Palm Sunday and Holy Week are difficult times in my interfaith household. My Jewish spouse is always irritated with the abundance of Jesus images that start showing up on TV. And she is particularly angry at the way the Evangelists Matthew and John portray "the Jews" in their telling of the Passion of the Christ.
I don't blame her. Christians have held these two particular versions near and dear to their hearts for centuries. And the further we have moved away from that 90-110 CE time frame in which these Gospels were originally told and heard... the more twisted the interpretations have become, and to terrible consequences. In the Middle Ages, Jews would go into hiding during Holy Week for fear of the Christians!
Sadly, with the rise of MAGA and DeSantis Republicans in the United States, we have also seen a sharp increase in hate crimes against Jews. Artists such as Kanye West have repeated lies about Jews and ginned up the hatred even more. There have been shootings at synagogues, and Jewish students at the local college campus complain that their fellow students follow them around calling them "Christ killers."
But "they will know we are Christians by our love," right?!
Text: Matt 26:14-27:66
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It is one of the most curious… and confounding
things… that the church has us start this Sunday with the triumphant entry of
Jesus into Jerusalem and within 20 minutes… we’re already spitting on Jesus and
nailing him to a cross. But to the cross we’ve come… using Matthew’s telling of
the story… a story he embellishes from Mark’s version of the passion.
And it’s important for us to remember that this
is Matthew’s telling of the story.
Each of our evangelists has their own way of
recounting the final days of Jesus.
Matthew is writing for a community living 20-25
years after Rome destroyed the Jerusalem Temple… thus crushing many hopes and
dreams of the Sadducees…whose whole worldview was entrenched in the worship in
the Temple.
Matthew’s community while Jewish.. is largely
made up of now of Gentile, non-Jewish converts to follow “the Way” of Jesus.
In other words… Matthew’s passion Gospel is
told to a people engaged in what could best be called a bitter family feud that
was happening within Judaism at that time so many centuries ago.
Matthew blamed those Jews who didn’t follow
“the Way” for the destruction of the Temple.
Sadly, this “blame the Jews for Jesus’ death”
rhetoric became a standard in Christian teaching.
Lines such as “his blood be on us and our
children” have been used to justify the type of anti-Semitism that led to the
Holocaust in Germany… and is responsible for the hatred of Jews we are seeing
on the rise in our country today.
And I have said this before: Jesus is Jewish.
Peter is Jewish. Judas is Jewish. All the characters in this Gospel are
Jews…with exception of the soldiers and Pilate.
While Matthew paints a more sympathetic picture
of Pilate… historians such as Josephus…have left us the true record of this
brutal Roman Governor who was so awful that even the Roman Government finally had
to get rid of him.
But Matthew didn’t want to alienate the
Gentiles of his group in 90 CE. And he was angry that more Jews had not come to
follow “the Way.” So he pushed a narrative that makes the Jewish leaders the really
bad guys… while he gave Pilate more of a pass.
But let’s think about this:
Pilate offers to the crowd the opportunity to
release one prisoner: Jesus Barabbas…an insurrectionist…or Jesus the
Messiah…whose crime was to point the way toward love.
No matter the choice…one of these Jesus’ is
going to die… and Pilate knows this.
So does Pilate’s wife… the one who dreams about
Jesus. We don’t know what she dreamt. Perhaps she found herself agitated with
the knowledge that Jesus is innocent of the false trumped up charges that the
fearful have brought against him.
Pilate doesn’t listen to his wife.
He doesn’t stop this ball from rolling.
His question to the crowd makes him complicit
in their agitation.
And then he washes his hands.
Interestingly…washing the hands this way was a Jewish
custom not a Roman one.
Only Matthew includes that detail.
Pilate’s hand washing as a means of
purification from the crime of sending an innocent man to his death is just as
much a mockery of Judaism as the Roman soldiers jeering and spitting at Jesus.
Even in Matthew’s attempt to give cover to
Pilate’s actions… there is no doubt that the one with the power in this moment
is Pilate… the representative of Rome.
He was the one in the position to stop the
madness… a madness which had its roots in fear and jealousy.
But Pilate… like so many others in the story…
chose death instead of life.
This pattern has been repeated over and over to
this day.
When we’re challenged to change… to turn
towards the light… and embrace a culture of life… the tendency of so many is to
turn away…and retreat into the dark.
When it’s time to take a stand in the face of a
powerful opponent… instead of courage…our fears overcome us and become more
like Peter and deny, deny, deny…to our regret.
As we move into this week… we’re being called
to follow Jesus on a journey where the challenge to create a culture based on
life, liberty and love meets the resistance of the status quo of death,
division, and fear.
We’re to look at our own lives… our own
society… and take it all to the cross with Jesus.
For it is at the cross where God redeems us and
restores us.
It is through Jesus that we seek deliverance
out of a pattern of death into life.
This is the time for our recommitment and
renewal.
And so we pray:
God of steadfast love, light of the blind, and
liberator of the oppressed, we see your holy purpose in the tender compassion
of Jesus who calls us into new living and friendship with you. May we who take
shelter in the shadow of your wings be filled with the grace of his tender
caring; may we who stumble in selfish darkness see your glory in the light of
his self-giving; we ask this through him whose suffering is victorious, Jesus
Christ our Savior. Amen.
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