The question keeps getting raised - Who killed Christ? Was it the Romans, was it the Jewish priests using the Romans, who do we blame. Well blame Christ if you really need to find someone to lay blame upon. Blame the 'jews' since he was also jewish. At the end of the day it was Jesus who made the decisions that lead to his own demise. They included encouraging his betrayer, refusing to avoid or evade capture, and refusing to defend himself upon questioning.
He, as wholly man, saw the writing on the wall and chose to face that challenge head on. He chose to face the certainty of pain and anguish so that we could gain from what he had done. So what have we gained - some abstract of "he died for our sins" or some parable about "sacrafice" and "lambs", some fullfillment of prophesy, I think we missed the simplest aspect of what Jesus was. Jesus in life and in his death was a vibrant living example of how to live as a Godly person.
At the point in his life where he made this choice, to follow what he felt was his path, his followers had essentially began to worship him. That would have been a tenuous situation as he was wholly man and attempting to get people back on track worshipping God and doing His will. The argument is of course that since he was BOTH wholly man and God then this worship was okay. In fact though the worshippers would have been performing a form of idolitry using the living animated statue as their idol of choice, a tangeable figure and symbol of God.
So it's here that opportunity and adversity rear their heads. Jesus has an out for this idolatry and has a means of puting people on the path should they listen. He has a means of showing them the true weakness that lies in his human body and at the same time the true strength of spirit available underneath that shell (that everyone can achieve). It would not be without cost to him, great cost, but the reward was priceless - a bright shining continuing eternally debated and dicussed tribute to the Master's work - pure selfless sacrafice.
Did we learn a very real lesson from the sacrafice or did we just attempt to add meanings to it that are unnecessarily vague hoping to make it sound so much more important and high minded? Could there be anything more important than the relinquishing of the self in service of others and standing as an example of what those others can achieve?
People lift Jesus up as the penultimate example of human perfection. They lift him up as the impossible goal unreachable by any mortal. I say that if his ideal was unreachable then there was no purpose to his taking human form. His living, wholly man, body and mind would have only had true meaning if the ideals that he pressed were attainable by we mere mortals.
Thus I think it was Jesus that in a sense killed himself. Not in the typical suicide fashion we think of one killing oneself but more of a soldier covering a grenade with his own body sense. He was the one in control of his life, he chose to follow the path lit by God, and it was he who brought about his own end because of his unfaltering faith in the Father and allowing himself to be God led.
So when we talk about anti-semitism and who killed Jesus and who do we blame, let's think about the choices he made and try not to lay blame with each other, but aspire to the express the forgiveness and love that he would have wanted us to have for one another.
Posted by nhavar at February 26, 2004 03:17 PMAnd while you're at it, don't even blame Jesus. "Blame" God.
Was he, or was he not an actor simply fulfilling his part in a grander scheme? That's what makes the story all the more potent.
A comment I find myself making a lot lately is "It's not my plan." I am beginning to realize my place: not as the director of the entire symphony, but an individual player in the orchestra. My job is to stick to the sheet music in front of me--well, maybe to improvise every once in awhile, when appropriate--but to play my piccolo the absolute best I can at all times.
Look at it that way, and Jesus is more like First Chair than anything else. Hmmm....not a bad position for him.
The interesting thing about this view, imho, is that it removes the event from any political/theoligical/ethnicological/historical realm and places it where it plainly belongs: at the feet of the the Lord, rooted firmly in faith and faith alone.
Posted by: the TRUE Bill at February 26, 2004 11:58 PMMike, I think your right. Well put.
Posted by: thenutfrommustang at February 27, 2004 12:19 AMI understand exactly what you're saying Bill.
I refrain from blaming God for the simple reason of having freedom of choice. That's part and parcel to what Jesus did, he didn't JUST do exactly what God wanted him but he CHOSE to do what God wanted him to do. He could have been Job running to the ends of the earth attempting to escape God's guidance.
My fear with using the "God made me do it" or "I feel God led" is that there's so much abuse of that thought. For example a man feels God led to lead a group of people in song and praise, meanwhile the pastor feels God led that the man is the wrong person for the job. Who's to say which person is right and which is just injecting there personal uninspired feelings into it.
To an extent it's the ultimate in passing the buck. It's saying I can't take responsibility for my actions, God made me do it. Plus there are already so many people out there "blaming" God for whatever miniscule pain or suffering that is placed upon them or that the see. I like to avoid expanding that any further.
Posted by: nhavar at February 27, 2004 08:49 AMJust to clarify, my "blame God" comment was meant to be taken in a semi-sarcastic manner. Tongue in cheek.
I hope you see that our arguments are more or less different sides of the same coin. At its heart, my argument asserts that no one is to "blame". Jesus' destiny was preordained. He, himself, prophesied about it. He WANTED to die. Thus, the most interesting and moving aspect of the story is not who did what to whom, or even what specific series of events led to his crucifixion. Rather, it’s his reaction—how the people and events, and his foreknowledge of what was (and needed) to come affected him—that makes The Passion resonate.
Jesus was destined to die on the cross. If he didn’t, there would, presumably, be no salvation. Crap! We Christians celebrate it every year! The transfiguration (i.e., Easter) is our most holy religious observance. It’s a bit of an oxymoron (or one would have to be an oxy moron) to get one’s undies in a bundle because it happened or how it happened. The possibility that he TRUE-ly died like a man—scared and conflicted, yet making the ultimate leap of faith nonetheless—makes him all the more potent Lord and Savior in my eyes.
Bottom line: all of the arguments about this and that, the finger pointing, yada yada…they make interesting talk. They are, in the end, just so much hot air. The whole business, in my mind at least, is quite simple. What it ISN’T is easy.
By the way...our professional relationship is over, but the harranging certainly is not. Fix your damned web site. My original comment is cut off at the top of this window. What are you using, Silverstream? ;-)
Also, what's up with the broken link on the Gallery?
I know, I know...call in a ticket.
Posted by: the TRUE Bill at February 27, 2004 07:27 PMLaziness and damn mac's. I don't have a mac to test on so I don't know what the output looks like. I thought I had the fix in for it but evidently Safari?Mac IE? doesn't render it right.
Posted by: nhavar at February 27, 2004 08:01 PMOh, sure...blame the poor computer.
Posted by: the TRUE Bill at February 27, 2004 11:26 PM