“And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth, and kill him...”

Only a few minutes from where we worship, nuclear warheads are pointed in our direction. All this could be obliterated in a nuclear moment. We don't think about that much. We can't think about it much. Robert J. Lifton named it "nuclear numbness." If you're exposed to violence or the threat of it for very long, eventually a kind of numbness sets in. I suppose it can be explained as a kind of psychic defense against the unthinkable.

I wonder if a similar mechanism is at work in us as we read the gospel accounts of Holy Week. I know this is not the first time you have heard the story of the arrest, trial and crucifixion of Jesus. When we hear it so many times, we're apt to think of it as an i…