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SUBJECT: 01. Chapter 1: Christ Being Led To Annas
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C H A P T E R O N E
Christ Being Led To Annas
And (they) led him away to Annas first; for he was father in law to Caiaphas, which was the high priest that same year.
—Joh_18:13.
GETHSEMANE lies behind us now.
Christ is about to meet the judge.
At this point, accordingly, the gospel of the suffering of Christ passes into a second stage. The Christ of God who can proclaim justice in this world by virtue of His inherent authority is to come into contact with “judges” who will pass judgment on Him by virtue of an authority they have received from God. For, in spite of the fact that they flagrantly abused it, their authority had its source in God. And this first contact between Christ and these judges introduces a new element into His passion and represents an abrupt transition in the gospel of His suffering.
The transition is clearly delineated.
Up to this time Christ was permitted to move around freely. He could go where He pleased. He could enter Jerusalem, or He could stay out of it. Had He wanted to, He could at the close have tried to rediscover the combination of the beginning, the beautiful beginning in which He had united a reformation of the temple with a wedding. Or else He could have prepared Himself for that different combination — a reformation of the temple issuing in death. Which of these was it to be? Temple and wedding march, or temple and funeral dirge? Which shall it be? The temple and the power of working miracles, or the temple and degeneration, a degeneration, mark you, under the cover of heavens which withhold their forces and conceal their light.
That question was put to Him by the world which surrounded Him and especially by the struggle which His ever-active thoughts were carrying on in the depths of His heart. From all sides He was being bound by the law and by the evangelical will. But as yet there were no bonds which restricted His body. There was no authoritative coercion other than that of God. And God was concealing Himself more and more by the hour.
Not so now. Now the Man of sorrows enters upon a new phase. He is put into bonds. The judge begins to play a role. External authority is to have a hand in the matter. Moreover, this new authority does not conceal itself; on the contrary, it imposes itself upon Him. Christ is no longer allowed to go His own way. Malice becomes His portion; humiliation and disdain seek out their worldly means to oppress Him, and we know that the world has many means which it is glad to lend to those who wish to give the essence of humiliation and disdain appropriate external shape and form.
Hence all those who think on Him in reverence will acknowledge that Christ now enters upon a new and narrower way.
In everything that took place heretofore, Christ governed the situation and was victorious over it. Gethsemane represents a victory won. But who among men recognized that this was so? Who, pray, lifted up paeans of praise in His honor, or even thought of doing so? Not one, of course; not even one.
Accordingly, the Son must act as though Gethsemane had never existed, and must carry the conflict which He first experienced in His soul into the public market-place and into the world’s tribunal, there to begin that struggle anew. He bears the essence of His victory within Him, but that too must be put into hiding. He must appear before the judge. And the judge gets his authority from God. In fact, God puts Christ into contact with two kinds of judges: the judge who represents temporal authority; and the judge who is the symbol of spiritual jurisdiction.
It is before the second of these that He appears first. Christ is led into the presence of Annas. Now Annas, by reason of tradition and family relationship, belongs to the priestly court of justice. It is not surprising to learn that Christ was first brought into contact with the spiritual court of justice of His own people. It is true that the Jews were fettered by the chains of Roman dominion. But the Romans followed the tactics of very enlightened despots. They allowed the peoples whom they conquered to retain as many of their customs and usages as possible. In matters affecting religious life, Rome gave those she vanquished an almost entirely free hand. Thus it was that the Sanhedrin, being a tribunal of justice in religious affairs, still exercised great authority under Roman rule.
The president of the Sanhedrin was the high priest. At this time the incumbent of the presiding officer’s chair was Caiaphas. And Annas, his eminent father-in-law, was a prominent figure of the day.
These two, Annas and Caiaphas, had, before time began, been given by the foreordaining God the horrible mandate of speaking the first word in the trial of Christ. May they tremble at the responsibility of that terrible mandate . . . But, alas, they have never learned to tremble. A weightier mandate was never given than these two received when God told them: Let this ruin be under thy hand (Isa_3:6); let the crumbled ruins of Israel’s wasted life be subject to thy rule.
