Latin. And the reason that is the Latin that's assumed is that when you look at the Greek, he doesn't say
uh do a near, right? Oh a near, which would be the man, the guy, this this person.
Yeah, look at this guy.
Um look here he is, right? Uh it's oh Anthropo.
Yeah.
Behold man, behold humanity. Right. And what does he mean by that? Why does he say it that way? Because again, humanity is under the authority of what for pilot? Violence. Right? He's he's a victim. of the Roman state. And so when he proceeds to keep calling him the king of the people in the crowd, the That is a series of veiled threats to this rowdy crowd calling for Christ's crucifixion. And this is why he he puts the sign over Christ's head. The king of the Jews.
lesson to you all.
Uh so that the people coming into the city for Passover say, hey. Here's your here's your king. Here's what Caesar does to your king. So what do you think he could do to you? This is the the paradigm. Pilate is here representing the emperor, representing Rome, representing the kingdoms of this world that are under the power of the devil for Saint John, right? And this is how they view humanity.
subject of a str of uh destruction, uh to be uh used as cattle, to be demeaned, right? There is no value to humanity here. There's definitely no concept of anything like human rights. There's no concept of man being made in the image of God. Right. This is a Denial of that in favor of just sort of raw power. And that's why it's so chilling when after all that. The chief priests speak up and agree. And say we have no king but Caesar. It's just the rule of power. And who can do more violence?
Okay, continuing on.
¶ John: Paschal Lamb, New Creation
So they took Jesus, and he went out bearing his own cross to the place called the place of a skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha. There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them. Pilate also wrote an inscription, put it on the cross. It read Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. Many of the Jews read this inscription, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Aramaic, in Latin, and in Greek.
So the chief priest of the Jews said to Pilate, Do not write the King of the Jews, but rather this man said I am King of the Jews. Pilate answered, What I have written, I have written. When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments and divided them into four parts, one part for each soldier, also his tunic. But the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom.
So they said to one another, let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be. This was to fulfill the scripture which says They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots. So the soldiers did these things, but standing by the cross of Jesus.
Here we have another quote. Yeah, yeah. Right. And I and I think people may not realize what's going on here necessarily. Unlike the other gospels we read, uh Saint John does not have Christ saying Eli Elama Sabakhtani, according to Psalm twenty two. Right. But this bit they they divided my garments among them and for my clothing they cast lots.
That's from that.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's from the same song.
Psalm twenty two is
Yep.
It's a later verse in Psalm twenty two. So Saint John, by quoting a different verse in Psalm twenty two, regarding the crucifixion, is reinforcing the correct understanding of the other three. That they are citing the whole psalm. That you need to read all of Psalm twenty two. in terms of Christ's crucifixion.
He's not just making a propositional statement about God forsaking him. He's also not just quoting the first line of the psalm. His prayer of the whole psalm is in view, and the whole psalm is part of the context for understanding that.
Yeah.
All right, continuing on. So the soldiers did these things, but standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister, Mary, the wife of Clopus, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loves standing nearby, he said to his mother, Woman, behold your son. Then he said to the disciple, Behold your mother. And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.
So this is Very important. More important than a lot of our Protestant friends especially give it credit for being. Uh they've got a little bit of Romophobia.
Mm-hmm.
Start talking about Mary, they get a little itchy. Um So we need to say, first of all, while yes, St. John did become for some time the uh companion of the Theotokos, uh, in the period of the early church, including we see this in Acts. Um the Theotokos is in the book of Acts. Read it closely. Um But this is not just oh Christ needs someone to take care of his mother. Okay. Uh we know that for sure. Because there is, for example, St. James. Saint Joseph's oldest son.
Do you th do you think he wouldn't have taken care of the Theotokos? This is especially silly for Protestants because they they want to say that St. James is the Theotokos' son. That's not correct. Okay. But For a Protestant to make both arguments at the same time is especially illogical, right? Um St. James
not only is a great saint of the church, but was regarded by all of the Jewish people as one of the most pious men to ever live. You think he wouldn't have taken care of the woman betrothed to his father?
Right.
And sometimes in response to that I have had some of our Protestant friends say to me, Well, Jesus' brothers didn't believe in him at this time.
Yeah.
To which my response is, he didn't know they'd repent?
What?
You're saying Jesus didn't know? Right, so none of that makes any sense. There is something else going on here. Okay, there's something else going on here. And to understand this and to understand some things we're about to read, you have to understand that Saint John, now when he's describing the crucifixion, Starts to just pepper in all this language from the Greek translation of Genesis. specifically the Greek translation of Genesis uh one, two, and three.
