John 11:49-53
A sermon for the Season of Lent
We have taken up Peter, and today we’ll take up Caiaphas and the trial: What actually happened, and who was responsible for this trial and crucifixion, this miscarriage of justice.
About 170 A.D. a Christian named Tatian put all four gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – together into a single narrative of Jesus’ life. It was called the Diatessaron, which means “according to the four.” And we think that it was actually all together! We think so because there are such movies, like The King of Kings, a silent movie from the 1920s, and there are others since, most recently, The Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson. We think we can really see things “as they actually were” (the goal of historical research as stated by the historian, von Ranke). Of course it was much more complicated. We need to see this in order to understand what happened at the trial of Jesus.