No, never were those who were called to a heavy burden farther than these two officious ones from replying with that suitable cry of despair: I cannot be an healer; do not make me a ruler of the people (compare Isa_3:7). These two suppose they are still doing very well in their office even in these last days. As a matter of fact, who is thinking about “last days”? Surely, as long as Rome continues to send out her credentials to these spiritual judges, the world will continue on its way.
Caiaphas and Annas, then, are seated in their authoritative seats. They sit in judgment on the case of the Nazarene. Annas has the first word. For He must be put to death.
He must be put to death. And Annas and Caiaphas must have a hand in it. True, the Romans have not given the Jews the authority to carry out a death sentence; it was a formal requirement that the Roman governor had to grant his permission before a death sentence could be executed. Nevertheless, the Sanhedrin, which for the most part is Caiaphas, plays an important role in this drama. The Sanhedrin has the authority to judge in spiritual questions and in matters pertaining to religion and to traditional rights and usages. Hence Caiaphas and his Sanhedrin have the advantage of knowing that when they give a religious color to an issue carefully prepared beforehand, the Roman government will not easily take exception to any death sentence which they recommend. For it was precisely in religious affairs that Roman authority wished to give the people of the provinces free rein.
Thus it happens that the Sanhedrin and its diligent president feel that they are under the burden of a responsible assignment. They must, if we may put it that way, provide the substructure to the sentence which Pilate can later pronounce valid by his seal. They feel that if they make an error tonight—for “it was night”—or if they fail to find suitable arguments, or if they do not succeed in satisfactorily defining and formulating their charges against this revolutionist, it will be unusually difficult for them to get the sentence confirmed. Particularly is this true in the case of so wonderful and popular a hero as the Nazarene happens to be. Accordingly, they must carefully employ every means at their disposal; they must be sure to gather and arrange carefully all available evidence in time to use it for proper litigation.
It is exactly for this reason that Jesus is immediately placed before Annas, the father-in-law of Caiaphas. That Annas, also called Ananos, was the first to be given the “privilege” of seeing Jesus before him is a circumstance which cannot definitely be said to issue from his official position, for he was, as a matter of fact, no longer the high priest. It is true that Annas had been appointed to the office of high priest by Quirinius the governor and that he had served in this capacity from the year 6 to 15 A.D. But he had been removed from his position by the Roman procurator Valerius Gratus. When Valerius came into power in the year 15 A.D., he put Ishmael in the seat of the high priest. After Ishmael, Eleazar and Simeon followed in rapid succession. And thereupon Joseph Caiaphas was given the reins of office.
Officially, therefore, Annas had no right to demand a hearing of Jesus, or to have that hearing entered upon the record as a legal step in the official litigation against the Nazarene. Anything Annas could do could never have the character of an official action. He was simply giving Jesus a preliminary hearing. The official session of the Sanhedrin would come later. Hence, in our thinking about this matter, we must keep that later session distinguished from this antecedent hearing which Annas gave Jesus.
How did it happen, then, you ask, that Jesus was led before Annas first? Perhaps Annas was staying in the house of Caiaphas; it may be that the two shared the same home; or it is possible that each lived in a separate apartment; of the same palace. Some observers suppose that Annas, informed of Caiaphas’ plans and curious to know how these would develop, made it a point to be present just for this “occasion” in order to see what the result of the movement against the Nazarene would be. The supposition is not an implausible one, for it would explain what would otherwise be a rather singular circumstance: namely, that the captain of the Roman soldiers gave permission to take Jesus into the presence of a person who had no official position. For if Annas and Caiaphas were together at this time, there could be no objection to such permission, and granting it would require no special discussion on the part of military and spiritual authorities.
