Why Did They Hate Him So Much?

April 10, 2009

Good Friday

Cycle B

Why did they hate him so much?

What was it about Jesus that caused the people to turn against him so much they wanted the worst kind of death for him? What was it about him that made those same people who wanted to crown him king suddenly want him tortured and killed? He never hurt anybody. What had he done to deserve such treatment? Healed the sick? Raised the dead? Love one another as I have loved you? Were these such revolutionary ideas that they deserved a revolutionary’s death? Weren’t all these ideas already in the Jewish scriptures for all to see and follow? Weren’t they all supposed to be living that way already? Maybe that was the problem.

Most of those who condemned him were not evil people. They were not possessed by the devil. They went about their lives much like we do, and many were very religious. They did what they thought God wanted them to do. But something happened to them during that last week of Jesus’ life to rip the scab off their souls and turn them from an adoring throng into a bloodthirsty mob. They didn’t just feel the need to get rid of Jesus, they wanted to absolutely destroy him and his following. They wanted to hurt him, humiliate him, and kill him in the most horrifying way so that no one would ever remember him again. Even Pilate was shocked at the level of hatred the people had for Jesus. He tried every way he could not to condemn him. It made no sense to him, a pagan.

If you strip away all the politics, and the power trips, and the religious bigotry, you come to the kernel of truth that they hated Jesus because he forced them to see themselves for who they really were, and they didn’t like it. They hated Jesus because he called them to a life they were unwilling to live. He showed them the way, and the way was not what they wanted to do. They wanted to live the way they wanted to live. They didn’t want anyone telling them what to do or how to live. They liked their sins. They liked being in charge. They liked setting themselves up as God.

Why do they hate us so much?

The president of the United States said the other day in Turkey that we are not a Christian nation, implying that that’s a good thing. Basically saying that because we aren’t really Christian we aren’t a threat to anyone. Why would anyone think that being a Christian is a threat? What has happened to us that being a Christian is not seen as a good thing anymore? The life and message of Jesus Christ is one of love of neighbor and self sacrifice for the good of others. What’s threatening about that? Many would point to all the mistakes the church has made throughout history, when we have not lived up to our mission as we should. But the world has seen Christianity as a threat from the very beginning, before there was a church, from the life of our very founder himself. Why has the world never embraced such a message and such a messenger?

Why does it seem that the world wants to make Christianity inconsequential? Pope Benedict said today in his Good Friday homily, “Jesus is humiliated in new ways even today – when things that are most holy and profound in the faith are being trivialised, the sense of the sacred is allowed to erode. Everything in public life risks being desacralised – persons, places, pledges, prayers, practices, words, sacred writings, religious formulae, symbols, ceremonies. Our life together is being increasingly secularised. Religious life grows diffident. Thus we see the most momentous matters placed among trifles, and trivialities glorified.”

Is it because Christianity holds a mirror up to the world and shows us who we really are, and we don’t like what we see? Is it because Christianity holds us up to a higher standard, and we like things just the way they are? Is it because we want to play God ourselves, and don’t like it when confronted by the reality of God? Is it because the world is evil? I choose to think not.

But what is it about good that threatens us so much? We were created with the capacity to choose good and evil. Why do we choose evil so much? Why can’t we see that we are created in the image of goodness itself, and our natural state is to live in that image? And why do we feel that we have to go out of our way to destroy goodness? Are we that selfish? Are we that convinced that we are little gods who know what’s best for us? Isn’t that the sin of Adam? Maybe that’s the human condition, and we cannot break out of it. We were given the ultimate second chance; God himself came to live with us. We were given a glimpse of what it really means to be a human being, and we destroyed it.

Can you imagine what the world would be like if we all lived as Jesus lived? If we all loved as he loved? If we all emptied ourselves of all our prejudices and hatreds and selfishness, and gave ourselves to each other as completely as he did, as completely as we just heard told? Can you imagine what that would be like? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this nation, and all nations, were truly Christian nations, if not in name than in practice, and conducted themselves according to true Christian principles? Maybe that’s what heaven is like.

We read the passion every year and we think, “How could that have happened to God himself? How could those people have done such horrible things to such a good person? What were they thinking?” Well, two thousand years later, things haven’t changed much, have they. We don’t just remember Calvary on Good Friday, we live it.