John 11:45-56 | Matthias Stom | Caiaphas said: it is better for one man to die

John 11:45-56   Caiaphas said: it is better for one man to die

Christ Before Caiaphas, Painted by Matthias Stom (1600-1652), Painted in 1633, Oil on canvas © Milwaukee Art Museum Many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary and had seen what Jesus did believed in him, but some of them went to tell the Pharisees what Jesus had done. Then the chief priests and Pharisees called a meeting. ‘Here is this man working all these signs’ they said ‘and what action are we taking? If we let him go on in this way everybody will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy the Holy Place and our nation.’ One of them, Caiaphas, the high priest that year, said, ‘You do not seem to have grasped the situation at all; you fail to see that it is better for one man to die for the people, than for the whole nation to be destroyed.’ He did not speak in his own person, it was as high priest that he made this prophecy that Jesus was to die for the nation – and not for the nation only, but to gather together in unity the scattered children of God. From that day they were determined to kill him. So Jesus no longer went about openly among the Jews, but left the district for a town called Ephraim, in the country bordering on the desert, and stayed there with his disciples. The Jewish Passover drew near, and many of the country people who had gone up to Jerusalem to purify themselves looked out for Jesus, saying to one another as they stood about in the Temple, ‘What do you think? Will he come to the festival or not?’   READ MORE     Reflection on the Painting In our Gospel reading today we hear about Caiaphas, the High Priest, who organised a plot to kill Jesus. He presided over the Sanhedrin trial of Jesus, which followed his arrest in Jerusalem and happened prior to Jesus appearing before Pontius Pilate. Our painting shows Christ in front of Caiaphas at the Sanhedrin trial. The raising of Lazarus was the last straw for the Pharisees. They were extremely concerned about Jesus and his growing influence with the people. They were basically fearful that their own influence and power would diminish if they let Jesus live. Caiaphas voices in our reading what many of them were thinking: Jesus had to die! Caiaphas justifies this course of action by saying that it was ‘better for one man to die rather than have the nation torn apart’. Thus the stage is set for Holy Week. We all know what is about to happen… Matthias Stom was a Dutch Golden Age painter and one of the main masters of Utrecht Caravaggism. These were a group of Baroque artists all heavily influenced by the art of Caravaggio during the first part of the seventeenth century. Tenebrism is on full display in our painting. Tenebrism is the dramatic illumination using profound contrasts of light and dark areas, but where darkness becomes the dominating feature of the image. The single candle is the only source of light. Caiaphas is raising his finger saying ‘How can you say you are God?’ We see a serene Christ, who has accepted his fate, bathed in light and seeming to be an altogether different order of being from the coarse, cynical, false witnesses behind him. Positioning the three-quarter-length figures close to the picture plane with no other distractions in the painting, engages the viewer to be a prime witness to the powerful moment in which Christ refuses to deny that he is the Son of God… by Patrick van der Vorst