After the German occupation of Paris in June 1940 a Russian priest, Father Dimitirii Klepinin worked hard and bravely to provide French Jews with forged papers to assist their escape. When he was captured he was interrogated and imprisoned. Eventually he was offered his release on condition that he helped no more Jews. He showed his guards the cross he wore round his neck with the figure of Christ on it and asked But do you know this Jew?’ He was beaten up and deported in the camp where he died the guards yelled the word Jude’ at him.
Anti Semitism began of course long before the Second World War in some sense it began in the New Testament. In Matthew’s gospel Pilate washes his hands and says “I am innocent of this man’s blood see to it yourselves.’ That of course is nonsense the Romans did not allow the Jewish authorities to carry out capital punishment. However, the crowd replies, His blood be on us and on our children.’ Whether or not the crowd actually said that Matthew clearly sees the scene as appropriate to what happened. In doing so he contributed to the idea that the Jews were forever to be blamed for the death of Jesus. In John’s gospel, we find Jesus enemies referred to simply as the Jews though sometimes the term means simply the Jewish leaders. Even so John often presents Jesus as everything the Jews are not.
The by product of this anti Semitism which became even more pronounced in the 2nd century was the exoneration of Pilate to the extent that a story was invented about his having written to the Emperor Tiberius about Jesus. In the letter Pilate claims that Jesus was shown by his miraculous deeds to be divine. Pilate becomes a Christian and according to a medieval legend, though he was eventually beheaded for crucifying Jesus, his protestations of faith are received by heaven and he is forgiven. The Coptic Church came to see Pilate as a martyr and a saint. For many centuries more there was to be no such exoneration for the Jews.
Father Klepinin said to his interrogators Do you not know this Jew.’ Jesus was a Jew and historical scholarship is helping us now to recognise that fact more and more profoundly. Today it is therefore also important that we use our wider historical knowledge to look carefully at the role of Jesus’ fellow Jews in bringing about his death. Why and how did the Jewish authorities decide that it was right to hand Jesus over to the Romans on grounds that would incur the death penalty?
Judaism in Jesus’ day was as full of different factions as is the Church of England today. There were the establishment Jews the Sadducees, based mainly in Jerusalem, responsible for the Temple and providing its high priest. The religious leaders in Jerusalem were in a constant struggle with their Roman overlords to maintain their religious rights while keeping the lid on the more volatile elements in Judaism. Then there was the purist group of the Pharisees seeking to influence the development of Judaism so that everyone could remain faithful to the law. There were the rebels subsequently known as zealots who from time to time committed acts of terrorism. There were the messianic movements, which could be more or less violent depending on the message of their leaders. And there was the break away quasi monastic movement which settled at Qumran near the Dead Sea, and produced the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The Pharisees and Sadducees seem to have had their suspicions of Jesus from early on in his ministry. The opposition to Jesus starts early. Jesus is a puzzle to the authorities. For him the most important commandment was to love God and one’s neighbour. That was hardly controversial it was where he went with it that could be problematic. On the one hand he seems to preach a relaxation of the law of Moses rejecting the idea of uncleanness or ritual impurity which separates us from God. He was happy to mix with and even touch people whom the Pharisees considered unclean and sinful. He was also flexible about the Sabbath law, about tithing, about the ways in which people should honour their parents, and about animal sacrifice in the temple. Mercy and reconciliation are more important than ritual correctness.
On the other hand his teaching could amount to an intensification of the law of Moses. He reminded Jewish men about the sanctity of marriage. He replaced the choice between serving God or the Emperor, which inspired the rebel movements, with the far harder choice between God and mammon, God and money. He equated anger with murder and lust with adultery he was equally concerned with intention as with act. Love of neighbour includes love of strangers, sinners and enemies. And above all he claimed that God was about to change the way of the world for ever. He preached the coming of God’s kingdom of righteousness and peace.
It isn’t surprising that Jesus confused the Jewish authorities. At one moment they could find themselves agreeing with him and the next he had pulled a rug from under their feet. He could not be pinned down or trapped into saying anything that would enable them to fit him into an existing category as either friend or foe. Which really means that they could not tell whether he was the Messiah or not and he wouldn’t tell them. And even if he had straightforwardly claimed to be the Messiah they would not necessarily have wanted to kill him such a claim was not a punishable offence there were other messianic claimants in the first century AD and none of them were put on trial by the high priests so what was it that made three years of intense theological debate culminate in a trial and death sentence for Jesus?
The answer probably lies in Jesus’ two most public actions this week; the entry into Jerusalem on an ass and the incident in the Temple. It is the week in which the Jews remember their escape from slavery in Egypt and their freedom in the promised land. It is therefore the politically most significant week of the year. The God of the Passover is a God who rescues whether it be rescue from slavery in Egypt or from the Jewish exile in Babylon or now from the oppression of the Roman Empire. God will save or more provocatively God must save now which is the meaning of the word the crowds shouted out as Jesus entered Jerusalem Hosanna save now.
