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Catholic Bible Study
Lectio The Case for Jesus: The Crucifixion of Jesus
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Why would Jesus, who preached about the love of God, detachment form worldly goods, and love of one’s neighbor, be so violently opposed that his enemies arranged his execution? In this session, Dr. Pitre looks at the details surrounding Jesus’s trial and Death and what these details reveal about Jesus and his mission.
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Welcome back, everyone, to session seven of our Lectio Bible study on Jesus. Looking at the biblical and the historical evidence for faith in Christ, looking at the reasons to believe. And in this session, we come really to the climax of Jesus public ministry. And that is the mystery of his crucifixion, of his death on. On a cross at the hands of the Romans. And this session is very important because it begs a crucial question, namely this. If Jesus was the Messiah, and if he was God, then why did he end up dead on a cross? Have you ever thought about that? I brought up earlier other failed messiahs, like bar kings, who were executed by the Romans. And usually their executions signaled the end of their claims to be the Messiah. After that, all their followers dispersed and no one believed in them. Now we'll see why that's different for Jesus in our final session when we look at the resurrection from the dead. But even before that, we still have to ask the question, if Jesus was God, how is it that he died on a cross? Why did he die in that manner? And also why in the midst of his execution did he cry out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Ever thought about that? If he's God, why is he crying out to God about having forsaken him? What could that mean? Does that mean Jesus despaired at the end of his life? Some people think so. Albert Schweitzer, a very famous theologian and scholar and the early 20th century, said that. That Jesus died, that that cry of dereliction was a cry of despair. Right? That the kingdom that he had thought would come didn't, and that the wheel of history crushed him as it rolled along. If Schweitzer was right about that, then Christianity is a sham. I mean, it's, you know, as Paul says, we're. We are of all men to be most pitied. So how do we explain the cross? How would you explain to the cross, to someone who wasn't a Christian, didn't grow up a believer? Why do you believe in the cross? Why was Jesus crucified? In this session, what we're going to look at is both the historical reasons for the crucifixion, but also the theological significance of the crucifixion. And again, I must suggest to you that you can really only understand it if you see it through the lens of ancient Jewish prophecy and through ancient Jewish eyes. Then you'll be able to make sense of this seemingly senseless death. And I'd like to begin with one more quote from our good friend Bart Ehrman. I've been journeying along through him, but I do this not to pick on him either, but because he actually is a very intelligent scholar. Right. And he represents what a lot of scholars believe and also what a lot of Christians are learning in the university and at colleges, in classes on the New Testament. Right. Your children? My children. Well, we'll see. I don't know. They might get a little antidote first because I make them read my books. They hate it, but I do it anyway. It's either read the books, kids, or you'll get a lecture at dinner time. So pick, you know. No, in all seriousness, but Ehrman's a very. He's a very honest scholar in the sense that he says what he believes and he gives the reasons for his conclusions. And that's very helpful as we walk through these basic questions about the foundations of the history of Christianity. And so in this case, Ehrman here says this about the reason for Jesus crucifixion. The most certain element of the tradition about Jesus is that he was crucified on the order of the Roman prefect of Judea, Pontius Pilate. The crucifixion is independently attested in a wide array of sources and is not the sort of thing that believers would want to make up about the person they proclaimed to be the powerful Son of God. Why, historically, was Jesus crucified? This is the question that every reconstruction of the life of Jesus has to answer. And some of the answers proffered over the years have been none too plausible. For example, if Jesus had simply been a great moral teacher, a gentle rabbi who did nothing more than urge his devoted followers to love God and to love one another, or an itinerant philosopher who urged them to abandon their possessions and live a simple life depending on no one but God, he would scarcely have been seen as a threat to the Romans and nailed to a cross. Great moral teachers were not crucified unless their teachings were considered subversive. End quote. In this case, I agree with everything he's saying here. He's right. First and foremost, no one would have made up the crucifixion if they were a follower believer in Jesus. Because the crucifixion was not just a shameful form of death, it was the most shameful, the most horrendous form of execution in the Roman Empire. I actually have a long chapter on this in my book, Jesus the Bridegroom, the Greatest Love Story Ever Told. And I look at how the cross, how the cross became a symbol of God's love when in the first century ad, the cross was a symbol of Roman oppression. For example, if you were a Roman citizen, you had the dignity of being executed if you had committed a crime by decapitation, Right? It was only slaves, non citizens, that were crucified. This is why Paul, who was a citizen, was beheaded in Rome. But Peter, who was just a Jew from Galilee, was crucified upside down because it was a more shameful way of death. Second, when they crucified you, they would strip you. Many crucifixions were done without any clothing