He goes back to creation, the creation of man, and starts peppering in this language. One of the things that people s notice and think is odd or even disturbing, like a lot of Orthodox folks are disturbed by this because of how it sounds in English. Early on, and even up to here, right, in this very passage we just read, uh in Saint John's Gospel, Christ frequently refers to the Theotokos, his mother as woman.
Yeah, which sounds weird in English.
It sounds disrespectful. Yeah. Right. Like if my mother asked me to do something and I said, Woman right, like that would not be respectful. Right. And
Yeah. Which is nuts.
Not the case, right? Christ kept the commandment to honor his father and mother. Okay? Right? Like that that should be non controversial. Um so That's how it's going, but he keeps referring to his woman. And even here, right, the first thing he says is, Woman, behold your son. Right? Then he says to the disciple, Behold your mother. Pay close attention in Genesis chapters two and three. Uh Eve was not originally named Eve.
Yeah, she was first called woman.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just the word for woman. Uh so her name is woman. The expulsion from paradise, when she gives birth for the first time, and has a son. Right? Her name is changed to Eve, to Eva, Which means mother is Because she is as she says, the mother of all living. So her name is changed at this crucial moment of the expulsion from paradise. From woman to mother. Here, Saint John, at the cross, At the beginning of the new creation, Right.
The Theotokos, who, unlike the apostles, the disciples who ran off, Right, unlike St. Peter Betrayas, the Theotokos has remained faithful. To Christ, to the very end. Right? Right here to the cross. And Christ, who has been referring to her as woman to this point, now calls her mother, changes her name from woman to mother. using Saint John as an example of one of her children.
She like Eve is now the mother of all living, not living in the sense of biological life, right? The the the biological ancestor of all humans. Right. But what does Saint John say life is? Right. Christ says in Saint John's gospel, just a couple chapters before this, this is life to know you, the only true God in Jesus Christ whom you've sent. So all those who have come to know the true God through Jesus Christ. whom he sent are now Mary's children.
She is now their mother. She is the mother of all the faithful. in this spiritual sense. Uh referring back to Genesis. That's what uh St. John is doing in the text. And that's the way the immediate disciples of St. John. Like saying in your Irenaeus, that's how they interpret it. Which is further evidence. Right.
Picking up with verse twenty eight, after this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said to fulfill the scripture, I thirst. A jar full of sour wine stood there, so that he put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the sour wine he said, It is finished, and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
So a n a note here about right, in in all four he's been offered something. To drink on a stick, right? Um in a sponge. We pointed out in St. Mark's Gospel that there it was to sort of euthanize him. Right. Sort of to kill him more quickly, right? Out of maybe spite, maybe mercy. Um
But it was to kill him. And here, in St. John's Gospel, I'm pointing to these two because they're perhaps the most different, right? Here, Christ, who was being crucified, was being tortured to death, it was very near his death. Right at this point says, I thirst, says I'm thirsty. And someone goes and dutifully gets him something to drink.
Yeah, he's basically giving a command.
And so these are possibly the most different. Saint John is is is trying to convey, right? Even as he's dying on this cross. is quote unquote helpless, right? Quote unquote powerless. Uh he's giving commands that people are obeying. Saint John is emphasizing, as he said earlier in his gospel, right? Christ says in Saint John's gospel, uh no one takes my life from me, I lay it down, I can pick it up again. Right? Um
Christ is even in this moment in complete control of what's happening. And is dying voluntarily. Right. Now, this is an example of what we were talking about way back in the Prologoman. Someone, you know, Reddit Atheist could come and say, Oh, well what was it? Were they offering it to him to kill him or were they offering it to him because he asked for something to drink and they were obeying him? Which was it? Which one really happened, huh? Right? Completely missing the point.
Completely missing a point. The the fact of what happened the fact of what happened that they put a sponge on a stick and they dipped it in this stuff and they gave it to him to drink, right? All four agree on that fact that that happened. But Saint Mark uses that fact to make the point that even as he's dying, these people weren't there weeping and showing remorse. They were standing there laughing at him and mocking him and and wishing he would die quicker.
Yeah. St. John is making the point that even in that moment where he's being crucified and dying, Christ is still really the one in control. Can both of those be true? Yes, very easily.
Yes.
Right. Those do not contradict each other. Those are not contradictory statements. So there there is not a contradiction here. There's a richness here. There are multiple levels of meaning and interpretation here, but there's no fundamental disagreement. Definitely no contradiction. going on, right, between these different accounts. On this point or any other.
Yeah. Okay. Verse thirty one. Since it was the day of preparation and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath, for that Sabbath was a high day, the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with him, but when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs.
But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water. He who sought is borne witness, his testimony is true and he knows that he is telling the truth, that you also may believe. For these things took place that the scripture might be fulfilled, not one of his bones will be broken, and again another scripture says, They will look on him whom they have pierced.
