The leadership of the temple in the period of Roman occupation were somewhat akin to the leadership in some parts of the Middle East now. The land was divided. Some was under the control of the Herodean dynasty, which was fairly corrupt and bloody.
The remainder was being ruled as a Roman province. The area tended to get comptent generals, because it was a powder keg. The lcocals tended to rebel. The compensation for the ruler was that he could make himself quite wealthy from the loot he could acquire.
And the leadership? They were now political families and the theologians, particularly the Pharasees, who were popular with the people. Many of whom are still quoted, for their teachings are in the commentaries collated to become the Talmud.
So Jesus heals someone on Saturday.
1After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
2Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. 3In these lay many invalids – blind, lame, and paralyzed. 4, 5One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 6When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” 7The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” 8Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” 9At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.
Now that day was a sabbath. 10So the Jews said to the man who had been cured, “It is the sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.” 11But he answered them, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.’” 12They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take it up and walk’?” 13Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd that was there. 14Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.” 15The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. 16Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the sabbath. 17But Jesus answered them, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” 18For this reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God.
The Pharasees were smart. They knew exactly what Jesus was saying. We should not delude ourselves. Jesus himself stated he was one with God. This is not what Moses or the prophets said. The Pharasees could not accept this. Stephen stated, but a few years later…
30“Now when forty years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in the flame of a burning bush. 31When Moses saw it, he was amazed at the sight; and as he approached to look, there came the voice of the Lord: 32‘I am the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’ Moses began to tremble and did not dare to look. 33Then the Lord said to him, ‘Take off the sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. 34I have surely seen the mistreatment of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their groaning, and I have come down to rescue them. Come now, I will send you to Egypt.’
35‘It was this Moses whom they rejected when they said, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge?’ and whom God now sent as both ruler and liberator through the angel who appeared to him in the bush. 36He led them out, having performed wonders and signs in Egypt, at the Red Sea, and in the wilderness for forty years. 37This is the Moses who said to the Israelites, ‘God will raise up a prophet for you from your own people as he raised me up.’ 38He is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai, and with our ancestors; and he received living oracles to give to us. 39Our ancestors were unwilling to obey him; instead, they pushed him aside, and in their hearts they turned back to Egypt, 40saying to Aaron, ‘Make gods for us who will lead the way for us; as for this Moses who led us out from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him.’ 41At that time they made a calf, offered a sacrifice to the idol, and reveled in the works of their hands. 42But God turned away from them and handed them over to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets: ‘Did you offer to me slain victims and sacrifices forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? 43No; you took along the tent of Moloch, and the star of your god Rephan, the images that you made to worship; so I will remove you beyond Babylon.’
Stephen points out that the ancestors his audience in Jerusalem were so proud of rejected Moses, and continued to take along Moloch — the God to whom children were sacrificed — and the pagan pantheon. Stephen stated that as you rejected Moses (who you claim to teach) you had rejected the one who sent him. The leaders did not need a commentary to get the implications here. They were quite familiar with whom he was quoting. The message was rejected, and in anger Stephen was killed.
If we take Paul seriously — we are the children also of the covenantal relationship Isreal had with G_d. We were grafted on to the tree of faith. We tend to follow leaders who — like the Pharasees — give us rules to live, teachings on how to apply the word of G_d in our day. Like Isreal, we carry idols in our heads.
We tend to turn back to paganism. The consequences of this have not changed: our young are destroyed (for Molech is about controlling the population), Preistesses tend to conflate their theology into some form of incoherent syncreticism,. In the same way, they conflate the emotions of devotion with eroticism. The boundaries that keep us sane and safe are dissolved. And, if this continues unchecked, the nation is destroyed, either by defeat or by the collapse of the population.
For if you are too busy being a preistess, playing politics, seeking the power of leadership, you do not have time to raise your children, or ally with your spouse.