One of the genres of books I loved to read as a child were the ‘Choose your Own Adventure’ books. Do some of you remember these? Lori Martin told me that there is a whole new batch of them that have come out recently that Isaac loves to read – and she passed one on to me to see again. These books are literally what the description says – you are the first person protagonist in the story. You might be a private investigator or mountain climber or race car driver or doctor or spy – and you choose your own adventure. On the first page you get a bit of a narrative, the start of the story line – an adventure or mystery or crime scene – and then a choice of how the protagonist, which is you, would respond. Do you choose to take this action or that action, follow and believe this character or that character, follow this clue or that clue, jump into this decision or that one? If you take option 1, turn to page 17. If option 2, turn to page 58. And you are off on your adventure – which brings you to the next page, and its 2 options, and then to somewhere else in the book, another page, and its options, and so on. You wind your way through the book – and at some point you reach one of the many different ending pages. Sometimes it is a tragic ending, or a dead end, or an unfortunate turn of events, and sometimes it brings you to a place of life and satisfaction and joy – a good completion of the storyline, or the mystery solved. In either case, where you end up is the result of the kinds of decisions you have made all along the way. It is a very cool concept, and I know it captivated me for a period of time, as it has for many generations of children. It started to teach me about making decisions and choosing paths and seeing the consequences of which way I go. Of course, sometimes you would cheat and turn back to the previous location and try the other route, or simply start the book again and again, following a different track of paths. Some books had as many as 44 different story endings. Just for some history here, the origin of the books came from a man named Ed Packard who would make up bedtime stories with his daughters about a character named Pete on an isolated island, and one night when he ran out of ideas, he asked his 2 daughters to come up with different paths for the story to take, each with their own endings. The idea was born, and over 16 Million copies of the original Classics and over 270 million of the follow up books have been sold around the world. I also heard from Sarah Cain that there is a new game board that uses this same concept of choosing your own adventure. I tried this book Lori gave me to read – The Abominable Snowman, where I was a mountain climber in Nepal with my friend Carlos, trying to find the legendary Yeti – and maybe I was too adventuresome and brash in my choices, because I lasted about 4 pages before hitting a tragic end.
Lori and I remembered these books when we were reading today’s Scriptures and reading the related Jason Porterfield chapter from his book Fight Like Jesus – How Jesus Waged Peace Throughout Holy Week (Herald Press, 2022, pages 97-116)). Today is Wednesday of Holy Week – the midpoint, the calm between the 3 tumultuous action packed days of Sunday’s parade and crowd, Monday’s cleansings of the Temple and Tuesday’s controversies and excited banter and arguments with the Pharisees and religious leaders – with the last supper and arrest and crucifixion still to come. Remember Porterfield’s claim, that all of Holy Week is about Jesus choosing each day the way of peace instead of violence – all stemming from his crying over Jerusalem at the end of the Palm Sunday story – ‘if only you knew the things that make for peace.’ It is like on each day, Jesus chooses his own adventure – chooses option 1 or option 2 – and each time his choice moves us to a different place and page in the story, moves us deeper and deeper into the way of peace, and each time his choice leads him closer and closer to the cross. The people, the crowds, the Pharisees, would have made other choices, gone a different route, turned to a different page, and the results and the end of the story would be very different. But Jesus keeps choosing the way of peace. Porterfield names his chapter on the Wednesday ‘Two Roads Diverged, and I Took…’ It is a take on the Robert Frost poem –The Road Not Taken. This is the day that tips that balance, and a day that asks us to make a decision about which way we go, how we live and interact in our world. These choices will not be so easy. When we look at our own lives, these choices are just as present and just alive for us. As he writes ‘At this point in Holy Week, we reach a fork in the road. Two paths diverge – one moves toward Jesus, the other way from him – and before proceeding into the second half of the week, we must choose which path to take.’ (Ibid, p.99)
There are two main scenes for this day – the gathering of the Sanhedrin and the anointing of Jesus with nard – and a little postscript about Judas. Let’s spend some time with each scene.
Scene 1 – The Gathering of Religious Leaders
There have been 3 very restless and active days in Jerusalem since Jesus arrived on the scene. This day is quiet – too quiet. Behind closed doors, major developments are taking place – backroom deals and decisions. The Sanhedrin is meeting. This is the ruling council of the Jews, comprising 70 members, religious leaders of the community, and the high priest – Joseph Caiaphas. What I had not realized was that Rome actually oversaw the appointment and removal of those on the council, and in particular, would monitor who was the high priest. Talk about the mix of religion and politics! In the 60 years of this leadership structure, there were 18 different men appointed as high priest, under the influence of Rome, each averaging 3 years in the post. The exception was Caiaphas who lasted 18 years – a sign of his brilliance and his ability to appease all the different factions and keep the peace and stability in the region. Rome was content. His job was secure. Now, on this Wednesday, his political acumen was on full display. The Sanhedrin meets behind closed doors and the end result is that they will conspire to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him, even as they worry about whether that can happen at Passover and cause even more of a scene and riot by the people. I have sometimes pictured these leaders as pure evil men who were so jealous of the popularity of Jesus and his challenge to their authority that they would kill him. The Scriptures give us a much more pragmatic motive. The council is worried about the peace and stability of the land and their religious life being threatened; they are worried about their uneasy relationship with Rome. As they say ‘If we let Jesus go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place (the Temple) and our nation.’ Caiaphas has the practical answer ‘You know nothing at all! 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.’ Pragmatic, Realistic, sensible, no nonsense, matter of fact – Sure, we can sacrifice Jesus, if this keeps the broader peace we have with Rome. This is the better choice than any other alternative. Turn to page 58.
