Daily Devotion for Monday 6th April

St Matthew 28: 11 – 15

While they were going, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests everything that had happened. After the priests had assembled with the elders, they devised a plan to give a large sum of money to the soldiers,  telling them, ‘You must say, “His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.” If this comes to the governor’s ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.’  So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story is still told among the Jews to this day.

Reflection

I once heard the broadcaster Penny Faust say that the New Testament was a shockingly antisemitic collection of writings.  I wonder whether this passage was one of the examples she had in mind when she said that.  Matthew has the chief priests organising a cover-up, the soldiers willingly accepting a bribe, and the wider population swallowing the story.

This story might confirm all our prejudices about the chief priests – venal, power-hungry, immune to the good news Jesus brought.  But the gospels also show them wrestling with very modern dilemmas – see for example John 11, where they fear that Jesus’ ministry will spell disaster for the whole Jewish people.  It is too easy to caricature other people as lacking in moral fibre when we are not facing the choices they face.  This summer I read Daniel Finkelstein’s ‘Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad’, which describes the horrific experiences of his family during the Holocaust.  His mother’s family had moved to the Netherlands in the 1930s, as his grandfather, Alfred Wiener, had realised what was happening in his native Germany.  Although Alfred got to the UK before the Netherlands were invaded, the rest of the family was trapped, and Daniel describes the work of the Jewish Council which was appointed by the Nazis, and used to manage the deportations of Jewish people to Westerbork and beyond.  Almost all the Wieners’ friends and neighbours would be exterminated.  After the war, the surviving leaders of the Jewish Council would be criticised as collaborators – though they were later exonerated.

If we are ever tempted to read the Bible as a series of simple choices between good and evil, I pray that we might pause and reflect on the complexities of the text.

Prayer

Lord,
when we are tempted
to assume the worst of others,
give us pause.

When we think
we would have made better choices than others,
check our pride.

When we are minded to obscure the truth
for our own convenience,
prick our conscience.

Help us to champion truth and integrity,
even as we may be tempted to turn a blind eye.

And may we be open to the truth-tellers
who prompt us to accept unwelcome facts.
For you are the way, the truth and the life,
and we seek to follow you.
Amen.