Spencerissimus
Let’s recap. We’re talking this month about how we read the Bible. We know all the law and the prophets are hung on love of God and neighbor, so we’ve discussed the meaning of love. We found that love of God involved including someone greater than ourselves within the compass of our egos, and that love of neighbor meant including others like ourselves. This involves a sacrifice of self, in the first place, and a sacrifice of self-interest in the second. And these sacrifices don’t necessarily improve the world, but only shape the individual soul.
In order to sacrifice your own interests, maybe even your life, for no earthly reward, you have to believe the gospel descriptions of the resurrection are true. Which means you have to read the Gospels as descriptions of real events by real people — something like the text we might’ve gotten if a space alien with an advanced consciousness had landed on earth and first century witnesses left a record.
For me, this way of reading produces fresh insights. Here are two, one dark, one bright.
The dark insight is historical.
There are some people who think George Washington was a bad man because he owned slaves. I see it differently. I think he was manifestly one of the best men who ever lived, and therefore the fact that he held slaves tells us that, in his position, we would have done the same or worse.
Likewise, there are some who say “the Jews killed Christ.” But I say, God must have chosen the Jews and prepared them over centuries because they were the best people for the job. And therefore the fact that some of them rejected and condemned Christ tells us that we would have done the same or worse.
To give one relevant example: the people called on Pilate to free the homicidal rebel Barabbas instead of Jesus. In other words, they chose to trust the devices of mankind — politics and violence — to “make the world a better place,” rather than suffer the material sacrifices of love to save their own souls in a political and violent world. We likewise call for Barabbas whenever we trust our salvation to princes and elections and lacerating political rhetoric and cruel or dishonest action.
Then there’s the bright insight, which is spiritual.
If this right now is the way the world will be until all things are made new, and if Jesus came, as he said, so that the joy that is in him can be in us, then he must have been teaching us how to see this present darkness in such a way that we find ourselves rejoicing.
Clearly, given our usual anxiety and pain, to see this world joyfully requires neither false smiles nor fretful whining nor fine theologies nor pat Bible quotations, but a genuine spiritual effort of transformation, day after day.
Back to you.
Love, Dad
You are right. On Palm Sunday, in Catholic churches anyway, we do an interactive reading of the Passion of Christ. The congregation is the crowd in the Gospel and we all call out, "Give us Barabbas!" and "Crucify him! Crucify Him!" It has never been lost on me that that's probably what most of us would be saying in that situation, or we would have already run away in fear like most of the disciples. It's a humbling realization.
"Likewise, there are some who say “the Jews killed Christ.” But I say, God must have chosen the Jews and prepared them over centuries because they were the best people for the job. And therefore the fact that some of them rejected and condemned Christ tells us that we would have done the same or worse."
I get upset when I hear people say 'the Jews killed Christ'. The truth is, we all did - mankind as a whole. I think it symbolic that the crucifixion as it played out involved both God's Chosen people - the Jews -and the Romans, who I believe represent all other - the Gentiles, so to speak. The Jews chose Barrabas over Jesus, true, but we all know that the execution itself was carried out by Roman soldiers. Pilate could have stopped this - he so much as admitted that Jesus was innocent and tried to symbolically wash his hands of the murder. But as we all should know who have reached the age of reason, inaction is action. All mankind was culpable in Christ's crucifixion. None of us has anything to boast about in that regard.