But what happens to a person, when they are given unchecked
power? They tend to use it, badly. Those guards at Nazi prison camps were just
normal guys before the war. No different
than you or me, but sell them a lie, give them power, and all of the sudden a
normal guy becomes a monster. And it was
not just during WW2 that Japanese, or German, or even Allied guards might have
become monsters obsessed with vengeance or “justice”. It happens even now. When power goes unchecked, normal people
start doing things normal people should not do.
And I imagine it happens slowly, not all at once. I don’t imagine you jump from nothing to
full-blown torture, but the journey there seems inevitable. It happens across cultures, ideologies, and
governments. But the end results are
usually the same, when no one supervises the power or keeps it in check, our
violent tendencies seem to creep out.
But of course most of us would never see ourselves in this light, and by
the same token most of us have never been in any position like this. And perhaps it is another gift of God, to
keep that kind of unchecked power away from us, so we never experience anything
like that.
Take as a case in point, the job of Temple guard, back in
old Jerusalem. It was your job to keep
order in the holiest place in the nation.
The literal or actual mercy seat atop the Ark of the Covenant lived in
the place where you work. This means the
literal presence of God could be felt near you.
This was no ordinary prison guard gig, this was nothing like that. Your job was to preserve order in the Temple,
keep out the drunkards, make sure no fights found there way in here, secure the
top brass of the Sanhedrin or Temple priests to keep them safe. And when directed by the High Priest, you
might be sent on various missions across the region to preserve the favor of
God. But to do this job, you very likely
believed in the God who was supposed to be at the top of the command food chain
you were subscribed to. With God so
close, and so baked in to your reason for being, you would think, the average
Temple guard would have been upright, just, and a good mix of justice and
gentleness. They might strike us as sort
of a religious policemen who was there to insure your safety at any given religious
function or gathering. And being largely
of Jewish decent in the guards, you might have even thought the Temple guards
were a light defense against Rome itself.
You would hope that these Temple guards were different,
surely they were supposed to be, based on working so near God, and ideally for
God. But what happens when good men like
this wind up working for power obsessed priests who use religion to control the
people instead of uplift them? What
happens when the ministry is corrupted into a financial enterprise where profit
is the ultimate goal? Missions are less
about order and more about control or worse enforcement or collections. And over time the God who is so nearby is
forgotten for the sake of the corrupt bosses who run the day-to-day. And now tonight you will be part of the crew
assigned to pick up some renegade Rabbi known as Jesus of Nazareth. Your bosses think Him a total heretic. He is a troublemaker with a large following
and a reputation for miracles too tough to fake. Your bosses want this Jesus contained; you
know at least that much. So how might
you treat this assignment? Most of us
(with the benefit of hindsight) would probably quit before we took that job on
for ourselves. Better to be unemployed than
to be caught up in this tragedy.
But that is not what happened that night, there were more
than enough guards to get the job done.
They caught Him. Jesus was now in
custody. The priests were setting up His
trial, so the prisoner was left in the custody of Temple guards. We know how the Romans would ultimately treat
Jesus, keep in mind they had zero reverence for the Jewish religions, rules, or
God. But how would the Temple guards
treat Jesus, guards who did believe in God the Father, the Messiah, and all the
rules of mercy our God’s law of love demands of us? Luke gives us a chilling account in the 22nd
chapter of his gospel letter to his friend about what we believe and why. He picks up at the end of this chapter in
verse 63 saying … “And the men that held Jesus mocked him, and smote him.” The torture begins. This was a prisoner in your charge and what
do you do? You smack Him around. Why?
Is it because Jesus is resisting arrest or confinement? Does Jesus swear at you using fowl language
insulting your mother and belittling your manhood? No Jesus is not a problem prisoner. He is meek.
Gentle as a lamb. Jesus does
nothing to make your job harder, He is instead the model prisoner every guard
should hope for. Jesus is not a hardened
criminal, in fact He knows nothing of being a criminal. And how do you respond to the Lamb of God who
takes no revenge, and makes no resistance, you smack the crap out of him, right
in His face. Why? Because you can. Because it’s fun.
And this is what unchecked power has done to your
heart. It has made you into a monster
who derives pleasure from smacking the crap out of a restrained Rabbi because
His eyes keep showing you mercy and love.
You hate that. You want it to
stop. Jesus is supposed to be a radical
Rabbi troublemaker, not a meek and mild Lamb.
Perhaps if you smack Him, He will get mad and show He is human, perhaps
Jesus will show His true colors if you hit him enough, if you make Him
bleed. Once Jesus sees His own blood He
will finally get mad and lash out (but no worries He is restrained, so none of
this should be dangerous to you). So you
take it up a notch. Luke continues in
verse 64 saying … “And when they had blindfolded him, they struck him on the
face, and asked him, saying, Prophesy, who is it that smote thee? [verse
65] And
many other things blasphemously spake they against him.” So we move up from torture to blasphemy
against God. They challenge His
abilities as a prophet. They ridicule
Him as thinking He might be the Messiah, let alone the Son of Man, or Son of
God. Are we any different?
Oh sure none of us could imagine ourselves being in any
Temple guard shoes. But then we turn
around and sin against God in our day to day lives pretending as if God does
not see us, or does not know it was me who did it. Then we blaspheme, asking questions and
making statements like … well, God made me this way. He could have stopped me if He wanted
to. So since He did not stop me,
whatever I did was His fault. His fault
for making this way. His fault for not
stopping me. If you think about it, its
God fault this whole world of sin exists anyway. He allowed the tree of good and evil in
Garden, and He did not do enough to restrict it from us. Should have stopped snakes from talking, or Eve
from eating, or Eve from leaving the side of Adam in the first place. So we lay the fault of sin at the feet of God
and blaspheme against God in the process.
And it is a modern Temple guard we have become.
And if you think things have changed today, how well do we
treat prisoners today? Do you think
prisons are comfortable places? Do you
think medical care there is what it should be?
Sure, people who have committed crimes may have forfeited creature
comforts as part of the punishment of their crimes while in prison. But do we ever offer them a chance at
redemption even after they are out of prison.
The words “convicted felon” hang around a person’s neck as a permanent
branded wound from which they will never fully recover. Forget voting so representation is mostly
out. Forget working anywhere decent for
no “decent” place wants a convicted felon working there or living nearby. We still treat those who have made mistakes,
those we have power over, not very well.
And we reason, we are not treating Jesus this way, we are treating a criminal
this way. But Jesus says, as you did it
unto the least of these, you did it unto me, and who might be more the least of
these, the least deserving than a prisoner, current or former.
I submit it is a mercy of God that humanity is not meant for
wielding power. Only God is qualified to
do that, as the life of Jesus testifies power was only ever meant for the
benefit of others, not for the punishment of them, even when they deserved it. Jesus did not come to this earth looking for
justice, He came here looking to show us what mercy looks like. Perhaps yet another reason to follow God, is
to let go any ideas of power, or the need for power, or the desire for it. Perhaps in following God, and leaving the
power with God, we are free not to have to be worried by it, or burdened by it,
or with the guilt of having used power badly.
To be free, truly free, we can just follow Jesus and leave all the
leading up to Him. I pray for all the
correctional officers in our world, that they fall not into temptation, and can
instead reflect the love of Jesus even to the hardest criminal. And I pray for me and my family, that we fall
not into temptation, and can also reflect the love of Jesus to those we come in
contact with, from the greatest, but especially to the least of any. For in faces like that, I begin to see the
face of Jesus Christ.
No comments:
Post a Comment