MATTHEW: But do you know this Jew?
We are looking at the way in which the different gospel writers tell the story of the crucifixion. We are trying to see how each one reveals what was going on in what happened, what was the meaning and significance of this event. Each one of them has a different approach though at the same time they have much in common. Mark, as we have seen, is the most spare and tragic of the narratives, a gospel written for those looking into the dark. We also saw how he conveys a sense that the story has been written by God with Jesus’ consent. What happened was no accident and to understand it you must understand something of the way God works. And to understand that you cannot look at this story in isolation . As with all historical events what happens is given a meaning on the basis of what we already know. Interpretation is always based on the ways in which we are used to making sense of the world. No event carries its own meaning into the world. Things strike us as significant because they engage with the depths of what we already know even if those depths are not at the forefront of our consciousness. The key moments in our lives find their significance because of the memories they stir up, memories of things we have read, moments in our childhood, significant relationships, places we have seen or even dreams – all contribute to the meaning which we give to what is happening to us now. New events find their meaning by fitting into what we already know.
So in the same way the gospel writers see the crucifixion through memories of Old Testament stories and poems, memories of other events in the life of Jesus, memories of significant moments in the life of their own Christian community, as well as through the influence of what is happening to them now in their conflict with the synagogue across the street or with the local Roman authorities. All these things influence the way they tell the story of the last week of Jesus life for that week has become crucial to the survival of the Christian community in the present.
When we come to Matthew’s account of the crucifixion we see the influence of ancient scriptures at work much more plainly than in Mark. A major emphasis in Matthew’s gospel is on the fulfilment of ‘what was written’. He makes more explicit the fact that aspects of Jesus life and ministry reminded his followers of texts from the Hebrew scriptures which they knew by heart much more extensively than we do now. So Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday reminds Matthew of a passage from the prophet Zechariah; and Judas 30 pieces of silver remind him of a passage in Jeremiah. We don’t need to worry about whether the gospel writers believed that the prophets foresaw and foretold the exact details of the life of Jesus. What was more to the point was the fact that these resonances between Jesus’ life and death and the ancient writings helped to substantiate a belief that contrary to all appearances Jesus was the Messiah, the agent of God. Because the idea that the Messiah might suffer an ignominious death seemed so outrageous to his contemporaries ,the passages about previous servants of God who had experienced opposition and suffering became immensely important (the suffering servant in Isaiah 53 is obviously one of the most important). These passages enabled Jesus’ followers to identify a stream of thought in the prophets which was perhaps neglected in their own day. Jesus contemporaries knew of course about past and present persecution and martyrdom by foreigners (cf Macabees ) but that the Messiah should be killed by his own people was not something they could envisage. It is notoriously difficult to describe the kind and degree of messianic expectation held by Jesus’ contemporaries, but for them the main task of the Messiah was the liberation of Israel. The image of a suffering Messiah was revolutionary, even though the hints were there in the Hebrew scriptures for those who searched for them.
Those early Christians could have tried to load all the blame on the Romans; Jesus did after all die a Roman death, he was not put to death by his own people; stoning was the proper penalty for blasphemy, though it isn’t clear historically whether the Jews were allowed at that time to carry out capital punishment themselves. (The stoning of Stephen might have been an example of mob violence.) Nevertheless, Jesus could have been presented as a Jewish martyr killed by Rome. But clearly it was all too well known that the Jewish leaders did not approve of Jesus. They had seen him as a trouble maker who stirred up a dangerous kind of enthusiasm amongst the people which would be likely to alarm the Romans, however unlike a political leader Jesus seemed to be. One of the more obscure themes of the Gospel concerns Jesus’ relationship with the politics of his day, but however we interpret it, he was clearly not a violent revolutionary.
All that, however, was in the past. When Matthew came to write his gospel, relations between Christians and Jews had gone from bad to worse. It might give us considerable pause for thought to realise that if Matthew’s gospel had been the only one to survive, Christianity would now be much more like Judaism than it is. We would probably be observing the kosher laws, and we would take tithing much more seriously. Jesus in Matthew’s account comes to fulfil the law not to abolish it. And that perhaps is why Matthew’s gospel can seem so anti-semitic, it represents a bitter struggle within Judaism. As his gospel is being written he is struggling to convince the world of the synagogue that the Jewish leaders of the past were profoundly mistaken. He has to convince his Jewish neighbours that Jesus was the Messiah, that it is possible to be a Christian and a good Jew and that the gentile members of his community have become as it were Christian Jews. Judaism, in Matthew’s day, was itself in turmoil for the Temple, the heart of Judaism, has just been destroyed by the Romans. The faithful were looking for a way of being Jewish in a world without temple, without sacrifice, without a central leadership in Jerusalem – Christianity according to Matthew could provide an answer to this tragedy, especially as the Christians saw the destruction of Jerusalem as a punishment for the handing over of Jesus to the Romans. When in Matthew’s gospel, alone, the crowds cry out to Pilate ‘His blood be on us and on our children,’ the Christians of Matthew’s church saw that as having been fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.
