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Bible Lesson: “Reality”   

Focus: Jesus stands silent before Caiaphas (found in Section 3 of this week’s Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly).  

Article from the Christian Science Sentinel:Silence,” by Florence Helen Boswell. To access, click the article’s title. Also, JSH-Online subscribers can view the article through the following link:

https://sentinel.christianscience.com/issues/1921/12/24-14/silence?_

Excerpt: “. . . ‘Judas had the world’s weapons. Jesus had not one of them, and chose not the world’s means of defense. . . . The great demonstrator of Truth and Love was silent before envy and hate.’ . . . Had he made evil real by yielding to disappointment or resentment he could not have healed the high priest’s servant instantaneously. . . . Jesus’ silence was not the silence of inertia, but the silence of demonstration.” (CSS, December 3, 1921)

Article from The Christian Science Journal:Love is Life,” by W. P. McKenzie. To access, click the article’s title. Also, JSH-Online subscribers can view the article through the following link:

https://journal.christianscience.com/issues/1899/6/17-3/love-is-life?_

Excerpt: “The bitterest form of error, Pharisaic injustice and brutality, could not destroy his sense of Love; and so none of the efforts of error could destroy his life. Before the wrong judge he maintained the dignity of silence. To have answered would have been to have involved the judges in worse injustice. He ‘held his peace,’ and in that sanctuary preserved his good will. The silence of peace is the right thing before the judge who is wrong.” (CSJ, June 1899)

Questions:

  1. Why does Judas betray Jesus (v. 10)?
  2. Why were the chief priests glad (v. 11)?
  3. Why do the chief priests have trouble finding a witness against Jesus (v. 55)?
  4. Why does Jesus hold his peace (v. 61)?
  5. What does Jesus mean when he says, “ye shall see the Son of man . . .” (v. 62)?
  6. What is the blasphemy of Jesus that provided reason to put him to death (v. 64)?
  7. How does the account of Jesus silent before the Sanhedrin relate to this week’s Bible Lesson, “Reality”?

Painting: Jesus at Caiaphas House, by William Brassey Hole

Bible Lesson Verses: Mark 14:10, 11 (to 1st .), 53, 55 (to ;), 60-64

(Note: citations in green are from this week’s Lesson; citations in red are not from this week’s Lesson but added for further context. Words that are italicized in the King James Version are also italicized below; italicized words in Scripture are not from the original Hebrew and Greek manuscripts but were included by the King James translators to add clarification for readers)

“The Pharisees, alarmed lest Jesus’ movement sweep all before it, met in council with the Sadducees to take action: ‘What do we? for this man doeth many miracles. If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.’ . . . These ecclesiastics were certain that if the people rose up to proclaim Jesus as king the Romans would strike swiftly, the hierarchy would fall, and the Jewish nation itself might cease to exist. From that day the Pharisees and the Sadducees united to bring about Jesus’ downfall and death. The Sanhedrin issued a decree that if anyone knew his whereabouts, he was to report it immediately that they might arrest Jesus.” (Shotwell, p. 295)

10  And Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went unto the chief priests, to betray him unto them.

“This Judas, from the town of Kerioth in southern Judaea (the only Judaean among the apostles), was the son of a Simon about whom nothing is recorded. His name always occurs last in the lists of the Twelve. Judas’ motives for following Jesus appear to have been mixed: he began with affection for the Master, yet underneath was a strain of ambition and greed, worldly and political. . . . Jesus’ insight was not at fault in choosing Judas; in selecting such a man he was holding out to all men the hope of regeneration and salvation. He knew what evil propensities were struggling for ascendency in the human nature of the man, but he also knew that as Judas heard the truth of his teachings and served him there would be continuous opportunity for spiritual growth. He waited patiently for a change in Judas. If Judas chose to give up these propensities his heart and spirit would soften; if not, they would harden slowly but inexorably. Less than a year after Judas’ appointment as an apostle Jesus made indirect reference to his character: ‘Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?’ ( Jn. 6:70). Judas’ disappointed hopes for a temporal Messianic kingdom and his mercenary desires impelled him to betray his Master; to this end he covenanted with Jesus’ enemies for a paltry thirty pieces of silver— about nineteen dollars in today’s terms. At the Last Supper the Master identified him as his betrayer, adding, ‘It had been good for that man if he had not been born’ (Mt. 26:24). When Judas failed to resist Satan and the last vestige of moral conscience was darkened, Jesus let him go. Within a few hours Judas guided armed Levites of the Temple guard as well as a band of Roman soldiers to the garden of Gethsemane to effect Jesus’ arrest, betraying him with a kiss. Judas had become irked by the very standard of apostleship he had at first espoused, for it unmasked his failings, and when that irritation hardened into resistance he himself was betrayed by his own weaknesses. Repentance came too late and, having set in motion a flood of events he was powerless to stop, he hanged himself . . . .” (Shotwell, p. 256)

 

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