For Porterfield, this is a classic case of the ends justify the means. There simply are no other good options, so you do what you need to do to maintain peace, even if the way you do that involves violence and death. This is the choice you must make. And it is a choice we and our world make all too frequently. If we do this little bit of interference in another country, the end result will be worth it. If we send troops here, or extract these resources here, or prop up this government or rebel forces, or freedom fighters, it will be worth it in the end to keep peace, keep economic stability, and maybe benefit us. Who needs a just system if we can keep the peace? So often that has backfired when we take the longer view of history. The rebels become the new oppressors, the political friend becomes the new enemy, the reactions unleashed become worse than the original problem, the violent or unjust means used come back to haunt us. Porterfield writes ‘Inherent to the claim that the ends justify the means is the mistaken belief that we can accurately predict what the end result of our means will be.’ (Ibid, p. 103). He goes on to share the irony that by killing Jesus, it led to the public’s mistrust of the Jewish leaders, the overthrow of the Sanhedrin and the start of the Jewish-Roman war, the very war that in the end resulted in the destruction of the temple in 70 AD.
Jesus offers a different path, where the means themselves are the same as the ends. For Jesus, peace was always the fruit of justice and living out that peace in the here and now. To be a peacemaker, is to act in ways of peace to get to the end of peace – they are the same thing. The ends do not justify the means. As Martin Luther King Jr. preached ‘Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at the goal.’ (Ibid, p.104)
Scene 2 – The Anointing of Jesus with Nard
While the powerful Sanhedrin was meeting behind closed doors, Jesus was out in the open in the humble home of Simon the leper. In the version in Luke, the woman is un-named and probably unwelcomed, even scandalous. She takes an alabaster jar of very costly ointment, nard – it would be like throwing away your secure retirement funds – and pours in on Jesus’ head (other versions say the feet). It was an act of devotion and an act of recognition of who Jesus really was. You anoint oil for a king and you anoint for burial. She got it! This is the awaited Messiah, the King, and yet a King that would soon suffer and die. Like the red scarf up here on our path, this woman is willing to put herself out there, in public, in vulnerability, in sacrifice, to demonstrate her love of Jesus and her intuitive knowledge and recognition of the meaning of Jesus. Yes, she is speaking from the edges, the margins, but maybe she knows exactly what she is doing and is in total control? Despite the protests of the disciples, the woman is affirmed by Jesus – ‘by pouring this ointment on my body she has prepared me for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever this good news is proclaimed in the whole work, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.’ Porterfield writes that ‘She is to be remembered, for she is the first to understand and accept what Jesus had been saying all along: His efforts to make peace would result in his death, not the death of his enemies.’ (Ibid, p.108)
What a contrast to the religious leaders who conduct their business and nefarious plans behind closed doors. The woman is out in the open, claiming what little agency she has in her society and setting. She is a part of the marginalized, those with little power, and yet she sees what the religious leaders, and even Jesus’ own disciples could not. It may be that those most on the margins understand the destructive nature of violence and mis-use of power. Jesus stood with the marginalized and validated their perspective and understanding. Porterfield writes powerfully ‘If we’re going to contend for peace as Jesus did, we must gain a new perspective on violence by standing in solidarity with the marginalized. Only then will we see the true, destructive nature of violence. Only then will we recognize its inability to produce real, lasting peace. And only then will we see what the unnamed woman saw so clearly: That taking life is never the answer and that having one’s life taken is not the worst thing that can happen to you.’ (Ibid, p.110)
So you have the Sanhedrin and you have this woman. There is one more character in these stories that stands out – Judas Iscariot. In some of the gospels, he is the one who says the money from the nard could be sold and given to the poor. In Luke, we get the narration right after this scene. Judas approaches the chief priests, probably fresh from their closed door meeting, with the offer to betray Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. The question always is, why did Judas betray Jesus like this. Was it for the money, out of greed, when 30 pieces of silver would be like $300 today? (Ibid, p.114). He didn’t even haggle for a better price. The only reason you betray a friend is because that friend first betrayed you. Judas had hoped Jesus would put up a fight, bring that hammer down upon the Romans, upon the enemies, start a revolution with power and might that would change things. And now he is talking about his death, and about waging peace and not war. It is these crushed expectations that lead Judas to betray Jesus in return.
Wednesday puts us at a cross roads. It lays before us two paths – two ways of living and being in the world. We have the ends justify the means of the Sanhedrin, or we have the voice from the margins that recognizes the way of peace in self sacrifice, justice and love – the ends as the means. Which page do we turn to? Which adventure do we take? What will be our path? I’ll end my sermon how Porterfield ends his chapter on Wednesday: ‘Like the Sanhedrin, will you support the sacrificing of others in order to maintain a status quo that benefits you? Like Judas, will you toss aside those who fail to meet your expectations? Or like the unnamed woman, will you embrace the One who refused to kill yet was willing to be killed? The choice is yours.’ (Ibid, p.116)