Passiontime⤒🔗

When Christians remember the death of their Saviour and the time of Jesus’ suffering, unbelieving Jews remember the time of suffering of their own people. Christians and Jews then also look at each other. Was not the suffering of Christ the fault of the Jews and do they not deserve, according to their own cry, that their blood come over them and their children? Unbelieving Jews in turn blame the Christians for legitimizing the horrible suffering of an entire people and actually even calling the Jews responsible for the guilt of Christ’s death. It is understandable that a lot of passion — in the sense of emotion — is aroused. It is about the death of none other than the Son of God for Christians. And it’s about the murder of no less than millions of people for non-Christian Jews. Sometimes this area of ​​tension gives rise to incidents. These then attract a lot of attention. The Goeree case receives disproportionate attention.

In the 1980s a court ruled against a husband and wife (the Goerees) for antisemitic discrimination when they claimed that the Jews had called the Holocaust upon themselves by not acknowledging Jesus as the Messiah.

These and similar matters, however, only have meaning when they force Christians and non-Christian Jews to become consciously aware of what they commemorate and believe.

Now it is certainly very one-sided to want to retrace anti-Semitism as a phenomenon to Christianity and to the notion that Jews are responsible for Christ’s death. Anyone who selects a few incidental facts from history can create such an impression among ignorant people. However, when we look more carefully, then it soon appears that this is a fallacy, a wrong perception. Many pages could be written about Christians who stood up for the non-Christian Jews with brotherly love and without reproach. We may remember one of the last pages from the Second World War. There is also much to tell about the persecution of the Jews by people who were not Christians at all, from the Sassanids in the first centuries to the atheist communists in Russia. And Hitler’s motivation was certainly not based on a desire to repay them for Christ’s death. It would be very valuable if Christians and non-Christian Jews would cease to harass one another with one-sided historical representations.

The question remains even then: how do Christians see the suffering of the Jews throughout the many periods of history? This question is urgent, even though with the same measure it can be asked how we view the many periods in which the non-Christian Jews prospered and flourished. Not only are there Jews in Russia who cannot leave the country, but there are also Jews in America who own almost the entire country.

It is useful in advance to take the proportions into account. Only then can a question be quietly entertained, without the danger of overreaction. And a question certainly remains. May the negative experiences that befell the Jewish people be linked to Christ’s death? Do they constitute the acceptance of the request that Jesus’ blood should come “on us and our children” (Matthew 27:25)? It is not first of all important what people wanted to do or claim with this text, but instead we need to focus on what this text itself says and how it functions in the entire scope of the apostolic writings.

Guilt and Grace←⤒🔗

There is then a whole series of arguments for the proposition that the pronouncement of the Jews in Jerusalem, mentioned in Matthew 27:25, cannot be used to illustrate the sufferings that have come upon the Jews over the course of the centuries.
 

1. Seen in the light of Moses’ laws, the shout of the Jews before Pilate is an unreasonable and unauthorized shout. The guilt of the fathers may not be attributed to the children. In this way parents cannot in advance burden their children with blood guilt that they themselves are prepared to take upon themselves. The Jews know the law. It is clear that they are outraged before Pilate. It typifies their fanaticism against Jesus that they even forget the reasonableness of the law of Moses. Would an outrageous cry of anger now be a reason for God to act against his own laws? Would God, who does not punish the children for the sins of their fathers, deviate from this because the Jews before Pilate asked for this in a moment of fierce hatred? Is it not true that an unfounded curse does not hit the target?
    
2. This also appears on Pentecost. Peter then proclaims the gospel to those same Jews and calls them to faith and offers them God’s grace. God does not hold these Jews to their foolish words of Good Friday, but adheres to his own promises: “For the promise is for you and for your children!”
    