We can easily understand why these spiritual authorities, these masters of theology, were much in favor of having Jesus appear before Annas first of all. Several reasons can be indicated for this. Or perhaps we can say that things simply drifted that way of their own accord. To summon the Sanhedrin, with its more than seventy members, required time. An official session of that body would have to be called and that could not be done in a moment. Hence those who were working behind the scenes took advantage of the opportunity to make use of this necessary interim by placing Jesus before Annas for a so-called preliminary hearing. These tactics would certainly prove beneficial. In the first place, this would be making “productive” use of time. Besides, Annas was a man having a seasoned experience; he had been called upon to act in difficult cases before, and had developed a technique in the art of finding official formulas and procedures. This man, surely, would be invaluable to Caiaphas in defining the arguments, formulating the charge, striking out irrelevant matters, and, in short, quickly directing the litigation to the main issues. The old man’s advice would make the work of Caiaphas just so much easier. We are not surprised, therefore, when we consider the various information given us in the Bible, to receive the impression that Annas and Caiaphas co-operated in preparing for the coming session of the Sanhedrin. Naturally, this procedure would make the work of Caiaphas, the president, easier. But another advantage, not to be disdained, is that it would help him in his efforts to offset the objections raised by the Sanhedrin —and objections there were—to a death sentence. In short, it would help him to make the point that the law required the death of the Nazarene. Caiaphas, you see, could then quote an authority: the venerable Annas himself had said so.
To these considerations must be added the fact that Annas undoubtedly took delight in seeing Jesus bound before him. He had followed the various exhibitions of hatred which had been directed against Jesus with a sympathetic interest; in fact, he had taken an active part in these. Hence it was a source of grim pleasure to the old aristocrat finally to see the man before him who—in his estimation—had almost started a revolution against the authority of the priesthood. This old aristocrat and Sadducee, this noble man “who had grown gray in the service” inasmuch as he was the father of a generation of priests and even the founder of a dynasty of high priests, could not keep back the thought that the ever-growing popularity of the name of Jesus spelled a declaration of war by the masses against the priesthood. His lips gave expression to the grimness with which he deigned to use the word—the masses, the vulgus. Now that uncrowned king was standing before him. Indeed he was uncrowned, and unanointed. And he had hurled curses about recklessly, not the least of which were directed against the priestly caste.
We can easily appreciate his situation. His priestly dignity had been forced into an attitude of evasive indifference towards the madding of the people who were being carried away by the Nazarene—those masses, the ’am-ha-arets. In spite of the haughty imperviousness of his demeanor, however, the soul of the decorous old master was greatly perturbed. Think, he had been the high priest himself, the father of five other high priests, the father-in-law of still another high priest, and the grandfather of a seventh. Accordingly, every disdainful speech which Christ directed against the high priests and the leaders of the people had come to Annas as a personal insult to the honor of his family.
Now Jesus is standing before him. Moreover, they are a private company here—no need here of the decorous restraint required by an official setting. Indeed, this for Annas is a realization of a desire he had nurtured for a long time. It is his greatest gratification. It may be that he paused for thanksgiving because of it. Was not God giving him “grace and honor”?
For Christ, however, this is suffering. The fact that his litigation begins with an “informal” action is an insult to Him. It is an indication of the kind of mentality that is to judge Him, and it bodes no good.
However, that is not the worst aspect of it. Worse for Jesus than this formal violation of law is the fact of the coerced meeting between him, the true High Priest, and this representative of the ancient priesthood. Annas, who, as we observed, opened the way to a whole family of priests, manifests in his person the decadence of the priestly office in Israel. The rights of the generation of Aaron, although guaranteed inviolable by law, had been violated frequently in the course of the years. But the later authorities ignored as much as possible the privileges of priestly families.[1]
[1] Holtzmann, Neutestamentische Zeitgeschichte, 1906, p. 102.
