In the first part of John 12, the religious power brokers are so afraid of Jesus and Lazarus that they begin to plot their murders in earnest. Why? It makes sense that they’d be irate at Jesus for exposing the emptiness of their illusion. And I can see why they’d want to destroy the evidence, so to speak, by erasing the resurrected Lazarus from the scene.
But I don’t see how they could unequivocally dismiss the possibility that Jesus was telling (and living) the truth. How could they be so sold out to their own propaganda that they couldn’t see the sense-making beauty in what Jesus was saying and doing?
One of the reasons I’m so bothered by this riddle is my uneasy feeling that I could do the same thing. What am I guarding? What am I dismissing? What are the fears in me that skew my perceptions? Whose ideas am I ready to erase in order to protect my own?
Copyright Scott Burnett 2006
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2 comments:
Have you ever read the part in The Last Battle by CS Lewis where the dwarfs are in Heaven but think they're still in the dark stable? Not even Aslan himself can convince them otherwise. I have always loved and been amazed at that depiction of how we can refuse to see.
Nice reference! The last chapter of The Last Battle is full of theological gold. Lewis has influenced me a lot.
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