“Who Killed Jesus?”
So the Pharisees and the chief priests met with the Council and said, “What shall we do? Look at all the miracles this man is performing! If we let him go on in this way, everyone will believe in him, and the Roman authorities will take action and destroy our temple and our nation!” One of them, named Caiaphas, who was High Priest that year, said, “What fools you are! Don’t you realize that it is better for you to have one man die for the people, instead of having the whole nation destroyed?” (John 11:47-50TEV)
In 1965, as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Nigeria, I was startled in a local marketplace by a man who accosted me angrily. “We hate you Americans,” he snapped. “You killed Kennedy.” I had experienced enough Nigerian hospitality to be more puzzled than indignant. To hate Americans because an American killed our President seemed a strange conundrum. Kennedy himself was an American; without Americans, President Kennedy would never have existed. Still, non-Americans around the world clearly felt that he had participated so essentially in their identity and aspirations that he belonged to them.
To condemn the Jewish people for the murder of Jesus is just as baffling. Jesus himself was a Jew; without the Chosen People, the Messiah would never have existed in the first place. Still, non-Jews around the world clearly have felt that Jesus participates so essentially in their identity and aspirations that he belongs to them.
Biblical history records that Jesus’ fellow Jews did in fact facilitate his death at Roman hands. Rather than sanitize that fact with politically-correct fabrications, faithful Christians must dare to ask why that happened-not in order to fix the blame on others, but to revitalize our faith at its roots. If our faith is alive, that is, the Bible stories which include Jesus’ rejection and murder are not about some distant, ancient people, but about us. To point a self-righteous Gentile finger is to refuse to identify with the people of the Bible, and therefore, to miss an essential message for us today.
In Jesus’ time, Rome had conquered and brutalized Israel. Centurions-Roman police-menaced on every streetcorner, and even in the Temple. For those who protested, Roman law was swift and deadly; well-traveled roads were lined as telephone poles with crucified dissidents. As resentment simmered, the oppressed Jews continued to observe their religious feasts, including the Passover. Recalling their ancestors enslaved to Egyptian oppressors, the Passover celebrates the God of the Exodus, who intervened dramatically to deliver His Chosen People into freedom, over the dead bodies of the Egyptian first-born and Pharaoh’s drowned charioteers.
When a hopelessly powerful and viciously ruthless enemy stands in your backyards and even in your houses of worship, all this remembering freedom and God’s saving power stirs hostile resentment and incites violent reprisal. In Jesus’ time, Passover would be like celebrating 4th of July with foreign forces occupying America. It was a virtual mandate for revolution, and the air in Jerusalem was electric with anticipation for yet another dramatic, saving act of God.
Into this hair-trigger atmosphere walked a man who promised to set His people free from their fear of death-the very fear, in fact, which oppressors depend upon for their power. This man Jesus proclaimed that death has no power if you trust in the God of the Exodus instead of Caesar. If you’ve lived in the shadow of crosses hanging with your brothers in faith, you know that such radical talk can turn an angry people into a mob ready not only to kill, but to be killed.
Thus, the anguish of Jewish leaders under Roman rule. Certainly, Jesus offended their authority. The prospect of a fellow Jew’s dying at pagan Roman hands was neverthless equally offensive. Yet any moderate voices were silenced by the fact that Rome demanded civil order and was prepared to crush the nation to preserve it. Not only would outward rebellion against Rome would be suicidal, but in fact, any disturbance at all among Jews could upset the perilous balance. Such fear was no demented paranoia; this very cataclysm had befallen Israel before in its history, at the hands of the Babylonians. As a Jewish leader, then, if you wanted your people to survive, you must be prepared to compromise your anger, if not your faith itself.
The dilemma was as clear as it was agonizing. If Jesus refused to shut up or get out of town, people would gather, excitement would grow, sparks would fly-and the people chosen to bear God’s Word to the world could get wiped out by Caesar’s jittery battalions. The choice between sacrificing one Jewish brother or risking the entire nation led to the decision: Jesus must go. Even when Pilate says, “I find no crime in this man,” therefore, the chief priests “were urgent, saying, ‘He stirs up the people, teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee even to this place” (Luke 23:4,5)
I genuinely wish I could say, “If I were a Jewish leader in Jesus’ time, I don’t know what I’d have done.” But I do know what I most likely would have done-and it would not have been to let some carpenter from far-off Nazareth, no matter how impressive his miracles, risk the life of my entire nation.
Today, 2000 years later, in our comfortable democracy occupied only by stoplights and convenience stores, it’s easy to scoff, “Shame on those Jews! Of course, we would never have given Jesus over to be killed!” Jesus himself, however, excoriated the Pharisees for that very same self-righteousness: “You hypocrites!.You claim that if you had lived during the time of your ancestors, you would not have done what they did and killed the prophets” (Matt. 23:29,30 TEV).
The Story says that the people of God chose apparent wordly security over Jesus; do we? Not long after this, the nation was in fact destroyed, along with the Temple. Could this happen to us? Indeed, when the people of God chose life in this world rather than to risk their lives for Jesus, they abandoned themselves to the powers of death. This is the real and terrifying choice facing Christians in every country, in every generation–even our own, today.
If indeed the God of the Bible is our God, then His Story in the Bible is our story. As Christians, therefore, we can never celebrate ourselves as having the whole part in Christ’s life while scorning the Jews as having the whole part in His death. The disciples themselves–not just the Pharisees–denied and disowned Jesus. And it was precisely these cowardly, unfaithful disciples to whom the Risen Lord first returned, and empowered to bear God’s forgiveness to the world: “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.. Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:21-23). Only those who have abandoned Jesus to die can appreciate the awful grace in this act-and the responsibility it bears.
That is, only those who have inflicted the pain of Good Friday can know the humbling grace of Easter and faithfully exercise its overcoming power. To be a Christian, therefore, is to know that we ourselves handed Jesus over to the Romans to be crucified. If we did not, then we are not fit to participate in the work of His Spirit today.
Discussion
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