During Lent, Tree of Life Church has an adult Bible study group that meets at six p.m. on Wednesdays for an hour before the mid-week service. Those who attend must be well motivated, since getting home from work, preparing dinner, and regrouping the family to get out of the house and arrive at church by six is a challenge for most people. Nevertheless, some two dozen people manage to assemble in the small room off the narthex that is usually home to the second graders on Sundays.

This year we are studying the Temple -- its history, its architecture, its place in the Jewish/Roman culture of the first century. Last night we focused on Mark 14, in which Jesus is arrested and accused of blaspheming when he said he would destroy the temple and build it up again. We talked about how he was being deliberately misquoted, how the charges against him were fabricated or exaggerated, in order that those who feared his influence might be rid of him.

Now among our number were three lawyers, although these days it does not take someone with actual court experience to understand the process by which a group can conduct a sham trial where the outcome is already known. But it was one of the lawyers who asked why the enemies of Jesus bothered with an arrest, an indictment, a trial, and a public execution. Couldn't this matter have been taken care of quite neatly at night? Jesus was, after all, not living in a constitutional democracy. Wouldn't it have been easier for government operatives to just plan a raid on some quiet place where Jesus had stopped, and place him and all his followers among the disappeared?

We talked about this for a while, and it came down to this: it would have spoiled the story. Somehow, we concluded, it was part of God's plan to have all the steps of Jesus' death take place in public, so that his resurrection would be seen as a manifestation of his true nature, and not just the return of a lucky fugitive who had escaped to the hills.

There are some who might read this who will think, what's the big deal? Why does a Christian have to spend time thinking about things like this? Isn't it obvious? To some it might seem like a given, but not to me.

Something of the skeptic survives in me. I didn't spend nearly twenty years as an agnostic/atheist for nothing. My faith is heavily leavened with doubt. I abhor the easy answer, the sentimental explanation more suitable for the Catholic schoolgirl I once was, the assumption that if God wants things a certain way they will be that way, no matter the laws of nature. I seek an explanation that speaks to both my heart and my intellect.

Listening last night, I knew that answering the lawyer's question with an invocation of "God's plan" was satisfying both my soul and my skepticism. And I knew that I had taken one more step on my faith journey.