on. At most in Jewish areas, they might have left a loincloth on because it was meant to shame you in front of everyone. And it was the most cruel way to kill someone because it was a long public death in front of everyone in which you would die by asphyxiation, slowly and, and painfully. And Greeks and Jews alike called it the most shameful and the most horrific way to die. So no one would have made this up. So we have to explain, how did Jesus get crucified if he was just a good teacher or philosopher? They didn't end up on crosses. He had to be seen as a threat to the political leadership, to the Roman Empire. Okay, you have to explain the cross. And in this case, what we're going to do is we're going to look at three episodes that explain the cross both historically and theologically. I want to look at the trial of Jesus. Number one, I want to look at Jesus cry from the cross, so called cry of dereliction. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And then third, and finally, I want to look at the piercing of Jesus side with the spear that we looked at earlier. I mentioned it briefly in the Gospel of John because John calls your attention to it as if it's really important. But I don't know about you, I haven't always been quite clear. Why is this so important? What's the meaning of that? That. Okay, so let's do that together. First, when it comes to the reasons for Jesus crucifixion, we have to look at his trial before the Jewish Sanhedrin. And when you look at the count of the trial in Mark 1455, 64, what you will find is that Jesus was crucified for blasphemy. Blasphemy. Listen to what Mark says. Now. The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin sought testimony against Jesus to put him to death. But they found none. For many bore false witness against him and their witness did not agree. And some stood up and bore False witness against him, saying, we heard him say, I will destroy this temple that's made with hands, and in three days I will build another not made with hands. Pause. Remember that stone not cut with any human hand, making a great mountain. Hear the echoes here of the kingdom in the Old Testament. I digress, but I just thought, bring it up there. Yet not even so did their testimony agree. And the high priest stood up in their midst and asked Jesus, have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you? But he was silent and made no answer. And again, the high priest asked him, are you the Christ, the Son of the blessed? And Jesus said, I am. And you will see the Son of man seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven. And the high priest tore his garments and said, why do we still need witnesses? You have heard his. What Blasphemy. What is your decision? And they all condemned him as deserving death. So what's going on here in the trial of Jesus? On the level of history, a few things. First, according to Jewish law, you could not convict somebody of a capital crime on the testimony of one person. You had to have at least two or three witnesses according to the book of Deuteronomy. So that's one of the reasons they're trying to get different witnesses to testify against him. But because their testimony would not agree with one another, they. They couldn't convict him. They couldn't press a charge against him. So once all that takes place, the high priest just kind of cuts to the chase and says, just answer the question. Are you the Christ, the Son of the blessed? And Jesus responds to that question by saying, I am. And you'll see the Son of man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven. Now, let me pause here. A lot of Christians make a mistake at this point in the text in assuming that Jesus affirmation of his Messianic identity was blasphemy. In other words, the high priest said, are you the Christ? Which means the anointed one. Christos is just the Greek translation of Mashiach. They both mean anointed one or Messiah. So the high priest says, are you the Messiah? And Jesus says, yes. And lots of Christians think, okay, that's where the blasphemy is. But that's not true, because it wasn't blasphemy to claim to be the Messiah, right? Think about it for a second. The Messiah was just the king of Israel, right? David was the Messiah. Solomon was the Messiah. If the Messiah didn't claim to be the Messiah. How are you supposed to know who he is? Right? Like it's not blasphemy to claim to be the Messiah. Someone says I'm the king, you know, people don't say kill him, he's blasphemy. No, it's just that's a human office. So the charge of blasphemy can't be just in the messianic claim, it's in what Jesus goes on to say. Not only am I the Messiah, but you will see the Son of Man, which is one of the titles of the Messiah from Daniel. We didn't get to look at that. But it's in the book, the Case for Jesus, if you want to read it. He says, you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power. Or in one of the Gospels, the right hand of God and coming on the clouds of heaven. Now any first century Jew would have known that when you sit at the right hand of a king, what does that symbolize? It means you have equal authority with the king, Right? So by extrapolation, think about it, if that's true of kings, what happens if you sit at the right hand of. What are you claiming? Yeah, to have equal authority with God. And you actually can see this in the Psalm, Psalm 110, which is one of Jesus favorite psalms to quote. The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, right? So the right hand is a symbol of equality with the one on the throne. So Jesus says, I am and you're going to see me seated at the right hand of God. In other words, equal in authority with God and also coming on the clouds of heaven. Now what would that have meant to a first century Jew? Well, if you go back in the Old Testament, who is it that comes on the clouds? It's not Superman, okay? Just put that out of your mind. It's not the