Sixth Sunday in Lent/Palm
Sunday
Text: St. Matthew 27:1-54
The Rev. Jerry Kistler
St. Stephen’s Reformed
Episcopal Church
“Who Killed Jesus?”
“Who Framed Jesus?” I don’t know if you caught it, but that was the title of a two-hour documentary on the Discovery Channel a couple of weeks ago. Did anybody see it? I didn’t get to see it myself, but I’ve read a little about it online, and I was a bit flabbergasted at the basic premise. Here’s the Discovery Channel’s own synopsis of the show:
“For two-thousand years, blame for the murder of Jesus has rested squarely on the shoulders of Judas Iscariot and the High Priest. This gritty crime thriller exposes all-new suspects and asks whether we have condemned the wrong man.”
See, I didn’t know the Crucifixion was a still an open case. I thought that one was pretty much taken care of along time ago. This would make it the ultimate cold-case file!
But when I heard about these “all-new suspects,” and knowing how much cable TV loves a good conspiracy theory, I started surmising in my head just who it might be that they’d try to pin the crucifixion on. Who do you think? For my money, the best and most obvious theory is: aliens. Aliens framed Jesus Christ. They came down in their little flying saucers and took the form of Caiaphas and Pilate, and so they’re the ones to blame. They’re always good to pin things on when you can’t otherwise explain them.
If it wasn’t aliens, of course the next best option is the Freemasons, because what’s a good conspiracy theory without the Mason being involved somehow. They’re always behind everything. The Masons framed Jesus!
If the Masons don’t work out, there’s always some combination of the CIA, the Mafia, and the Cubans. Well, you know, they’re pretty good at assassinations.
I know, maybe it was those evil Republicans. Aren’t they always to blame for the world’s problems? Or maybe it was those crazy Democrats. I mean, after all, the decision to crucify Jesus did get pushed through the San Hedrin pretty quickly without any minority opinion.
And if none of these options work, then of course there’s always Bigfoot. Bigfoot framed Jesus!
As I said, the show went on for two hours and tried to go through all the possible suspects, including Jesus himself. And, of course, it came to no conclusions. But I’m sure it was all very entertaining. But here was the closing life of the show: “The answer to the question who is responsible for Jesus’ crucifixion is anything but an open and shut case.”
Is that so? I’m not going to trot out any new suspects for you this morning, but I believe we can know with certainty who really did kill Jesus Christ—if we take the record of Scripture seriously, which of course cable TV does not. I think we can close this case today. And yet you still may be surprised by the conclusion. So hold onto your seats. This is the ultimate suspense thriller.
There are the usual suspects. Was it Judas Iscariot with the
thirty pieces of silver in the
In all likelihood, Judas’ motivation for joining Jesus’ band of disciples in the first place was self-serving. The most telling passage is the one in the Gospel of John where the sinful woman came to anoint the feet of Jesus with a large amount of very costly perfume. And out of all the disciples it was Judas who objected and said, “Why as this fragrant oil not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?” But as the text goes on, “This he said, not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief, and had the money box; and he use to take what was put in it” (Jn. 12:4-6).
You see, in all likelihood Judas became a disciple because
he believed that when Jesus came into His kingdom he would gain personally and
materially by being in tight with Jesus. He’d gain a position of power and
prosperity in the Messianic Kingdom as one of Jesus’ chief aids or perhaps the
Secretary of the Treasury. And it seems he was skimming off the top of the alms
fund as a kind of down-payment to himself. Certainly he’d pay it back in the
future. But then when Jesus rebuked him and told him to leave the woman
alone—“She’s done a good work for Me. For the poor you
always have with you, but Me you do not always have”—Judas suddenly realized
(it hit him like a ton of bricks) that he was never going to attain to an
earthly position of wealth and power by being a follower of Jesus—that in fact
he had wasted three years of his life for nothing. That’s why the Scripture
says that immediately following this episode with the woman Judas went to the
chief priests to betray Christ. And when the chief priests promised money, from
that point on he sought the opportunity to “conveniently betray Him,” says Mark
(Mk.
So was Judas responsible for the death of Christ? Absolutely, and, it would seem, for one of the worst possible motivations: for money. But though he was responsible, he was not the most responsible. Because if you want to sell something, you’ve got to have a buyer.
So was it the Jews—the Chief Priests and the San Hedrin, the elders of
Nobody wants to be seen as an anti-Semite, except for a few nuts way out there on the far, far right. But this is exactly what people are accused of when they tell the story of the crucifixion simply the way it’s recorded in the Gospels. That’s what happened to Mel Gibson when he produced his film “The Passion of the Christ.” You know, The New York Daily News called it “the most virulently anti-Semitic movie made since the German propaganda films of World War II,” even though the text of the movie was almost only the words of Scripture itself. Astounding! What’s more astounding is that the Joint Committee of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Inter-religious Affairs of the Untied States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Department of Inter-religious Affairs of the Anti-Defamation League wrote that it was
“one of the most troublesome texts, relative to anti-Semitic potential, that any of us had seen in twenty-five years. It must be emphasized that the main storyline presented Jesus as having been relentless pursued by an evil cabal of Jews, headed by the high priest Caiaphas, who finally black-mailed a weak-kneed Pilate into putting Jesus to death. This is precisely the storyline that fueled centuries of anti-Semitism within Christian societies.”
