Status Quo Guards

Therefore the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council, and were saying, "What are we doing? For this man is performing many signs." (John 11:47)

I see here an admission by these leaders that Jesus is clearly able to do things to substantiate His claims of true leadership that they cannot do. They are increasingly jealous that His abilities to perform miracles in support of His radical teachings about God carry so much power to change people's views of God. But this very shift in public opinion about what God is like is the very thing undermining their own influence and control over the masses because they have built all their power structures on pictures of God as one who employs force and fear and shame to maintain their allegiance.

In this statement they are forced to admit that they seem powerless and wimpy in the face of such overwhelming and compelling signs that Jesus has been using to draw the people to Himself. While Jesus is performing sign after sign and they have been unable to discredit even one of them as hard as they have tried, in contrast they cannot think of anything they have done to really effect a viable alternative to keep the people's allegiance for themselves. They have set themselves up in direct competition against Jesus and yet they have been unable to match anything He has been doing to win that competition. They are now becoming frantic in their desire to do something – anything to win this contest even if it means violating the rules of the game and surrendering the last remnants of their moral integrity.

The whole book of John is focused on the evidence of signs in support of Jesus' claims about what God is like. John wants to make sure we see that Jesus is the one winning the competition and here he reveals what the opposition is feeling as they realize they are losing. At this point they are ready to grasp at anything, legal or illegal, moral or immoral, to protect their status, to maintain their positions of dominance and control and to preserve the status quo at any cost.

These leaders were aware of their responsibility to fulfill the obligations of their offices and positions for leading the people. These men were the religious instructors of the people, they were to be an example of holiness before the public, their job was to set the tone for a whole nation of people that depended on them to know how to live rightly before God.

These men were also powerful political leaders of the people. They controlled most of the commerce and wealth and were in charge of the legal system of the country. Although the Roman occupiers had taken over much of the enforcement by martial law, the Jewish leaders still had been allowed considerable latitude to enforce local civil and religious requirements. These men had worked hard to manipulate themselves into the positions they had attained and they were not about to let all of those years of effort and promotions slip away from them easily.

Because of this the leadership of the Jewish nation viewed Jesus as a rebel, a maverick, a constant and growing threat to the social stability of their nation. In many ways Jesus was disturbing the fragile 'peace' that they had worked so long and hard to carve out for their nation. Yes, there were many problems and corruption and criminals that were everywhere, but this Jesus threat had come from a very different direction. Never before had they ever encountered a person that was so unique and so friendly and yet so threatening to the status quo. They found His approach of challenging the establishment through grassroots involvement with the masses far more of a threat to their power base and prestige and honor than that of any wild-eyed rebel or prophet or religious fanatic they had ever encountered before. This man was seeking to redefine the very roots of their identity as a people.

As Jesus during His ministry performed miraculous sign after sign while spreading around His disturbing views of God that undermined much of what was promoted by the religious teachers, the leaders kept doing everything they could think of to discredit His theories and discount His miracles. In growing desperation to keep the people believing in traditional views of how society should operate so as to maintain their own control and influence, they knew they had to soon contain this strange threat that was stealing away the minds and hearts of the masses. Yet every tactic they tried, each plan carefully crafted to entrap Him, each question calculated to trick Him into incriminating Himself publicly always backfired only to bring even more dishonor to themselves instead of to Jesus. This had become a major source of irritation for them.

One of their main concerns was that Jesus was unbalancing the careful arrangements they had forged with the foreign powers dominating them. They had spent years crafting compromises and acquiring privileges from the Roman government that other countries did not enjoy, but these privileges were dependent on keeping everything carefully in place politically. If someone came along and upset all the arrangements and secret deals they had put in place they could threaten the fragile security and limited peace that had already been forged and chaos would surely result. Something had to be done to stop this man from ruining everything they had worked so hard to put in place, but so far every tactic to stop His influence among the people had failed spectacularly.

It was from this background that these leaders now convened an emergency council of the religious and political leadership in reaction to a home run grand slam that Jesus had just performed (using a baseball analogy). Every other time Jesus had raised someone from death He had done so soon enough after their death that people could reasonably question whether the person had really been totally dead. In those days before medical techniques allowed people to know better information about the internal systems, it was not hard to make a mistake and assume someone was dead when they were really only in a coma. Sometimes people had awakened spontaneously after a day or two and this gave opportunity for doubt that Jesus had really used supernatural power to awaken them from supposed death.

But it was well known that after three days if a person was not awakened by then that decay would take over the body and it would begin to rot and stink. As long as Jesus had not raised anyone from the dead after three days the religious people could keep circulating questions to fuel the minds of doubters. But this time Jesus had smashed past the three day limit and had intentionally waited four days to make His point absolutely clear. In doing this He had performed a sign that was totally irrefutable, a sign that could not be discounted. Jesus had moved the competition to a whole new level and the impact of this miracle had created dramatic effects to undermine and expose the hypocrisy and true motives of the leaders.

This miracle had pushed them to believe they had to take desperate measures to meet a desperate situation if they were to keep in place the status quo protecting their livelihoods and their influence. Whether their plans were within legal limits or not, they now realized that nothing they had done in the past had really won much ground and they were fast losing control of the masses to this carpenter.

What are we doing? An interesting question indeed. Of course it could not be a truly honest question, for to admit what they were really doing would be to admit defeat. But this was one of the very things that Jesus had come to expose. The ways and plans of men in the name of God have ever been contaminated with selfishness and grasping for power and desire for control over others. To admit their selfishness would be to admit they were counterfeits and not worthy o public trust. Keeping the status quo in place always requires a certain amount of deception and intimidation of those under one's control. The fundamental principles of this world's ways of governing requires the use of fear, shame and force.

Jesus had come to this earth to initiate a new kingdom. But this kingdom was to be in sharp contrast with all the ways people were used to governing and being governed. The principles of the kingdom of heaven are so different that they are a direct threat to the function of the kingdom structures of this world no matter how much they may claim to operate in God's name. Whether it be a nation or a church, the underlying principles used to hold people together under a social system are either based on the principles of Satan's kingdom or must be subject to the sovereignty of God and rely on His principles to bond people together while maintaining full respect for their individual freedoms.

Jesus came to reveal the truth about how heaven treats people with respect and love, honoring their right to choose for themselves. This threatened the very adhesive of society that the world's systems use to keep their groups in place and their leaders in power. Jesus was injecting solvent into the fabric of earthly society that was making their kingdoms come unglued. Because of this the source of this solvent had to be eliminated and the damage contained. Otherwise society as they knew it would fall apart and then what would happen to the status quo and all who depended on it for their livelihoods and their identity?

What are we doing? In comparison to all the things Jesus had been doing that drew attention to Himself, swaying the opinions of people about how God wanted to relate to them, the religious leaders seemed to be doing very little to limit His influence. Somehow they had to come up with a way to contain the damage from this man that they were not able to intimidate. It was time to take extreme measures to meet an extreme threat to the world's system of control. It was time to do whatever it took to stop this man so the damage could be repaired as soon as possible.

Furthermore, it would even seem reasonable that it might be necessary to put Lazarus to death as well to eliminate the living witness that Jesus had produced who was helping spread His infectious beliefs. It was time for an extreme response as soon as possible if they were to protect the very existence of society as they had maintained it. In contrast to what they had attempted previously, what they now had to do needed to be dramatically more radical. If threats, deception, logic and trickery had not worked, it was time for brute force like the Romans had used so effectively.

Whatever it takes. That is the tactic that the kingdoms of this world and every religious system relying its methods have had to resort to when faced with erosion of their existence by the kingdom of heaven.