What’s Your Job Description – John 11:47–48

“So the chief priests and the Pharisees called together the Sanhedrin and said, “What are we doing? For this man is performing many signs! If we allow him to go on in this way, everyone will believe him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” 

Have you ever considered that the religious leaders of Israel were right?  

• They lived upon a powder-keg of insurrection and rebellion.  
• They lived in a conquered nation, ruled by the super-power of the age.  
• They lived with the task of controlling a population, in order to preserve it.

Consider what happened when they failed.  The religious leaders of Israel failed to suppress the rebellions leading into 70 AD.  Their fears, expressed concerning Jesus, came true when the Roman General and future Emperor, Titus, destroyed Jerusalem and the temple, effectively taking away their place and nation.

Israel was never the same. The concerns of the Pharisees and Sadducees were valid.

They could not have been more right while being more wrong.  Their job was never the practical machinations of political power.  Their job was to shepherd God’s chosen people in truth and love; the 1st and 2nd greatest commandments.  

They utterly failed at their true job description with the gravest of consequences.

Let’s not make the same mistake.  It is easy to get led astray by valid realities and misplaced responsibilities.  Those realities never overcome the truth of scripture and the power of God.

https://ref.ly/Jn11.47-48 via the Logos Bible Android app.

QUOTE (Fra Angelico) – Mar. 18

“I salute you. I am your friend, and my love for you goes deep.
There is nothing I can give you which you have not already, but there is much, very much, which though I cannot give it, you can take.
No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today.
Take heaven.
No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this precious little instant.
Take peace.
The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach is joy. There is radiance and courage in the darkness could we but see; and to see, we have only to look.
Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by their coverings, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love, and wisdom, and power. Welcome it, greet it, and you touch the angel’s hand that brings it.
Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, a duty, believe me, that angel’s hand is there, the gift is there, and the wonder of an overshadowing Presence.
Our joys, too, be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.
Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty beneath its covering, that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven.
Courage, then, to claim it, that is all! But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are pilgrims wending through unknown country our way home.
And so, at this Christmas time, I greet you, not quite as the world sends greeting, but with profound esteem now and forever.
The day breaks and the shadows flee away.”
~Fra Angelico

In honor of Fra Angelico, a friar and early Italian Renaissance painter, who died on this day in 1455.

Fra Angelico 070 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Fra Angelico (Photo credit: isterik32)

Resources:

Today in Christian History – March 18
Christmas Greeting – Fra Angelico

Related articles

• He Painted Beatitude | Beato Fra Angelico
• Fra Angelico, The Annunciation, c.1440-41, Fresco, Monastery of San Marco, cell 3.