“Are you the king of the Jews?”
“You have said that I am”
It intrigues me that in today’s reading Jesus never explicitly says that He is the Messiah. When His accusers fail to get Him to condemn Himself outright, He is actually arraigned on different grounds entirely. Of course, His fate was sealed, in both senses, well before the exchange here took place, but it is clear from Luke’s account that the charges and the punishment meted out to Jesus were entirely unjust. In their headlong rush to achieve victory, the Jewish leaders colluded with the Roman authorities to achieve satisfaction by any means necessary. As we saw yesterday, the irony of this is that, eternally speaking, this was of great benefit to us all.
I am continually struck recently by the cleverness of Jesus in how He answers questions. He always extends the conversation, answering in open fashions, so that those He is talking to are forced to consider their position. He does not deny Himself, nor does He condemn Himself, and, further, nor does He force Himself, or His ideas or position, down their throats. His goal seems to be that people come to God, through Him, as a result of the choice that they have made, rather than through any force on His part.
I wonder somehow, therefore, if we are doing God a great disservice by only talking about Him, what He has done, or is going to do, or how our faith affects our lives, in nice, neat, packaged answers. Whereas you might challenge me that if I can’t justify my position it has no validity, it seems that, verbally, Jesus saw no need to do this either, and instead “proved” His position with His life.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could do the same with ours.