Right. So there's there's a few things here in this last bit of uh St. John's telling of the story. So the first is We have uh Because Uh we're coming to twilight on uh Friday, right? As soon as sundown comes. It's now the Sabbath, and on top of it being the Sabbath, uh this particular Sabbath is the Passover falling on the Sabbath.
Um and so it is especially important to the Jews that they keep the commandment from Deuteronomy about cursed is anything that hangs on a tree, that it n the bodies not be left on them overnight. Right, onto the Sabbath because they will defile the land. You don't defile the land on the Sabbath, especially not on The Passover, which is the Sabbath of Sabbath. So
Based on that, they say, Hey, we we need to we need to take the bodies down from the cross. And the Romans helpfully have a typically Roman brutal solution, which is they take A big mallet basically imagine a sledgehammer and go and smash the knees of the people being crucified so that. With broken knees and legs, they won't be able to push themselves up, obviously, and they will strangle quickly and die. Um So they don't go and put them out of their misery in some sort of
uh way reflecting mercy, it's just more brutality. Yeah. Um So uh They find that that Christ is already dead. Right, or appears to be already dead. So they don't break his legs. This is the the text that not one of his bones will be broken. This is One of many ways in which I mean we we only could read a piece here for this episode, but w this is one of many ways in which St. John connects.
Christ's self-offering of the cross to to Pos to the Passover lamb. Right. One of the rules for which in Ex both Exodus and Numbers, one of which or both he's citing here is that it cannot have any broken bones. Um but so to make sure that Jesus is dead, uh one of the the soldiers, Saint Logenus, takes his spear and jams it into Christ's side, right, up under the ribcage. Uh which
Obviously, if he was still alive, would both cause a reaction, but also kill him. Right? Because it's going the spear is going into his lungs andor heart. Um And when they do this, uh blood and water uh pour forth. This is another place where the language that St. John uses, he's getting from, in this case, Genesis 2 in particular, about the opening of Christ's side.
Yeah. Yeah. Like like the opening of Adam's side in order to make Eve.
Right. Adam is put into this sleep like death. Right, and his side is open, right? As we're talking about, he's pulled apart, right? But his side is open and his bride comes is brought forth. Right. So uh remember way back at the beginning of Saint John's Gospel, we got the wedding at Cana. So Christ's bride is his people, the church. Uh and that is brought forth from a side, but but how is that reflected to be brought forth from aside? Blood and water.
If we go back and we trace through Saint John's gospel, say if it's a water, you've got to be born of water and the spirit. Right? This is how Saint John talks about baptism. Uh like with in the conversation with with Nicodemus. Blood, think about John chapter six. Lest you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you. This is how St. John talks about the Eucharist, right? So it is
uh these sacraments, right, which form and constitute God's people, right? And this is this is not a big stretch. What constituted ancient Israel? Circumcision in eating the Passover.
Right.
Right. And so what consecrates God's people of the new covenant is baptism and re and eating, receiving, eating the Eucharist. Right. This is not like a wild swing, right? This is but that's what's being conveyed here in the in in this moment. This is where for Saint John the church is born. From Christ's side in his in his sacrifice. Right. Yeah. And We participate in Christ's death and resurrection and baptism.
We participate in his sacrifice, we partake of it by eating, by receiving the Eucharist. And that constitutes us as the church. his bride, right? The body of which he is the head, which Saint Paul also says about a marriage. Right.
¶ John: Pierced God and Repentance
So yes, so that leaves. This last quotation, where he says, and again another scripture says, literally again is written in another place. They will look on him whom they have pierced, which is from Zechariah.
Yeah, Zechariah twelve.
And I think uh I mean, i it it's very easy to just buzz over that and be like, Oh, pierced, yeah, he's crucified. They nailed him to the cross. Okay, see, they predicted that and it happened. There's a lot more going on here. If we go back and read this passage from Zechariah, this is where we're gonna sort of close this episode.
So it's Zechariah twelve seven through thirteen one. And the Lord will give salvation to the tents of Judah first, that the glory of the house of David and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem may not surpass that of Judah. On that day the Lord will protect the inhabitants of Jerusalem so that the feblest among them on that day shall be like David, and the house of David shall be like God, like the angel of the Lord going before them.
And on that day I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and please for mercy, so that when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, They shall mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him as one weeps over a firstborn. On that day the mourning in Jerusalem will be as great as the morning for Hadad Remon in the plain of Megiddo.
The land shall mourn each family by itself, the family of the house of David by itself and their wives by themselves, the family of the house of Levi by itself, and their wives by themselves, the family of the Shimeites by itself, and their wives by themselves, And all the families that are left each by itself and their wives by themselves, on that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness.
