No. Jesus Was not Killed by the "Religious People"

The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the Sabbath.
But Jesus answered them, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” For 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.
John 5:15-18

I have seen many memes during Lent and Holy Week reminding us that Jesus was killed by the “religious people,” and I know that they are well intended.

It is not a bad thing especially at this time of the year for Christians to look critically at themselves. 

But there are two problems with the popular meme.

The first problem is that it is historically wrong. Jesus was not killed by the religious people; he was executed by the Roman Empire. His crime (or at least his supposed crime) was sedition rather than blasphemy. 

The second problem is that although the meme is well intended, what it is really doing is euphemizing the ancient falsehood that “the Jews killed Jesus.” It is another way to reinforce the anti-Semitism that is so often baked into our Holy Week observances.

Perhaps the most insidious thing about the anti-Semitism in the Gospels is that we Christians are simply oblivious to it. The scholar James Carroll, who is himself a devout Christian, points out in his book, “Christ Actually,” the obvious but generally unrecognized anti-Semitism implicit in our naming the two parts of the Bible the “Old” and “New” testaments.

“New” is always better than “Old.” One clearly supersedes the other.

Jesus was a champion of the poor and the marginalized, but we often portray his advocacy for the “least and the lost” as a contrast to the Jewish perspective. We do this in spite of the overwhelming evidence that Jesus stood in direct line with the Hebrew prophets. 

This anti-Semitism is an underlying theme in Holy Week. And that theme is most evident in the Gospel of John.

John frequently uses “the Jews” the same way that Matthew, Mark and Luke use “the Scribes and the Pharisees.” He is talking about the religious authorities who oppose Jesus. The reference to Pharisees as a synonym for self-righteous hypocrites is historically inaccurate and implicitly anti-Semitic.

(We pause briefly to note first that the Scribes and the Pharisees are the same people. Second, the Pharisees were reformers. Third, that Jesus was almost certainly a Pharisee. And Fourth, that the Pharisaic reform movement gave birth to Christianity and rabbinic Judaism.) 

John was writing at a time when the church and the synagogue were separating. Christianity began as a Jewish sect. The synoptic Gospels portray an internal conflict within the synagogue between the Pharisees and the followers of Jesus. John characterizes the conflict as one between the followers of Jesus and “the Jews” who remain loyal to Judaism. Of course, the followers of Jesus were also Jewish. It was a sibling rivalry.

As a potential source of anti-Semitism, the verses from the fifth chapter are far from the worst passage in John’s Gospel, but they are bad enough. John says that “the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him” for breaking the Sabbath and for blasphemy.

I was in college when I first met someone who had been called a “Christ killer,” by the (so called) “Christians” in his Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. I was appalled, but also perplexed. 

The very simple version of atonement theology I grew up with said that Jesus had died for my sins. He had also died for the sins of the world. But the personal part was where we put the emphasis. The historical roles of Pilate, Herod, the Sanhedrin, and the crowds, were all incidental accidents. The only theologically valid answer to the question, “Who killed Jesus?” was, “I did.”

Over the years I have grown into a very different theological understanding. Jesus died because his absolute faithfulness collided with the sinful violence of the empire. He died because he proclaimed the Kingdom of God as a just and non-violent alternative to the Roman Empire and to every empire. The Romans didn’t crucify people for religious crimes.

In many ways, anti-Semitism is our original sin as Christians. It is long past time for confession and repentance. Until we move past that, we cannot really understand who Jesus is.


Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish. 

*This is a revised version of a post first published on 4-16-14.

Holy Week and Anti-Semitism

The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the Sabbath.
But Jesus answered them, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” For 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.
John 5:15-18

I can still see my high school principal standing with his hands on his hips, glaring at me, demanding an explanation for something I had done or not done. “I want a reason,” he shouted, “Not an excuse!”

And I can remember pausing as I thought to myself, “Actually, what you want is an excuse. I’ve got a reason, but you won’t think it’s an excuse.” Wisely, I did not try to correct his mistake. I mumbled something and he threatened dire consequences if it happened again.

There are reasons for the anti-Semitism in the Greek Scriptures, but they are not an excuse.

Perhaps the most insidious thing about the anti-Semitism is that we Christians are simply oblivious to it. The scholar James Carroll, who is himself a devout Christian, points out in his book, “Christ Actually,” the obvious but generally unrecognized anti-Sermitism implicit in our naming the two parts of the Bible the “Old” and “New” testaments.

“New” is always better than “Old.” One clearly supersedes the other.

Jesus was a champion of the poor and the marginalized, but we often portray that as in contrast to the Jewish perspective. Every affirmation of Jesus is matched by a condemnation of the Jewish faith that nurtured him. We do this in spite of the overwhelming evidence that Jesus stood in direct line with the Hebrew prophets.

Anti-Semitism is an underlying theme in Holy Week. And that theme is most evident in the Gospel of John.

John frequently uses “the Jews” the same way that Matthew, Mark and Luke use “the Scribes and the Pharisees.” He is talking about the religious authorities who oppose Jesus. The reference to Pharisees as a synonym for self-righteous hypocrites is historically inaccurate and implicitly anti-Semitic.