Shortly before the Passover feast Pontius Pilate would have arrived from his headquarters on the coast with a troop of anything up to a thousand soldiers to re-enforce the Roman garrison. When Jesus enters Jerusalem he does so in peace to ride rather than walk into Jerusalem on such an occasion indicates a royal status but to ride an ass rather than a war-horse indicates a king of peace. It is an act of messianic significance. The crowds react joyfully. But what is puzzling about this incident is the fact that it didn’t result in Jesus immediate arrest together with his disciples. Any Roman guards watching would have been immediately on the alert for trouble. Perhaps the size of the crowd prevented them. The population of Jerusalem expanded by over 300,000 for the Passover, which had to be attended by all Jewish males. In such a crowd a man on a donkey and a few branch waving supporters would have been swamped. Only rumour would have made the event more visible.
The second more troubling demonstration occurred in the temple we call it the cleansing of the temple what it actually symbolised to those present is rather more complex. It makes more sense if we remember that it was characteristic of the Prophets to illustrate their message with symbolic actions. Prophets like Jeremiah, Hosea or Ezekiel would wear something, break something, buy something to provide a striking visual aid which would drive home their message about what God was about to do to or for his people. Jesus action in the Temple is also a symbolic act. He turns over the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of those who sold pigeons, not because he thinks these things are wrong or dishonest. It’s not as though you were to go on a rampage in a cathedral gift shop or start attacking those who were charging you admission. What Jesus is symbolising is the arrival of a decisive moment and also therefore of a decisive person. And the decisive moment is the time at which God will destroy his Temple and offer new life to Israel, It is a moment for pulling down and raising up. And by announcing such a moment Jesus was clearly calling into question the authority and future of the priest who were in charge of the Temple. The significance may not seem all that clear to us until we remember the evidence of the witnesses at Jesus trial who claim that We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands and in three days I will build another not made with hands.’ Similar words are used by the crowds that taunts Jesus as he hangs on the cross.
So to go back to our original question, Why did the Jewish authorities arrest Jesus and put him on trial?’ They did so because they believed Jesus was setting himself up against the high priest; because Jesus had implied that the Temple would be destroyed; and because he seemed also to be implying that the Jesus movement would replace the Temple. For some time now the religious leaders had regarded Jesus as a false prophet who was leading the people astray in his teaching. Now they were convinced that for the sake of the survival of Judaism as they knew it Jesus had to be stopped. The penalty for being a false prophet was under the Jewish law, death. Under the Romans the Jews were not allowed to carry out the death penalty. So Jesus had to be handed over to the Romans. Because he could easily be presented as a Messiah that was sufficient grounds for an accusation the Romans would take seriously. The Jewish authorities could present Jesus as a rebel and a potential terrorist. The weakness of that accusation is clear from the fact that none of Jesus followers were arrested either then or later. To be associated with a rebel was dangerous that was why the disciples ran away. It was less dangerous to be associated with a false prophet, which is what the Jewish leaders really thought Jesus was his followers didn’t need to be punished they had simply been led astray.
If this is how we are to understand what happened, where does that leave us with the bigger picture with which we began the origins of anti Semitism and the rebuilding of Jewish Christian relations? The Judaism of Jesus day was awash with anxiety and uncertainty; the question the Jews asked themselves was the question they had so often asked before when would God act to deliver them from oppression? On the other hand, how were the rulers of Judaism to safeguard its unity, and prevent its destruction by the Romans as a result of a terrorist too far. Any religious leader even an Anglican archbishop knows the tensions of disunity; anxiety and obstinacy predominate in a period of transition with many voices claiming to know the way forward. The High priest Caiaphas is recorded in John’s gospel as saying that It was necessary for one man to die for the sake of the people.’ If unity is to be preserved someone has to be excluded. Today such exclusions do not involve death, but they can still be seen as necessary for the sake of the people.
We can understand why the Jewish authorities acted as they did and stirred up the people to play their part in the charade played out by Pilate. But to see how particular Jews – and not the whole Jewish race – in all too easily understandable tragic circumstances were responsible for Jesus’ death, does not get us very far in seeing how bridges can now be built between Christianity and Judaism. In the intercessions which follow in the service at 2.00pm we shall pray for God’s ancient people the Jews for greater understanding between us and for the removal of our blindness and bitterness of heart and that God will give us grace to be faithful to his covenant. How is that to happen?
There is much that could be said but one thing is perhaps important and it has to do with understanding the way in which Christianity is a real challenge to Judaism. It has nothing to do with language about Jesus being the Son of God or even the Messiah. It has all to do with the vocation of Judaism. Is Judaism only for the Jews or is it for the world? Is the covenant and the law only for Jews or is it for the world? We have seen that in his teaching Jesus was relaxed about the rules which excluded people food laws, rules of ritual purity, Sabbath laws. He included the tax collectors, the sinners, the prostitutes and even foreigners like the Syro-phoenician women and the centurion’s servant. He emphasised the inclusive laws, the love of neighbour and even of enemy. His story is about a certain kind of faithful community not a race or a religion. The conflict between Jesus and the rulers of the Temple was a conflict about Israel’s identity. It is a conflict about the meaning of righteousness and peace for everyone. Is the justice and the peace of God a privileged possession of one sector of humanity to be protected by politics and ritual? Or should it be accessible and hospitable to all? That is Jesus question to Judaism; but of course it could also be his continuing question to Christianity, in so far as our faith becomes the possession of a particular group of people to be defended at all costs. How are we, Jew and Christian to be an inclusive community living under the pressure of a faithful creator whose will for us is justice and peace? That is the question and it leads us on to consider a group that both Judaism and Christianity have in one way or another often excluded from justice or peace women and yet it is the women who remained faithful to the end and were standing within sight of the cross.