It is sometimes stated, and at other times implied, that Jesus was killed for opening the doors of God’s mercy to prostitutes and tax collectors. This is sort of true, but mostly misleading. It’s true to say, and needs to be said (as I will in my sermon this upcoming Sunday), that Jesus upset some of the Jewish leaders because he extended fellowship and mercy beyond their constricted boundaries. But it is misleading to suggest that Jesus was killed for just loving too much, as if inclusive tolerance were the chief cause of his enemies’ implacable intolerance.
Take Mark’s Gospel, for example.
By my reckoning, Jesus is opposed once for eating with sinners (2:16), once for
upsetting stereotypes about him in his hometown (6:3), a few times for
violating Jewish scruples about the law (2:24; 3:6; 7:5); and several times for
“blaspheming” or for claiming too much authority for himself (2:7; 3:22;
11:27-28; 14:53-64; 15:29-32, 39). As Mark’s Gospel unfolds, we see the Jewish
leaders increasingly hostile toward Jesus. Although the fear of the crowds
stays their hand for awhile, they still try to trap Jesus and plot his
destruction (8:11; 11:18; 12:12; 12:13; 14:1: 15:3, 11). There is a lot the
Jewish leaders don’t like about Jesus, but their most intense, murderous fury
is directed toward him because he believes “I am [the Christ, the Son of the
Blessed], and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power,
and coming with the clouds of heaven” (14:62).
The four gospels, as we might
expect, emphasize different aspects of their opposition. Luke, for instance,
makes more of Jesus’ identification with the society’s cast-offs as an issue
for the Jewish leaders, while John makes more of Jesus’ unique status as God’s
equal. But the basic outline is consistent in all four accounts. As Jesus
reputation as a healer and miracle worker spreads the crowds come to him in
larger and larger numbers and the elite despise him more and more. As a general
rule, Jesus was popular with the masses (the exception being in his hometown of
Nazareth). And as a general rule, as his popularity (but not necessarily
success) increased with the crowds, so did the opposition from the Jewish
leaders.
The Jewish leaders disliked,
and eventually grew to hate, Jesus for many reasons. They accused him of many
things (Mark
15:3). They were angry with him for upsetting their
traditions and some of their scruples about the law. They looked down on him
for eating with sinners and associating with those the culture often despised.
Most of all, they hated him because he claimed to be from God and, in fact,
equal with God himself. They could not recognize his divine authority and
identity.
In a nutshell that’s why the
Jewish leaders (religious and political), and later some of the crowd they
incited, hated Jesus. Jealousy was no doubt part of it. But deeper than that,
they simply did not have the eyes to see or the faith to believe that Jesus was
the Christ, the Son of the living God. That’s why in all four gospels, when the
opposition against him reaches its climax, Jesus is not charged with being too
welcoming to outsiders (though they faulted him for that too), but with being a
false king, a false prophet, and a false Messiah (Matt.
26:57-68; Mark
14:53-65; Luke
22:66-71; and less clearly in John
18:19-24). In short, they killed Jesus because they
thought he was a blasphemer.
In the end, it was the
implicit and explicit claims Jesus made to authority, Messiahship, and
God-ness, not his expansive love, that ultimately did him in. This is certainly
not an excuse for our own hard-heartedness. Conservative religious people are
often prone to distancing themselves from “sinners and tax collectors.” We need
Jesus’ example to set us straight. But we must put to rest the half-truth (more
like a quarter-truth really) that Jesus was killed for being too inclusive and
too nice. True, the Jewish leaders objected to Jesus’ far-reaching compassion,
but they wanted him dead because he thought himself the Christ, the Son of the
living God. If Jesus simply loved people too much he might have been ridiculed
by some. But without his claims of deity, authority, and Old Testament
fulfillment, he would not have been murdered.
So as we tell people about
Jesus, let’s certainly talk about his compassion and love (how could we not!).
But if we don’t talk about his identity as the Son of God, we have not
explained the reason for his death, and, just as crucially, we have not given
people reason enough to worship him.
