Caiaphas

THE HIGH PRIEST CAIAPHAS was essentially a mathematician. When the Jews started worrying that they might all get into hot water with the Romans because of the way Jesus was carrying on, Caiaphas said that in that case they should dump him like a hot potato. His argument ran that it is better for one man to get it in the neck for the sake of many than for many to get it in the neck for the sake of one man. His grim arithmetic proved unassailable. 

The arithmetic of Jesus, on the other hand, was atrocious. He said that Heaven gets a bigger kick out of one sinner who repents than out of ninety-nine saints who don't need to. He said that God pays as much for one hour's work as for one day's. He said that the more you give away, the more you have.  

It is curious that in the matter of deciding his own fate, he reached the same conclusion as Caiaphas and took it in the neck for the sake of many, Caiaphas included. It was not, however, the laws of mathematics that he was following.  

John 11:47-50

- Originally published in Peculiar Treasures


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Caesar Augustus

CAESAR WAS ONLY ONE of the titles Augustus bore. Others were rex, imperator, princeps, pontifex maximus, and so on. He ruled Rome and thus virtually the whole civilized world. He was worshiped as a god. People burned incense to him. Insofar as he is remembered at all, most people remember him mainly because at some point during his reign, in a rundown section of one of the more obscure imperial provinces, out behind a cheesy motel among cowflops and moldy hay, a child was born to a pair of up-country rubes you could have sold the Brooklyn Bridge to without even trying. 

Luke 2:1

- Originally published in Peculiar Treasures and later in Beyond Words


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Buechner

BUECHNER IS MY NAME. It is pronounced Beek-ner. If somebody mispronounces it in some foolish way, I have the feeling that what's foolish is me. If somebody forgets it, I feel that it's I who am forgotten. There's something about it that embarrasses me in just the same way that there's something about me that embarrasses me. I can't imagine myself with any other name—Held, say, or Merrill, or Hlavacek. If my name were different, I would be different. When I tell you my name, I have given you a hold over me that you didn't have before. If you call it out, I stop, look, and listen whether I want to or not. 

In the book of Exodus, God tells Moses that his name is Yahweh, and God hasn't had a peaceful moment since. 

- Originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words


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Brothers

CAIN MURDERED ABEL. Jacob cheated Esau. Joseph's brothers sold him for twenty shekels and would probably have paid twice that to get him out of their hair. The Prodigal's elder brother couldn't stand being in the same room with him even with a fatted calf for inducement. As the Bible presents it, one of the closest of all relationships is also one of the saddest.

Envy and fear are apparently near to the heart of it—one brother is afraid the other is loved more, favored more, given and forgiven more, gets away with more—but that doesn't seem enough of an explanation somehow. You have a sense of signals crossed, of opportunities missed, of messages unheard or unheeded, in short of love gone wrong. You can't help thinking what friends they might have been if they hadn't been enemies. Cain giving Abel a hand with the spring lambing. Jacob letting Esau have his pottage just for the hell of it. 

We all have the same dark secrets and the same bright hopes. We come from the same place and are headed in the same direction. Above everything else maybe, we all want to be known by each other and to know each other. Iraq and the United States, the Arabs and the Israelis, the terrorists and the terrorized—we are all of us brothers, all of us sisters. 

Yet from the way we manage things most of the time, who in a million years would ever guess it? Who can remain unmoved by the thought of how the world might be if we only managed things right? 

- Originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words


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Bread

WE DON'T LIVE BY BREAD ALONE, but we also don't live long without it. To eat is to acknowledge our dependence both on food and on each other. It also reminds us of other kinds of emptiness that not even the blue-plate special can touch.  

- Originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words


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