Yeah. So in this passage we just heard in Zechariah, who is it who they have pierced, who they will look upon? It is This person is, first of all, just in the verse that that comes from. when they look on me, on him who they have pierced, they shall mourn for him.
Oh, God.
God says that it is God who they have pierced. But also refers to it as him, who God uses both the first and the third person. To describe the one whom they pierced. But then if we go back a little to the immediately preceding verses, Who is this person? Person from the house of David, so it's the Messiah. right? Who is like God Who is like the angel of the Lord?
So this figure is God himself and And the angel of the Lord And the Messiah, the They will weep over him as one mourns for an only child over a firstborn. He is the firstborn son. This is in Zechariah. That's the quote. This is this is who say what St. John is pointing us to. To understand who Christ is in this moment of his death on the cross. The one who they appears. This is who Christ is. And then what is accomplished on that day? People of Judah, specifically the people of Jerusalem.
who have just done this, are brought to mourning and repentance. And in response, God opens up a fountain. Remember Christ's side being opened and blood and water flowing. A fountain is open for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to cleanse them from their sin and uncleanness. In response to their repentance and This is what Saint John is pointing us at with that one little quote right at the end of the story.
Awesome. Well, I don't really have anything to say in closing. It's been um just great to go through all these passages and look at a lot of these details that are coming out and the differences between them and and to revisit them. I think um, you know, we're recording this the week before Holy Week. So for me this is a great preparation for Holy Week. But if you're listening to this during Holy Week,
Um, I'm I'm ha I'm happy for it or even after, probably a lot of you are not gonna listen to this until after, but I think it's um Th this is beautiful, beautiful stuff to spend time with um as we're looking at Christ's death and of course his resurrection. Do you have anything you wanted to add here at the end, Father?
¶ Conclusion: Contemplating Christ's Suffering
Yeah, I want just briefly, let me say. Let me start with a confession. Uh About this way. Uh Those of you who are not on social media are truly among the blessed. Uh I am not really on social media. Unfortunately, I get made aware of what's going on in social media. And I am fundamentally not a good person. Uh and and one of the ways in which I'm not a good person I'm about to describe. Um there's been a lot of fur on social media during this land. And I don't think it's been good or helpful.
for people. Um, there's a lot of people out there Who spent this land? Arguing for or against a bunch of heretical ideas having to do with the death of Christ and that's not how any of us should have spent our life. And the confession part is that I have said things publicly that I stand by and that are absolutely true. But I said them at a time during this Lent and in a way that I knew was gonna stoke the fire of that and stir people up.
And so in that way I did a lot of people a disservice. And that's why I call this a conversation. Um because even the people who I think are horribly wrong And in being horribly wrong about this are stirring up dissension and confusion in the church is doing nothing to justify their activities. Me going after them and riling them up during Lent did not help them spiritually, did not help the people arguing with them spiritually, and so I shouldn't have done. Uh I should have waited.
Instead of continuing to kick the hornet's nest. And the reason I'm bringing that up in this context is This is going to first air. This is going to premiere on YouTube and whatever. Um, this episode during Holy Week on Holy Thursday. And one of the magnificent things about that service I think is not only that we get to hear the passion gospels, but we also get this opportunity to venerate the image of Christ crucified.
And I hope that this episode and reading the four accounts separately as Father Andrew was just talking about, I hope the beauty of it impressed me. Because I think it's not just a problem of me and my bad behavior during Lent, maybe some other people's partially instigated by me. I think a lot of the time we we pull these things from these these passion gospel narratives out of context. You know, Christ quoting Psalm twenty two. Uh
The thief on the cross and how he was saved and all these things. We yank them out and we make them these points of these theological argument and w we dissect things in a way where we lose just the beauty Of beholding the image of the Son of God offering himself and offering his life and suffering these tortures and torments for our sake. And sometimes we need to stop the arguing.
and stop the the bickering and stop Pulling these things out and playing with them with intellectually and just look and just listen. And just behold and just marvel and wonder and give thanks and see how beautiful our Lord is. So that's what I have to say about it.
Man.
Well, that's our show for today. Thank you very much, everyone, from listening. Um, this was not a live episode, this was pre recorded, but we'd still like to hear from you. You can email us, of course, at Lord of Spirits at AncientFaith.com. You can message us through our Facebook page. You can also leave us a voicemail at speakpipe.com slash Lord of Spirits.
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You've been listening to the Lord of Spirits. Christian Priests, Father Andrew Stephen Damick, and Father Stephen DeYoung, a listener supported of Ancient Faith Radio. And I beheld and I heard the voice of many angels round. And the elders, and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb. And strength.
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Revelation.
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