Matthew lost his struggle with the synagogue – Judaism and Christianity were not reconciled and so the terrible cry of the crowd in Matthew’s gospel led to endless persecution of the Jews by Christians down the centuries. Which means that on this day of all days of the year we have to look again at our own relationship with Judaism. In the year 2000 Pope John Paul II presided at a millennial liturgy of repentance for Christian teaching against Jews and Judaism over the centuries and for the failures of the church during the holocaust. The record of the Church of England is different but the English have over the centuries been just as guilty of anti-Semitism. So it can still happen that a child will refuse to play with one of her Jewish classmates in the play ground because she doesn’t pray to Jesus – and when the story of the last week of Jesus life is read out in the primary school class room how does the Jewish child feel – ‘Will all the other children look at me and blame me? ‘ We may try to convince such a class of children that it was only the leaders of the Jews in Jerusalem in the early 30ies AD who handed Jesus over to the Romans; it was only their selected rabble rousers who called for Jesus to be crucified. Nevertheless, however much we may try to limit Jewish responsibility in this way, a whole history of violent anti-Semitism is unlikely to be healed by such an attempt at academic damage limitation. The tensions evoked by the gospel story must be healed by the gospel story.
And we might begin to do that first by looking at the leader of the Jews in Jesus day. Little is known about Caiaphas other than that he served as high priest for 17 years – longer than any other holder of that office under Roman Rule. He was therefore successful, if success was to be measured by keeping Jews and Romans from killing each other. He was successful if success was to be measured by maintaining the round of religious Festivals and the whole of Temple worship without disturbance. He was successful as a believer in the idea that truth can be possessed once and for all by a religious institution. He was a competent politician in extremely difficult circumstances between AD 18 and AD 35. In that period isolated protests were put down by the Romans with sporadic violence, and the embers of potential rebellion smouldered on. It was the job of Caiphas to see that they were not to be fanned into flames. Whether or not he actually said that one man should die lest the whole nation perish, it is a phrase that can represent the policy of all political leadership in such circumstances. The Passover festival saw the population of Jerusalem vastly enlarged with pilgrims. It was the worst time of the year for a spark to ignite disaster – a spark like Jesus. We might well say that Caiphas did the wrong thing for the right reason, because that’s how the world works. Caiaphas represents not a particularly Jewish attitude but the way the world works, the dilemma of power; he represents the failure of those who are so cast as the guardians of tradition that they cannot question their tradition or hold it up to criticism. Did Caiaphas feel threatened by Jesus and if so why? Could he have found another solution, or would that have meant finding another victim? Do we live in the kind of world in which the blood of Jesus could never not have been spilled?
And yet blood was an image of profound significance in Judaism. Though it may seem totally alien to us now, blood was being spilled in the Temple that week in vast quantities – the blood of the lambs for the Passover. The doors of Jewish homes in Egypt had been marked with the sign of blood that the angel of death might pass over them. Blood was a symbol of life and the spilling of blood symbolised the pulling down of the barriers between God and his people which had been set up by sin and moral failure. In ways which we can scarcely imagine such sacrifices enabled people to feel closer to God and reconciled to God. And it was this imagery which the early Christians applied also to the blood of Jesus. Once his sacrifice had been made no more sacrificial blood need be spilled. On the cross Jesus provided the ultimate sacrifice; through Jesus reconciliation with God was now possible without any more sacrifices in the Temple. The rabble before Pilate are presented as shouting ‘His blood be on us and on our children’ – meaning I suppose ‘We take responsibility for the spilling of this blood’. But the followers of Christ might also have said the same thing – ‘His blood be on us and on our children’ – in other words ‘May the blood of Christ be metaphorically sprinkled on us for the cleansing of our guilt and sin, just it used to be literally sprinkled in the Temple’. And that makes what the crowd says deeply ironic, though the irony may not have been intended by Matthew. If the sacrificial effect of the blood of Jesus is available to all, then in eternity it is ultimately available for them too, forgiveness is ultimately available for them too. In the same way we might see the cross as prophetic. Jesus dies as a warning to his people, what happens to him now individually will happen to them both in the destruction of the temple and in the pogroms and holocausts throughout history. Jesus is at one level the symbol of the tragedy of the Jewish people and all persecuted peoples.
The division that arose between Jews and Christians was tragic – both Paul and Matthew wished it could be otherwise because they experienced that division in themselves. Each Good Friday the church should dedicate itself again to a humble re-engagement with Judaism to see what may be done to heal those centuries of division.
During the German occupation of Paris a Russian priest called Father Dimitrii provided French Jews with forged papers to assist their escape. When he was captured and interrogated, he was offered his freedom on condition he helped no more Jews. He held out the crucifix which hung round his neck and asked, ‘But do you know this Jew?’ He was beaten and sent to the camps where he was often addressed as ‘Jude’ – Jew. Fr Dimitrii had recognised that as the Jews of Paris were being rounded up for deportation – this Jew, the crucified Christ was amongst them still. As he was sent off to die with them ‘he earned the right to be counted with the crucified and also the Jewish kindred of the crucified’.*
* cf Rowan Williams, ‘Christ on Trial’ p.42