In 1936, near the beginning of the Spanish Civil War one horrible center of fighting was the Alcázar fortress near Toledo. In the middle of horrific fighting, however, every day the firing stopped twice in order to allow a blind beggar to tap his way on the street between the firing lines. We can imagine how welcome those few minutes were to the men on both sides. They probably hoped that the blind man walked slower to give them a few more seconds of peace. Then the reprieve ended and the slaughter again engulfed the two armies that were struggling to kill each other.[1]

We meet Jesus in a similar critical moment. He’s in the middle of a few hours of relief between his antagonists’ struggling to arrest him and their final success —apprehending him at night and dragging him to trial and de…