Now the fact that Annas had seen five sons, besides a son-in-law and a grandson, enter into the office of the priest, and had also held the office himself, was in itself a forthright unmasking of the deplorable condition of the generations of priests and of their crowned heads in general. For, if the ancestral law had still been in force, Annas would have worn his purple robe until his death.[2] He would not have seen a single successor take his place. From another point of view, of course, it is also true that the given circumstances do represent a singular honor. “God gave grace and honor . . .” This was a time in which priests were succeeding each other all too rapidly. Not seldom corruption led to murder and to a change of dynasty. Arbitrary Roman administrators did the rest. Therefore the fact that Annas was able to keep the honor in his own generation as long as he kept it there is evidence of the respect accorded him, not so much by the people who sometimes spoke disparagingly of his dynasty, as by the official leaders of the people. And the days were still far away inwhich the crowd would venture to murder his son, Ananos, the second.
[2] Holtzmann, p. 164.
Indeed, the honor accorded him was a great honor. We cannot but think in this connection of the Jewish woman who had seven sons, each of whom was admitted to the office of priest. She was allowed to regard this as an honor so great that her admirers applied to her the words of Psalms 45, verse 13: The king’s daughter is all glorious within; her clothing is of wrought gold. So evil an application of a text shows us the quality of the spiritual climate in which Annas also lived. Many continued to bow in reverence before him. As father of the dynasty of priests, he was accorded so much honor that the incense offered to him was accompanied by texts drawn from the Bible.
God is not putting our Saviour into the presence of just one of the many decadent figures of that day, is not placing Jesus before the tribunal of just one of those transient and trivial priests of which there were all too many at that time — twenty-eight of them, in fact, in about a hundred years. No, God places His Son over against the founder of a family of priests in whom a little of the ancient dignity, pride, and glory had again been fanned into a flame.
Thus it happens that a contrast is most discriminatingly brought to light—the contrast, namely, between a priesthood according to the flesh and a priesthood according to the Spirit. True, such a contrast is imperceptible to anyone who looks solely at the external side of these circumstances. Externally observed, Annas seems to be the fruition of a new promise. He looks like a new shoot out of the stem of the priesthood, and who, indeed, can recognize in Christ Jesus anything but the tree which has been hewn down?
But God sees things with eyes other than those of the world. He points out the contrasts which inhere in the things which are not superficial and which are not visible. It is true that Annas personally would not have liked to see such a hymn of praise as the 45th psalm go out of fashion; nor would he, permeated as he was by the logic of the priests, have wanted any of the fragrances of the myrrh to be wafted towards the Christ who is standing before him. But in this which is his weightiest hour God judges quite differently. In God’s eyes Christ is standing over against a priest and a generation of priests to which, not the 45th, but the 82nd, psalm is applicable: How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked? Or again: O thou tribunal, seated to do justice, dost thou speak justly? But to its Son who is in bonds, heaven now applies the words of Psalms 45, and they are very rich in content:
My heart is inditing a good matter: I speak of the things which I have made touching the king: my tongue is the pen of a ready writer. Thou art fairer than the children of men: grace is poured into thy lips: therefore God has blessed thee forever.
The dynasty of the priests of Annas may pride itself in a priestly caste which can point to an eminent father and mother as the founders of a family of priests. But Jesus Christ desires a higher thing; He wants to be priest according to the order of Melchizedek. Melchizedek, too, was a priest having no priestly father or mother; his coming was as inexplicable as that of a bolt of lightning. Annas represents a dynasty of priests which derives from the flesh its standards for determining succession in an office which augured unusual distinction for a few persons. Over against him stands Jesus. Jesus represents a mysterious priestly essence which, according to the Spirit, incorporates into the true priesthood, and ministers the grace of a priest to all those who know of it by reason of the fact that they are included in the Messiah through faith. The dynasty of Annas salvages from Israel’s and Aaron’s legacy what it thinks worth preserving, and steels its heart against the spirit of prophecy weeping at the ruins of Aaron. It is eager to cover the nakedness of Aaron, but it is unwilling to do so with its own cloak. It wants to throw a cloth, borrowed from Rome or from Babel, over the dilapidated furniture of the house of Israel. On the contrary, Christ would cover the nakedness of Aaron with His own garment of righteousness, or, failing in that, would exhibit that nakedness to the staring eyes of all the sons of Ham in the world. He would build a house for the bearers of the tradition of Aaron, provided that the architectural plans are according to the vows of Aaron. Should these find this house too revolutionary in structure to suit them, they can have the alternative of standing out in the cold of the universe. And the universe is cold . . .
