We have just finished reading about the several times that Jesus tried to explain His divinity, and His relationship to the Father, to the Pharisees and others in the Temple area. As we have seen, that discussion by Jesus provoked the objection that He was calling Himself God, that He was committing blasphemy. People picked up stones to kill Him for that offense. But in today's Gospel (Jn 11: 45-56) we read of what might be the real reason why the Jewish leaders wanted Jesus dead-- they were worried that all the signs Jesus was working would persuade people to follow Him, which would provoke the Romans to take even stricter control of the Jewish land, eliminating what little independence they still retained. Caiaphas, the high priest, articluates the position clearly: "...it is better for you that one man should die instead of the people, so that the whole nation will not perish." In other words, Caiaphas is saying that they should kill Jesus not because He deserved to die but because by killing Jesus they would prevent a great harm from coming to the Jewish people. It is the classic "the ends justify the means" argument. "Sure," Caiaphas would have said if you asked him, "it is wrong to kill Jesus. He doesn't deserve to die. He has certainly done great things. But, sadly, Jesus has to die so that things don't get worse with the Romans and we lose what little of the nation we have left." With 2000 years of hindsight and conditioning, we would probably all say that Caiaphas is wrong in his thinking, that his justification for killing Jesus doesn't pass muster. Maybe we would explain our thinking by doing some sort of balancing analysis-- how grevious was the wrong done in killing Jesus versus how good was the notion of saving the remaining independence of the Jewish nation. Or maybe we would argue-- as the Church does-- that the end never justifies the means. In other words, it doesn't matter how noble the cause it, we can't do something inherently immoral to achieve it. But before we get too morally high and mighty, we might challenge ourselves a bit on whether or not we would really honor that teaching. In reality, I think we're all pretty-much like Caiaphas, just in a different context. Would you lie (an inherently immoral act) to save the lives of your wife and kids? We discussed that question in diaconate formation class some months ago, and a lot of folks said they would. Would it have been morally ok to kill Hitler in 1944, with the thought that you were going to end WWII a year earlier than it did? What if you knew Osama bin Laden was getting ready to order the 9/11 attacks, and you thought you could prevent those attacks if you killed him, would it be moral to do so? I think lots of people would say "yes" to both questions. But what if Hitler was just a mouthpiece, and the powers behind him were going to continue the war anyway? What if killing bin Laden simply meant that his number two took over and ordered the attacks anyway? At the end of the day some of the Church's most difficult teachings come down to this notion of the end not justifying the means. The prohibitions on artificial birth control and euthanasia leap to mind in that regard, but there are lots of others. In fact, any time we decide that something is always immoral-- like lying-- we've set up a line in the sand that we can't ever cross, regardless of the justification. Tough stuff. So we might spend a bit of time with the argument Caiaphas makes and see if there are places in our lives where we do the same thing. I'll bet you'll find it is harder than you might think to be different from Caiaphas.