(We pause briefly to note first that the Scribes and the Pharisees are the same people. Second, the Pharisees were reformers. Third, that Jesus was almost certainly a Pharisee. And Fourth, that the Pharisaic reform movement gave birth to Christianity and rabbinic Judaism.)

John was writing at a time when the church and the synagogue were separating. Christianity began as a Jewish sect. The synoptic Gospels portray an internal conflict within the synagogue between the Pharisees and the followers of Jesus. John characterizes the conflict as one between the followers of Jesus and “the Jews” who remain loyal to Judaism. Of course, the followers of Jesus were also Jewish. It was a sibling rivalry.

As a potential source of anti-Semitism, the verses from the fifth chapter are far from the worst passage in John’s Gospel, but they are bad enough. John says that “the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him” for breaking the Sabbath and for blasphemy.

I was in college when I first met someone who had been called a “Christ killer,” by the (so called) “Christians” in his Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. I was appalled, but also perplexed.

The very simple version of atonement theology I grew up with said that Jesus had died for my sins. He had also died for the sins of the world. But the personal part was where we put the emphasis. The historical roles of Pilate, Herod, the Sanhedrin, and the crowds, were all incidental accidents. The only theologically valid answer to the question, “Who killed Jesus?” was, “I did.”

Over the years I have grown into a very different theological understanding. Jesus died because his absolute faithfulness collided with the sinful violence of the empire. He died because he proclaimed the Kingdom of God as a just and non-violent alternative to the Roman Empire and to every empire. The Romans didn’t crucify people for religious crimes.

In many ways, anti-Semitism is our original sin as Christians. It is long past time for confession and repentance. Until we move past that, we cannot really understand who Jesus is.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish.

*This is a revised version of a post first published on 4-16-14.

Why Did Jesus Die? (A Short Reflection for Holy Week)

He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?”
Mark 8:34-37

The most common (most frequent and crudest) explanation of Jesus' death on the cross is that God sent him to die for our sins. Someone had to pay for the sins of humanity. Jesus suffered so that I didn't have to. He was perfectly sinless and it was a perfect sacrifice.

That is a caricature of what is called the theory of "substitutionary atonement." I have deliberately used the caricature to make a larger point. In spite of the fact that it's the theology I grew up with, and it's still the most common theological understanding of Good Friday, I am convinced it is wrong. It is wrong biblically, historically, morally, and theologically.

On Good Friday, Jesus was tried, and convicted, and tortured, and killed. It was a triumph for the powers of darkness, and there was nothing good about that Friday. Or so it seemed. 

But in his death he exposed the moral bankruptcy of the Empire and the shallow religiosity of the chief priests and elders who collaborated with the oppressors. Good Friday is the story of a collision between the goodness of God in Jesus, and the evil of a violent empire.

Before we go any further, we need to clear up two major misunderstandings:

• The Jews did not kill Jesus; the Romans did.
• He was not executed for blasphemy; he was executed for treason.

The Jews did not kill Jesus. We know this as an absolute fact because they did not have the authority to carry out capital punishment. We also know this because if he had been sentenced to death by a Jewish court, he would have been stoned to death. The Romans were the only ones with the authority to kill him, and they did.

We know that the Romans executed Jesus for sedition because they crucified him. Crucifixion was a death reserved for those who committed treason against the empire. It was a form of state terrorism designed to torture its victims and terrify the populace. The Romans did it often so that the people were kept constantly aware of the consequences of defying the empire.

So why did Jesus die? And what does it mean?

I don’t believe that God sent Jesus to die. I don’t believe that it was God’s plan.

That’s partly because I think that speaking of God’s plan is too anthropomorphic. It imagines God as some sort of supernatural version of a human being. But it’s also morally suspect. It suggests that somehow God was sending Jesus on a suicide mission.

In the passage from Mark’s Gospel, as in Matthew and Luke, Jesus says that those who want to follow him need to “deny themselves and take up their cross.” He is not carrying the cross in their place. He is not inviting them to watch him die. He is inviting them to do what he is doing. And remarkably, they did.

Luckily for us, being a follower of Jesus is not as dangerous for us as it was for those first disciples. We are not living with Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Nazi Germany. We are not living in a part of the world where Christians are persecuted. 

If we take up the cross at all, we do it symbolically. And safely. That is mostly because we live in the United States of America, but it is at least partly because we are not as faithful in proclaiming the Gospel as an alternative vision of how the world should be. 

Jesus died because he was completely faithful to God and his faithfulness collided with the sinfulness of humanity in the form of the Roman Empire. 

He died because he proclaimed the Kingdom of God as a radically different vision of how the world could be. Against the normalcy of violence, he proclaimed nonviolence. Against the normalcy of self-interest, he proclaimed self-sacrifice. 

The commandment to love our enemies is about as subversive of what passes for normal as anything could possibly be. And two thousand years later, even those of us who claim to be his followers have a very hard time even imagining what that path looks like, let alone following it.

When he invited his followers to take up the cross, he invited them to follow the path of self-sacrificial love. And he promised that the way of self-sacrifice is also the way that leads to life.