Christians during Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services this week will be once again reminded that Jesus stood trial and was convicted. I think it is worth while to think through a bit what that trial was about, why and how it unfolded like it did. There are plenty of commentaries out there to go into the details found in the Christian canonical accounts but I want to approach it from another direction. What were Jesus’ realistic options within the trials? I’m going to follow the gospel of Luke simply because I’ve been preaching on it this year. A student of Jesus is challenged by the wealth of material with each gospel writer exploring things from a particular angle but I’ll just stick to Luke for now.

The first question they want to know from him is if he is the “Messiah” or “anointed one”. Is Jesus a man sent by God to deliver his people from their brutal gentile overlords? Is a he sort of prophet/king figure who in the tradition of other past rescuers of Israel (Judges, David, Maccabees, etc.) to deliver them from their in country exile?

This of course is the question that has been teasing Jesus’ followers and his adversaries all along. We know that during this time period there were many aspirational Messiahs who tried to free the Jewish people from the Romans, each of them failing. Jesus of course showed promise given the miraculous power he demonstrated. Also in this respect, however, was part of the political weather. The political/religious factions within the Jewish people had competing perspectives, ideologies and approaches towards how God would free his people. It seems at this point that Jesus within this context has few friends. He had a band of followers that abandoned him at the garden with only Peter daring to follow but in the passage before fleeing in tearful despair at the threat of his own arrest.

Jesus responds in a very strange way for someone who as we would expect would want to live to see another day. His first comment is a statement of fact: “If I tell you, you will not believe. If I question you, you will not answer.”

Jesus has been debating the religious authorities at the temple throughout the week and had been pretty clear about who he was claiming to be and what he thought of their administration of the flock of Yhwh. This quite clearly was the reason for his arrest and their desire to have him executed. No matter what he says, they will not believe. I’ll come back to that after I comment on his next statement.

Jesus then goes on to say “But from now on the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God.”

Jesus’ examiners were experts in the Hebrew scriptures and this statement which may sound strange to us would have been crystal clear to them. Jesus compiles his answer based both on Psalm 110 (the Psalm most often alluded to in the New Testament, whose treatment seems exclusively Christian making it likely that Jesus started this interpretation of that Psalm) and Daniel 7. What Jesus is saying to them (which all four gospels record him as saying all throughout his ministry) is that he is no mere kingly or prophetic deliverer of Israel from their pagan overlords, but he is a divine deliverer.

How I know this is how they reacted to his statement. “Are you then the Son of God?” He said “You said it” and it is case closed, trial complete. He is guilty of a crime against their religion and culture. They are ardent monotheists and Jesus has just claimed to be Yhwh or another god beside him within the monotheistic religion. Now they have a different problem. They want him to be executed by the Roman powers which means getting the polytheistic Pilate to find him guilty of an executable offense. The executable tripwire for the Roman occupational government was of course insurrection. Jesus’ claim to be the “King of the Jews” would have to be the angle, so that is what they do.

Now let’s imagine this scene from Pilate’s perspective. He’s the servant of a guy who claims a form of divinity or that claim will be asserted after Caesar’s death. There are lots of claims of divinity around in the world of Pilate. Such claims, however, are usually supported by political, economic and military power, the kinds of power the world recognizes and respects easily. Jesus is brought into Pilate with no such accessories. If he is supposed to be a god or descended from a god could he perhaps do some signs and wonders that would certify his divine credentials? Jesus in Luke before Pilate and Herod is very non-compliant. Not much to say. No arguing or begging for his life as anyone else might suppose a normal person would do.

OK, back to the main subject. What were Jesus’ options?

First of all Luke makes it clear that this was God’s plan all along so its easy to see that Jesus’ aim was not to go free. He didn’t mount a defense that would have resulted in his freedom. It doesn’t seem unreasonable that he could have talked Pilate out of what it seems Pilate didn’t want to do anyway.

The trial with the Jews as a strange angle to it. If Jesus asserts who he says he is, which is what he does, he will be executed. If Jesus lies and says “I just made the whole thing up to get attention and maybe some chicks” then he goes free, maybe.

Could Jesus talk them INTO believing that he is the Son of Man from Daniel 7? He had in fact been doing this all along the way to Jerusalem in Luke and a number of times in his dialogs with the religious authorities after the triumphal entry. Jesus had been making this point over and over and over again and they didn’t believe.

Here’s another question. By virtue of their time and place in history COULD they have believed him? They religious system left them completely unprepared to accept the audacious claims he was making. This in fact hasn’t changed. The interpretive filter of many modern readers likewise excludes the possibility that Jesus would be the Daniel 7 Son of Man who defeats the empire monsters and establishes an everlasting kingdom. There is no way to believe him. He must be a lunatic.

To make matters worse even his disciples don’t believe him. If in fact they truly believed he was the Daniel 7 Son of Man why would they have run? Now they might have kind of imagined this right up until the arrest and then his arrest unnerved them. They would have imagined that this Daniel 7 figure would have done some wondrous thing to defeat the soldiers who came to arrest Jesus, but he is arrested and then abused and held trial. Their assumptions and expectations where not that different from Pilate’s in that they assumed that a “King” comes with armies to display his glory. The arrest and trial in fact unnerve the disciples who were of anyone most likely to believe who Jesus was claiming to be according to the canonical record. Jesus’ position, standing trial, arrested, seemingly helpless, having lost all political and potential military power informs everyone that he in fact was not who he said he was.

Now for the really big question. What would have changed this community from imagining Jesus was a liar or a lunatic into imagining he was the unthinkable, that Daniel 7 Son of Man?

If Jesus had done a miracle for Pilate or Herod what would it have accomplished? Would they have listened to him? Maybe. They might have treated him differently, with some respect, but their situation of power within the world power structure would not have changed. Jesus could well then have then been on track towards the same end as John the Baptist. Very seldom do people give up power and privilege for a religious belief.

What would have changed Herod’s and Pilate’s relationship with Jesus? The only thing would likely have been a change in the political power structure where Jesus would have defeated the armies that kept Herod and Pilate in power. Would a military coup combined with a miracle have changed Herod and Pilate? What might it have changed them into?

There are a lot of revolutions in the world where political and military power changes hands. Did the American invasion of Iraq turn Saddam Hussein into a regular guy? Did it change his mind about much of anything except his fortune? People of power and privilege whose fortunes are changed by a violent political revolution are seldom model citizens of the new regime. What they desire is to get back to their position of power and privilege that they enjoyed before. So what were Jesus’ options?

One of the things that changed, and took hundreds of years to change was a thing called a plausibility structure. After Jesus suddenly the divinity of Jesus Christ became believable to the point that all sort of people would say “yes” to a pollsters asking if Jesus was the Son of God. The plausibility structure shifted radically making the possible embrace of that idea possible.

To me as a Christian minister that is a positive thing, of course. A bunch of monotheists would have their monotheism altered to a more trinitarian frame of mind. A bunch of polytheists would adopt a Christian trinitarian frameworks and cultural transition would create space for this within the plausibility structures of massive numbers of people. Culture matters. The resurrection effectively changed world history in a very dramatic way.

I hope to come back to this because the relationship between the believability of Jesus and the plausibility structures around us is important when we start to wrangle with the kinds of issues that are getting passed around via the Rob Bell work. It’s especially a lot of work-product for me around Easter time.