3.  It is not the apostles who will bring blood and vengeance upon the Jerusalem Jews. Rather, it is precisely the unbelieving Jews themselves who suggest this (without reason). It is a malicious suggestion. They say to the apostles, “You intend to bring this man’s blood upon us” (Acts 5:28). The apostles, however, say that this Jesus, whom they have killed, has been exalted to “give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins” (Acts 5:31). The Sanhedrin rejects this offer of grace and tries to put the guilt for this unwillingness on the apostles, as if the apostles preached vengeance and retribution, instead of grace and forgiveness.
    
4. The apostles have certainly mentioned more than once the fact that Jesus was killed by the Jews of Jerusalem. This is a historical fact and that is how it functions. Take the book of Acts and read and compare! In facing the Sanhedrin and the Jerusalem Jews, the apostles say: you have condemned and killed Jesus (Acts 2:23; 3:14-17; 4:10; 7:52; see 1 Thessalonians 2:14-15 (Judea!)). But when the apostles preached to Jews outside of Jerusalem and Judea, they refer to the sentence of the Jewish Sanhedrin without personally making the Jews liable who are living elsewhere (Acts 13:27-29).
    
5. When the apostles take leave of the Jewish synagogues on their missionary journeys, this is not because the Jews in Jerusalem killed Jesus, but because the Jews of these synagogues refuse to accept the offer of grace in the gospel. Not the past of guilt, but the present of grace, is here decisive.
    
6. Returning to Matthew 27, we must also pay attention to the connection of the Jewish exclamation with Pilate’s performance. Pilate asks for water to wash his hands in innocence before he surrenders an innocent person to be crucified. Clearly, this ceremony has no legal significance. The Roman governor remains responsible for his judgment and for surrendering him. We also do not have to think that a down-to-earth Roman would have had the illusion that this opera-like scene would release him before the emperor from the responsibility for this decision. Pilate merely wants to indicate that he is handing over an innocent person for the sake of the Jews. It is because they want it, otherwise he would not do it. He does not have a hand in it, but they do. In response to this theatrical gesture, the Jews cry out, just as theatrically, “His blood be on us and our children.” In other words, we take the responsibility. They do not mean that they are prepared to suffer for Jesus’ death. They mean precisely that Jesus’ death is so necessary and justified that they fear not the least responsibility for the blood of this human being upon themselves and their children. They do not incur any risk! Pilate may go ahead and shift the moral guilt on them: they’re not afraid of it. It will not harm them or their children, because that blood will rightly be shed. After all, is he not a blasphemer according to the Sanhedrin? The Jews act theatrically, as a crowd, in good faith. Peter and John therefore say to the same crowd who denied Jesus before Pilate (Acts 3:13) that they had acted “in ignorance” (Acts 3:17). They thought that they would be serving God by killing a blasphemer, and did not realize that in reality they condemned God’s own Son, although they could have known it.
    
7. The New Testament speaks much about the judgments and plagues of God that affect the world (Rom. 1:18-32; Revelation). Here there is no distinction between Jew and Greek. God’s anger holds sway over all unbelief and sin, over every people. It is wrong to make a special connection between God’s wrath and the fate of the Jews. One can only speak in general about God and the nations, all included.

Good Friday←⤒🔗

When we celebrate the time of Christ’s suffering, it is not proper to take a special look at the prosperity or adversity of the Jewish people. And when they do not believe in Christ, the Jews should not make a connection between their experience of suffering and the theatrical self-assured shout of the Jewish crowd in Jerusalem before Pilate. The suffering of Christ is no one’s downfall, but instead was aimed at everyone’s salvation.

That is how it is celebrated. He has died to make full reconciliation for all our sins. That may be proclaimed, starting at Jerusalem where God’s Spirit was poured out on Pentecost. That must be believed, by Jew and Greek. This faith does not directly save us from all suffering and injustice, not for the Jews and the Afghans and the gypsies. It does teach us, however, to put all wrong and violence in God’s hand, through Christ’s power. He will repay it. Meanwhile, Christians pray for faith in Jesus who was crucified, for both Jews and Greeks. For Good Friday is not a Purim feast of revenge on our enemies. But it is the feast of sacrifice: a prayer for the world to which God sent his only begotten Son in love.