The contrast is complete, is perfect. Therefore it is enduring. Accordingly, it is no mere coincidence that the dynasty of Annas, long after Golgotha, was still enraged against Christ’s lambs of sacrifice. We know that the sword of the children of Annas was crimsoned later by the blood of James, the brother of the Lord.
This contrast, then, became the decadence of Aaron’s wasting priesthood[1] in Annas, and the florescence of Melchizedek’s fulfilled priesthood in Christ traces its genesis to the distant past. Moreover, its development extends far into the future. Hence it is that God, in order to make that contrast obvious to the whole world, allows the Priest according to the order of Melchizedek to be led as a captive into the presence of one who exacts tithes by the grace of Rome and Babel, the decorous old Annas.
[1] In the sense of a traditional connection, the genealogy is unknown
Alas, Melchizedek: it is unfortunate that you are no longer here to bless and to demand tithes. How pitiable, Lord Jesus, is the fact that God has bound Thy hands so tightly that they cannot be extended in blessing or reach out to accept the tenth part of a tithe for Thyself. “Mein Jesu, was hast du getan; in was fur Missetaten bist du geraten?”[2]
[2] Well-known theme of the Passion of St. Matthew: My Jesus, what hast Thou done; in what crimes hast Thou been involved.
We see, therefore, that the drama of Jesus’ trial is marked by a prologue in which the conclusion of the tragedy is plainly announced.
Has not Annas himself personally experienced what it means to suffer as Israel’s priest under Roman authority? He may insist upon his dignity, but it is a fact, nevertheless, that he had had to suffer retrenchment, that one of Rome’s satellites had first appointed him to the priesthood and had later taken that office away from him. This humiliating experience should have led Annas to ponder carefully the tragic conflict of Israel’s rejected priesthood, the conflict of a spiritual office which had become subjected to a carnal authority. The riddle of the hewn-down tree affected Annas also; in fact, it should have served as a matter for lifelong meditation for the old priest. Or, in any case, it should have opened his eyes to the large, eschatological significance of Jesus of Nazareth, who, confronted by the same problem, experienced it in his body in a far more excruciating form of suffering than Annas, and who demonstrated it daily in his life from the time when He lay in His manger.
What Annas objects to in Christ, of course, is that He gave a different solution to the riddle of the hewn-down tree, than the old priest wished. Christ’s solution to it was not one of external power but of a life after the Spirit. Annas is so completely occupied with his own mocking misery, which he evasively tries to conceal, that he takes no notice of the preaching of the Nazarene. He chooses to let the stem of David and Aaron lie in all its nakedness and blunt misery and to send its stench up to heaven, rather than to notice the new shoot out of Nazareth. After all, this new voice which had risen had raised the old sound over Israel and its dynasty of priests.
Therefore the short scene presenting Christ before Annas is a compendium of a pronounced contrast between the flesh and the spirit which within a few years will divide Israel into a people living by faith together with Abraham and a people dying by reason of its own unbelief and hardening of heart.
This scene represents something else besides. It speaks to us of an Aaron and of a Levi who were unwilling to bow the knee before Melchizedek. Aaron bent the knee before Melchizadek and Levi gave him tithes, but they did so only when they were in the loins of Abraham. Now that they are standing on their own feet, they say to the successor of Melchizedek: give us tithes or perish. Not all of those who were included in the loins of Abraham live by the faith of Abraham. Hence, when God put the chair of judgment in position, and arranges the curtains behind which the session of the judges of His own Son will convene, the shadows deepen, and everything which happens is full of dramatic power and figurative significance. The gleanings of Aaron and the harvest of Melchizedek are placed in the balances of the world. Who dares to weigh them?
Annas dares. Now he is lost. This master in charge of the scales had no knowledge of imponderables; he had lived in vain.