When I read the Gospels, that’s the storyline I read. Not that it justifies anti-Semitism, or the kind of atrocities that have been inflicted on Jewish people as “Christ-killers.” It wasn’t the Jewish people as a race who were responsible for the death of Christ. But it was the chief-priests who paid the money to Judas. It was also the chief-priests and the Jewish elders who illegally brought Jesus to trial at night and in a private home, and who also brought in false-witnesses to get the verdict they wanted. It was the chief priests and the elders who brought Jesus to Pilate, because it was the only way they could get a capital sentence. And it was the Jewish crowd, at the instigation of the elders, who cried out “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” even when Pilate declared Him innocent.
Where the Jews of Jerusalem responsible for the death of Christ? Let’s ask St. Peter. On the day of Pentecost he stood up before those same people who’d cried out for the death of Christ and proclaimed,
“Men of Israel, hear these words:
Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs
which God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves also know—Him, being
delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by
lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death” (Acts. 2:22-23). And later, “You denied the Holy One and the
Just, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and killed the Prince of
life” (Acts
I guess Peter wasn’t worried about the charge of anti-Semitism.
But what a ridiculous charge it is! Peter was a Jew, and Jesus Himself was a
Jew. It was Jew against Jew. The people who sent Jesus to be crucified were
those who represented the rebellious house of
Well, what about the Romans? Was it the Romans? Was it
Pontius Pilate and his gang of mercenaries that we can pin the murder of Christ
on? Well, of course, they too had a hand in Jesus’ death. It was literally
their hands that dragged Him to the Praetorium, beat Him and scourged Him
beyond recognition, fashioned the crown of thorns and forced them down upon His
head, and then, with those brutally expert hands took hold of the spikes and
the mallet and hammered them through his wrists and ankles, and finally raised
Him up to hang from the cross. It was Pilate who gave the sentence,
even though he knew Jesus was an innocent man. You see, he was under threat
from Tiberius Caesar himself not to let things get out of hand in
And yet, still we have not discovered who is most responsible for crucifixion of Jesus. None of these three—Judas, the Jews, or the Romans—bear the ultimate blame for the Lord’s death. Those most guilty of betraying their Lord and sending Him to the cross are not two-thousand years and seven-thousand miles away; they are much more near at hand. All you have to do to find them is look at the person in the pew this morning. And I’m not talking about the person sitting next to you; I’m talking about the person occupying your own seat. You and I killed Jesus Christ, for by our sins you and I committed cosmic treason against the Lord Most High, for which only the death of His Son could pay the price.
The prophet Isaiah, looking ahead six-hundred years to the death of Christ, lamented that “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).
One of the things that most impressed me about the movie, “The Passion of the Christ,” was something that I learned after I saw it. And that was that the hands you see in the movie taking the hammer and nails and driving them through the wrists of Jesus were the hands of Mel Gibson himself, because, as he later said in an interview, it was he who put Jesus on the cross—not the Jews, not the Romans, but he himself—and you and I along with him.
There’s a hymn that we sing every Good Friday, and we sing it for a very specific purpose. It’s one that I can barely get through each year.
“Ah, holy Jesus, how hast thou offended,
That man to judge thee hath in hate pretended?
By foes derided, by thine own rejected,
O most afflicted.
“Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee?
Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee.
‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee:
I crucified thee.”
You and I killed Jesus. But here’s the great twist in this murder mystery: we still haven’t discovered Who is ultimately responsible for the Lord’s death.
Again it was the prophet Isaiah who cried,
“All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned, every one, to his own way;
And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”
“He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth.
Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him;
He has put Him to grief.” (Isaiah 53:6, 9-10).
Yes, He, the Lord, God the Father Almighty has put Him to
grief. It was the Lord, the Father, who laid on His Son the iniquity of us all.
“[God] made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the
righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor.
All the wrath that we deserved for our rebellion, all the pain and suffering that our sins earned from God, Jesus received in full upon the cross. “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me?” All the alienation and abandonment, all the grief and terror, all the intolerable burden that you feel deep down inside that your sins cry out to God against you, Jesus experienced completely on the cross, so you wouldn’t have to. “It is finished.” “It is complete,” He said. “For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh,” says St. Paul, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh [in the flesh of His own Son], that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us” (Rom. 8:3)
Yes, Judas betrayed His Lord. Yes, the Jews and the Romans conspired together to kill the Prince of Life; Yes, it was our sins that nailed Him to the Tree. But ultimately, it was because of the predetermined counsel and good will of our Father in heaven that Jesus went to the cross to pay our price and to die or death. God the Father killed Jesus Christ His Son. And thanks be to God. +