“When Pilate saw that he could not prevail at all, but rather that a tumult was rising, he took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, ‘I am innocent of the blood of this just Person. You see to it.’ And all the people answered and said, ‘His blood be upon us and on our children’” (Matthew 27:24)
Long before the film The Passion of The Christ was released, a cry went out from many in the Jewish community that Mel Gibson’s portrayal of the last 45 hours of Christ’s life on earth was anti-Semitic and that it posed Jews in a false light. The only concession that Gibson made to the charge was to not translate the above phrase in the English caption of the original language. Indeed the passage is controversial; nevertheless, it does exist in the gospel of St. Matthew. Gibson in response denied being anti-Semitic. “We all crucified Christ,” he insisted. Yet the title of the film includes two articles. The second “The” identifies Jesus as “The” Messiah, which is the charge so offensive to His fellow Jews. They refuse to recognize Jesus as their long-awaited Messiah promised by the Almighty One in sacred scriptures.
The irony is that the people uniquely qualified to receive Him missed that precious moment in history. The Son of Man who gave meaning to history ought to have been identified by them. History seems to be an endless series of cycles, one civilization following another. Israel knew better. They began like other clans in migration, displacing weaker residents of the land they believed was given to them by the Lord God; yet they understood themselves as bearers of a special message from the same God to all humanity. From Abraham leaving his homeland and struggling to survive to his grandson Jacob’s twelve sons coming from Egypt to conquer the people of Palestine and portion out the land for a brief moment in history, they formed a unified nation only to disintegrate when they themselves became victims of conquest by a powerful Assyria, later Babylon, ending as a vassal territory of the Roman Empire. Was it worthwhile? What was the overriding purpose, if indeed it had been the plan of the Almighty?
Seen in the light of secular history, Israel is barely a footnote in the listing of the mighty nations of civilizations such as Egypt, Mesopotamia [Babylon and Persia], Greece, Rome, Ottomans, India, China and Japan. The significant difference is alluded to above—They were the chosen people. Chosen for what? To pave the way for the entry of the Son of God into time, space and history. And to whom much is given, much is expected. They were to be “A light to enlighten the gentiles, and the glory of His people, Israel.” They were blessed with the Law of the Almighty, a lamp before the feet of those who walk in darkness. But with each gift of the Lord Almighty can come a commensurate misuse of that gift.
- A. The covenant expressing a unique relationship between YHWH and Abraham turned into compromises with sinfulness and abandonment of that duty to holiness;
- The blessing of the land as a sign of God’s protection and His Kingship produced an outcry that the people would rather have a king like all other nations of the earth;
- The blessing of the Law of God became instead a burden of nearly a thousand petty observances imposed by self-appointed administrators of Moses’ rule for right living;
- In the “fullness of time” when the Almighty sent His only-begotten Son to liberate His people and give them a new direction and a correction from the pitfalls they found themselves, they rejected Him, preferring a common thief, Barabbas. As the prophet Isaiah predicted would happen, He was despised and rejected because He did not conform to their clamor for a revolutionary leader to lead an uprising against Rome’s domination. No longer were they the people of Shalom peace.
Perhaps even worse than the physical punishment inflicted on Him portrayed in the film was the agony of rejection by the very people He so loved. He came to His own, but they refused Him. He came to lead them and through them us from sin and to change the hearts of human nature, but they would have none of it. He would merge Israel with a new nation—the twelve apostles He selected were to symbolize the twelve sons of Jacob-Israel. Not to renounce His people, but to make them the instrument of salvation to all humanity. St. Paul described this concept near the end of his letter to Romans. Salvation comes from Israel, and gentiles are wild branches grafted into the Hebrew trunk.
Part of the chosen people, the sacred remnant, understood and fulfilled that divine plan. The rest missed the moment in history. They continue to be an ethnic entity with the purpose of having been selected and elected for a special task in history no longer operative, as we witness today in the City of Peace and the Promised Land being anything but tranquil—rather the powder keg of the whole earth.