Do you actually believe that another path through this world is possible?
A remarkable encounter takes place at the end of Mark 14, during the arrest and trial of Jesus before the religious leaders. The high priest asks him if he is the Messiah, the promised leader that God would send to lead the people on the correct path toward the kingdom. Jesus responds "Yes I am." This answer is so horrifying to the high priest and everyone else in the room that they immediately call for his death.
The thing is, this scene reveals an absurdity within the religious community (and one that we might struggle with too). It was, in fact, a 'core belief' of everyone in that room that God would send a Messiah to lead them one day. Everything they stood for was centered in this hope, and this was, in theory, the very moment they had been living for. Even so, just the thought that someone would claim to be that person was so viscerally repulsive to the crowd that their impulse was to destroy. So did they, or did they not, believe what they had been teaching all along?
People who claim to be followers of Jesus act this way all the time. In so many creative ways, we say "Yes, I fully believe that the path Christ taught is the right one" and in the next breath we say "But here in the real world, we have to..." So do you actually believe that another reality is possible, or was it always going to be the case that you would end up living by the same values as everyone else, no matter what?
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7 сен 2024
