NOTES for Mar 14:53-72

After seizing Jesus, they brought Him to the house of Caiaphas. To put Him to death, they needed the agreeing testimony of at least two people, but this was not easy. At last some were found who distorted Christ's words and said, "We heard Him say, I will destroy this temple made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands" (compare John 2:19).

But even this was not enough. The defendant answered nothing, just as Isaiah had prophesied (Isa. 53:7). The high priest was perplexed: "Do You answer nothing?" (v. 60). Silence in reply. "Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" What would He say? This time the answer rang out firmly and confidently: "I am; and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of heaven."

This was more than enough. By acknowledging Himself as the Messiah, Jesus condemned Himself to death. Blasphemy was a crime worthy of death under Jewish law. The high priest, tearing his garments, as Jews did as a sign of bitter grief or when witnessing sacrilege, said, "What further need do we have of witnesses?" Jesus was judged worthy of death.

Peter was in the courtyard all this time, and one of the servant girls recognized him: "You also were with Jesus of Nazareth," she said. Peter loved the Teacher with all his soul. Moved by this love, he had followed the Teacher to the high priest's house. Peter had even been ready to die for Him (Mark 14:31). But now the one who would become the first of the apostles gave way to fear. Everything was different from what Peter had expected. "I do not know or understand what you are saying," he answered the servant girl. Twice more that day he denied the Teacher. The rooster crowed twice, and he, remembering Christ's prophecy, went out and wept bitterly.

How often we too give way to fear and are ready to deny the Lord, largely because His actions do not fit our ideas about Him.

Darkness thickened, and a succession of false testimonies began. Peter bears false witness by denying Him. Many bear false witness before the Sanhedrin. Yet no one could be found to give reliable testimony proving that He had committed evil deeds.

When slander and distortion fell silent, His testimony about Himself was heard. It was not given at the very beginning of the proceedings, but only when every version had already been voiced and it was time to choose: to accept or reject the truth that came from God.

We can construct theories, think through different scenarios, and surround ourselves with an invented little world, but sooner or later the hour of an unavoidable choice comes. Anyone who hopes to evade it rejects the truth by the very act of evading the choice.

The "trial" of Jesus can be called a trial only in quotation marks. It is entirely clear that no one in the Sanhedrin intended to examine the substance of anything or sort anything out. The evangelist says directly: the Sanhedrin gathered in order to condemn Jesus, to condemn Him at any cost, even if it was necessary to resort to false testimony. Where does such hatred come from? And is it even hatred?

In a certain sense, of course it is: everyone gathered then in Caiaphas's house wanted the Man who stood before them to disappear from the face of the earth. Yet the hatred here was cold and calculating. There was nothing personal in it, only politics and religious-political interests. The temple elite is often presented to oneself and others as some kind of infernal villains. If that were so, we today would feel calmer, because no one would call us infernal villains.

In reality, however, and unfortunately for us, everything here is more frightening: Jesus is killed by the most ordinary people, though highly placed ones, for the most ordinary, entirely earthly, and not at all "otherworldly" interests, the interests of religious politics and politics in general, which are usually called "higher" interests but do not cease under that name to remain quite earthly. He simply got in the way of the temple elite, in the complex game it was playing with Roman power, with the Synagogue, and with the Zealots. In this game Jesus turned out to be the factor outside the system that could spoil everything, and something had to be done with Him. The whole horror of the situation was that Jesus' "judges" were completely indifferent to who stood before them. It really could have been the most ordinary teacher or preacher, and the same fate would have awaited him.

No one in the Sanhedrin intended to kill the Messiah. They only wanted to remove from the road a man who was interfering with high politics, and in the end the One they "removed" was precisely the Messiah. This is understandable: murder is murder, and the murder of any innocent person is the same sin as the murder of the Messiah. In the fallen world the life of an outstanding person is valued differently from the life of an unnoticed one, but in the Kingdom the arithmetic is different. The Messiah dies as the most ordinary person because each person is as precious to God as He is.

Peter did not limit himself to denying that he knew Jesus. He began to swear and call God as witness, and as a result he aggravated his denial with the blasphemy of a false oath. In many Gospel episodes the words spoken by Peter turned out to have been spoken on behalf of all the apostles. This was so, for example, when in the name of all he confessed Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

Should we consider that he also spoke the words of denial not only in his own name? If so, this means that in different situations he expressed not only the faith and wisdom given to the apostles from above, but also their old human weaknesses. Then it turns out that he also accepted the shame for all who faltered, for all who were ashamed of their faith, and not only for his own weakness. But it appears that he also had to realize the fall more deeply than the others. And therefore the repentant words of love for Christ that Peter later spoke were spoken not only for himself. Perhaps not only for the apostles...

In reflecting on today's Gospel reading, let us focus on Peter's denial. Let us try to experience this event with Peter. Let us not hurry to say that we never even thought of denying Christ, because we love Him more than anything in the world. By speaking this way, we show that we do not know what love is. If someone wants to understand the words from the First Epistle of John (1 John 4:8), that God is love, he should first of all think about what Peter felt and experienced in the moments of denial and during the three days that followed. Why is this so?

What is most frightening to us when we love? The most frightening thing is that the beloved person will die. And when he dies, literally as soon as his life goes out, we begin to understand how much we did not do for him that we could have done, but now it is no longer possible to do it, because he is no more. We cannot come to him, embrace him, and beg forgiveness for all the bad that happened and for all the good that did not happen.

What did Peter experience, not yet knowing about the Resurrection? A fierce pain of repentance and the impossibility of asking forgiveness. And if we think about it, his denial is not much better than Judas' betrayal. But Judas cannot endure the feeling of guilt, while Peter endures it. What is the difference? Perhaps by understanding the difference, we will understand what love is.