Attempts to arrest Jesus were made several times, as far as the Gospels tell us. All unsuccessful for various reasons:
One time Jesus’ detractors bailed on their plot because they feared the crowd who adored him.
Another time Jesus stealthily slipped away through the surrounding crowd.
Another time the only explanation given was that “his hour had not yet come”—which is the writer’s post-resurrection messianic take on the situation.
And yet another time we’re told that they wanted to, but just couldn’t do it—which sounds a lot like when you don’t have your homework to turn in because you simply forgot to do it while playing video games with your friends, but can only say, “I just didn’t do it.”
Imagine being a professional guard, receiving your orders to arrest a certain non-violent individual who himself had no guards, and then having to come back empty-handed with one of these excuses. For all the plotting your bosses worked on, and all the training you went through to get this job, things just went sideways. You’re clearly a rather unprofessional guard after all, and you’re probably now looking at a career change.
Then there’s another curious excuse for why they couldn’t arrest Jesus: “No one ever spoke the way this man does.”
I wonder how much of Jesus’ teaching the guards actually caught. I wonder if his teaching was so compelling that the crowd was just too thick for the guards to reach him. I wonder if, as Jesus spoke, he made eye contact with the guards and they felt themselves paralyzed, like deer in headlights. I wonder if they just listened, like any other nondescript onlooker, and felt a surprising stirring and longing in their souls—as if, while they listened to him say such strange things about his flesh and blood and rivers of living water, they found themselves more hungry and thirsty than they had ever felt before.
