From the Gospel of John:
You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.
(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 11:50 (NRSV) – February 26, 2014.)
The words of Caiaphas the high priest are reported by John as a prophecy that Jesus’ death would be an atoning sacrifice, that he would “die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God.” (vv. 51-52) But I read them this morning as nothing more than political calculation.
More years ago than I care to remember I took a college class in political history. One of the things I learned is that nearly all decisions of government include two major components: political calculation, which is always based on past experience, and profound ignorance of current conditions and future potentials. Despite prodigious amounts of fact finding and data gathering, that ignorance remains a factor. There is always “one more fact” that could have been learned. And, more often than not, a “known fact” is not appreciated because prejudice, preconception, or inexperience blinds the decision-maker to its importance.
I suspect the lawmakers in Kansas and Arizona, where legislation has recently been enacted by one or both houses of the state legislatures permitting service providers, both private and public, to refuse service to gay, lesbian, and transgendered persons on the basis of “sincerely held religious belief,” have been surprised by the responses their actions elicited. They may have expected some reaction from the political left. It’s possible they anticipated some objection from more liberal religious bodies (such as the Episcopal Church). I don’t think they had a clue that the business community, represented by Apple, Delta, American Airlines, and other corporations, would oppose their action. I don’t know what data gathering they did before enacting those proposed laws, but they either failed to get the business data or failed to understand the data they got.
I could criticize what they did — these bills are, in my opinion, deeply flawed in several respects — but my thought today is that in our personal lives we do much the same thing. We make personal decisions on the basis of past experience in an atmosphere of profound ignorance; there is always something we don’t know. St. Paul was speaking of the eschaton, the end of time, about which we can know nothing when he wrote, “We see through a glass, darkly” (1 Cor. 13:12, KJV) but the truth is that our vision is always obscured. The glass through which we look at the present or the future is always darkened; there is always something we don’t see, some fact or bit of data of which we are ignorant either through lack or through misinterpretation.
So what does one do? Fail to decide? Fail to act? No, one cannot be paralyzed by fear. The only answer is to decide, to move forward in faith, to hope for the best. I don’t fault Caiaphas for his political calculation or for his ignorance; I am no different. I can hope I make better choices, but the process by which and environment in which human decisions are made has not changed in 2,000 years. Political calculation and profound ignorance are still the norm and probably will be until we get to the other side of Paul’s darkened glass.
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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.
My favorite thing in the Book of Proverbs is the personification of Lady Wisdom. Perhaps because of the further development of her portrait in Chapter 8, where she is said to have been with God in the moments of creation, “daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race” (vv. 30-31), I see her as young, slender, and athletic, her rejoicing being manifest as dance.
It has been said that all human communication, even at its best, is an approximation of meaning. This is especially true of religious communication which is almost always analogic. When we try to speak of God we mean both more and less than we say; when we listen to others speak of God, we understand both more and less than we hear. 
A very familiar sentence from a very familiar story. I am intrigued today by the way in which Jesus carefully phrases his invitation to stone the woman caught in adultery. He does not say, “Let anyone among you who has not sinned be the first . . . .” Rather, “Let anyone among you who is without sin . . . .” As Jesus has phrased it, sin is not something done; it is a condition possessed. Those who would condemn the woman are focused on actions and behavior. Jesus turns their attention and their consciences from human behavior toward human nature.
My grandmother was a great fan of that old shibboleth, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” We all know what it means: you have to get to know someone (“read the book”) before you can make any judgment about them. “Appearances,” goes another, “can be deceiving.” Until you have worked passed and through the surface, you cannot know and make judgments about what lies underneath. Until, as the Native American teaching goes, you have walked a mile in another person’s moccasins, you have no basis on which to render judgment.
Sunday, February 2, was significant for three things. It was the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, also called the Purification of Mary, also called Candlemas, a principal feast in the Christian faith and one that rarely falls on a Sunday. It was Groundhog Day, a very silly secular holiday in the United States and the inspiration for one of the more profound movies about personal growth and maturity, 1993’s Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray. It was Super Bowl Sunday.
In a sense, we walk on the surface of chaos all the time. One of the learnings from quantum mechanics is that things are not nearly as solid as they seem. The everyday world seems to “float” on what has been called a “quantum foam.” The Greeks posited that if we continue to divide matter we get to atoms; if we divide atoms, we get electrons, neutrons, and other subatomic particles; if we try to divide subatomic particles, eventually we get to get quantum fields and even multidimensional vibrating strings. At the quantum level, reality is a quivering mass of quantum chaos. We walk on the surface of chaos all the time!
Is it just me, or does this speech of Jesus (the verses are part of a long, long address to “the Jews”) just drip with frustration? And it makes me wonder – did Jesus really express such frustration? Or is it John who is frustrated and does his frustration color the way he presents the gospel story?
There are times when I’m reading one or another of the Gospels and I am pulled up short; I just have stop and say, “Really? Jesus said that? Really?” 
I’m intrigued that, near the end of what is a pretty standard hymn-of-praise sort of psalm, there is this admonition to be a careful observer. Jesus will echo this admonition, not in its exact words but in intent, several times in the gospels. 
