Friday is the first night of Passover, the joyous celebration of God bringing the Jews from slavery into freedom. Today is also Good (or Holy) Friday, the Christian commemoration of Jesus’ death at the hand of the Roman Empire. For both Jews and Christians, this is a deeply holy day.
Tragically, the Christian Holy Friday has often been a time of holy terror for Jews. Throughout the centuries, the remembrance of Jesus’ suffering and death served as an excuse for Christians to inflict that same suffering and death on Jews. A Jewish friend recalls from his 1950s boyhood that he never went outside on Good Friday to avoid being beaten up by neighborhood boys because “the Jews killed Jesus.” Such beliefs are still prevalent. Recently, an acquaintance asserted, “Of course the Jews killed Jesus. The Bible says so.”
No, it doesn’t, and we Christians need to pay attention to how we tell the Good Friday story, especially in this time of rising anti-Semitism. Affirming our faith and seeking to follow in the ways of Jesus Christ should not lead to the prejudice and bias that fosters discrimination, fear and violence.
So how can we Christians tell the story of Good Friday? We can tell the truth that Jesus’ crucifixion was a Roman execution meant to strike fear and suppress opposition. Thirty years before Jesus’ death, the Roman Legion crucified 3,000 Jews to stop a rebellion in Galilee. When Christians tell Jesus’ story, we need be clear that the religious leaders of Jesus’ time were responsible for the well-being of their people, living under the shadow of a brutal and oppressive regime. Many were justifiably concerned with anyone who put their people in jeopardy by challenging that regime.
We can affirm that Christian scriptures were written over decades to different audiences with varying degrees of familiarity with Judaism and different relationships with the Roman Empire. When we speak of Jesus’ last days, we can tell the truth that the Gospel writers were trying to establish a new religion and therefore sometimes disparaged or vilified those who opposed them.
We can also underscore that the Gospels don’t agree in their portrayal of that opposition. As noted above, some Jewish leaders understandably feared Roman retribution, not just for themselves but for their people. Some opposed Jesus for theological reasons and believed he was undermining the faith that had given their people hope for generations.
Still others opposed Jesus for less virtuous reasons. In Jesus’ time, as in ours, unholy and unhelpful alliances existed among political, economic and religious leaders. Jesus’ advocacy for the poor, the vulnerable and the outcast — which was deeply rooted in his own faith as a Jew — may have been welcomed by some leaders and by the people, but it put him at odds with many in power, especially those at the top.
Moreover, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke often distinguished between the religious establishment and the people. Their Gospels also acknowledged diverse opinions toward Jesus among the leaders themselves. In contrast, three decades later, John’s Gospel was written primarily from a “you’re either for us or against us” perspective.
Hence, John spoke only of “the Jews” with little distinction between leaders and people or recognition of the diversity among the leaders. John also absolved the Romans of almost any responsibility for Jesus’ death. In Mark, Pontius Pilate turns Jesus over for crucifixion because he wishes “to please the crowd.” In Matthew, he literally washes his hands of the situation. But in John, the Roman imperial governor pleads Jesus’ case — an odd perspective, given the Roman Empire’s brutal response to religious resisters.
Because John’s Gospel has been the main text used in many Good Friday traditions, Jesus’ death often has been framed solely as the result of the “old Jewish religion” resisting the “new (and better)” Christian faith. From there, it’s only a small step to the “bad Jew, good Christian” thinking that’s often permeated Christianity from its beginning.
Yet as scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan observe, if the Jews as a whole wanted Jesus dead, why do Mark and Matthew state that the leaders needed to arrest and kill Jesus “by stealth” or that they were worried about a “riot among the people?” Perhaps the real opposition to Jesus that led to his death was rooted less in religion than in the leaders’ fear of losing power or status. Such fear is a human trait, not limited to any particular religious or ethnic group.
As Christians, we need to tell the truth of the Good Friday story. The story of Holy Week is not about the inherent evil of a particular ethnic or religious group. It is simply the all-too-human story of vested power (political and religious) that is threatened and then responds with force and violence.
The Jews didn’t kill Jesus. Fear and hatred did. Neither is the sole domain of any particular religious group or faith tradition. The question isn’t “who” killed Jesus but “what.” We Christians need to remember that this sacred week.
The Rev. Talitha Arnold, senior pastor at United Church of Santa Fe, wrote this for the Interfaith Leadership Alliance.