Palm Sunday and the Ironic Prophecy of the High Priest

When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, some Jews immediately saw divinity, while others took the news of this powerful miracle to their religious leaders (John 11:45-46). Those religious leaders were prideful, faithless and ungodly, so the news struck them with a terrible fear of loss. First, they feared that such overt miracles would cause the people to follow Jesus instead of them. Since these religious leaders were vassals of the Roman government, they also feared that Rome would see this obvious loss of religious control and use it to take away their formal authority as Roman political agents. Worse yet, they feared that once the Romans took away their authority, they would also transform their Jewish world into a Roman one, and thereby eliminate their people’s status as a cohesive national Jewish culture (John 11:47-48). Caiphas was the chief priest that year. He immediately rebuked them for their fears.  He famously told his peers that it was better for one man to die for the people than that they should lose their nation (John 11:50). He didn’t just make that statement up out of thin air. Ironically, he got it from a prophecy he had received as the high priest which said that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, and not only for the Jewish nation but also for the children of God scattered abroad. From that point on, they made plans to kill Jesus (John 11:51-53). 

Caiaphas was correct in his prophecy, but grossly wrong in his understanding of it. He thought removal of Jesus would save Jewish culture and his peer’s privileged place in it, not that the death of Jesus would be a willing sacrifice that would cleanse the Jewish people from their sins. He did not see Jesus as divine, so had no clue that this loving sacrifice would unite the people who actually love God under the banner of God’s sacrificial love. In fact, Caiaphas and his fellow leaders were so blinded by their arrogant and selfish fears that they set out to kill the resurrected Lazarus as well, since so many people were drawn to Jesus because he had raised him from the dead (John 12:9-11). Their fears were not totally unfounded. When Jesus entered the city on Palm Sunday on a donkey, his popularity was overwhelmingly evident as the people welcomed him as a king by waving palm fronds and shouting Hosanna! Due to Jesus’s popularity, the religious leaders knew that killing Lazarus would only make matters worse. They realized that they had already lost their power (John 12:19). But this realization wasn’t entirely true. While some in the crowd were almost certainly true believers who had a hint of who he really was – the Messianic King and the son of God, others saw that same truth but loved the glory of men more than the glory that comes from God and remained in the grips of the power of the religious leaders (John 12:42-43). Still, there were others who only saw him as a political king and miracle worker. Their adoration was for his practical utility. A few days later many would no longer be shouting Hosanna, but instead would be shouting to crucify him (Matthew 27:20-23).

The prophecy of Caiaphas proved true, just not in the way he thought it would. The nation he knew disappeared for a time, but those who received Christ – including those in the Gentile world – became the children of God (John 1:11-13).