kings, it's not even the angels. Who comes on the clouds? God? Well, the Son of Man does in that one instance. But ordinarily, who is it? It is God comes on the cloud. So whenever he comes in judgment, he comes on a cloud. Think here about the glory cloud too. When God comes down from heaven, it's in the cloud of glory. The pillar of fire by day, the pillar of cloud by night. Now one of you very astutely brought up the Son of Man. The Son of Man is the only apparently human figure in the Old Testament who also comes on the clouds. But what's interesting about the Son of Man is in Daniel 7:14, Daniel says, I saw one like a Son of man coming on the clouds. In other words, one like a human being coming on the clouds. So what Daniel is seeing is a divine figure who looks like a what? Man. So is the Son of Man human or Son of Man divine? And the answer is yes. Right. That's the whole point. See, that's why Jesus uses that to refer to himself. His favorite title for himself is itself a riddle. By calling himself the Son of Man, is he saying that he's human? Yeah. Is he also implying that he's divine? Yes. But is he doing it in a way that won't get him arrested? Yes. See, all the way back, in appealing to the paralytic, what did he say? The Son of Man has authority to forgive sins on earth. And that's an ambiguous statement. You can take it in different ways, because Son of Man can just mean a human being. Like Psalm 8. Right. Who is the Son of Man? That you are mindful of him, O Lord, you've made them a little less than the angels, but greater than the beast. So that's just an expression that means human being. But the Son of man in Daniel 7 is this mysterious divine figure who looks human but rides on the clouds. So at his trial, what does Jesus say? Yes, I'm the Messiah and I'm equal in authority with God, and you're going to see me doing what only God does, riding on the clouds. Well, that's all the high priest needs to hear. What does he do? He tears his priestly garments. Right. Which was something that would express, like, either mourning or anger at having heard something that was like, blasphemous or insulting or repugnant. He tears his garments, and he says, we don't need any more witnesses because we've all heard his. What? Blasphemy. And what is the punishment for claiming to be God or equal to God? It's death. So you can actually see this. In Josephus, the Jewish penalty for blasphemy was stoning, but also crucifixion. It says, let him that blasphemes God be stoned. And then what? Hung for a day. So suspension on crosses is something they would sometimes do even after you had died, to put the body out and say, basically it's to warn everyone, don't be like this guy. And then buried ignominiously in an obscurity. Also important here, I think it's crucial to point out this isn't the first time Jesus has been accused of blasphemy. Not only was he accused of blasphemy in Gospel of Mark, but in the Gospel of John. I'm going to bring this passage up. John 10, 30, 33. Remember we mentioned I and the Father are one. How did the Jews respond? The Jews took up stones to stone him. And Jesus answered, I've shown you many good works from the Father, for which of these do you stone me? He's kind of tongue in cheek here. He's saying, hold on before you kill me. Which good thing that I did are you going to kill me for? Can you just let me know first? Then the Jews answered him, it's not for a good work that we stone you, but for what blasphemy? Because you, being a man, make yourself God. All right, so there's the answer to Ehrman's question. He said, every explanation of the life of Jesus has to answer why I was crucified. And ironically, the very answer to the question, according to our earliest biographies, is the one that Ehrman himself denies. It's that Jesus claimed to be God and that's what got him killed. Everybody see it, and that's in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. In all four of the Gospels, it's the claims Jesus makes about his own identity that leads him straight to the cross. Second question, though. If Jesus is in fact divine and human, fully God, fully man, how do you explain the cry of dereliction on the cross? Why does he cry out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Is he despairing? Let's look at the passage and try to read it through Jewish eyes. In Mark 15, 33, 35, we read these words, the description of the moment of Jesus death. It Sundays, when the sixth hour had come, that's noon, there was darkness over the land until the ninth hour. Hour, it's about 3 o'. Clock. So three hours of darkness, which is something we often miss because artistic depictions of the crucifixion can't depict it as pitch black because you couldn't see it, right? So it's hard for them to capture the fact that the crucifixion, the bulk of it, takes place in darkness. And at the ninth hour, 3pm Jesus cried out with a loud voice, eloi, Eloi lama sabachthani, which means, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And Jesus uttered a loud cry and he breathed his last. Okay, it's perfectly understandable that many people, when they read this passage, are a little scandalized by it, because it sounds like Jesus is despairing or he's giving up, or at the very least that he's not God because he's crying out to God for having been abandoned by God. Right, so what do we make of this? Well, it's absolutely crucial to understand here that this is not a spontaneous outcry on Jesus part, but that he's quoting the first line of one of the Psalms, namely Psalm 22. Right. And it's hard for me to impress upon you just how familiar the Psalms were to Jews in the first century A.D. and how important they were to them. Right? Because the Psalms were the hymnbook of first century Judaism. When you would go to the temple each day, I know this sounds weird, but each day at the service they would have a psalm. Can you imagine going to mass and every day having a responsorial psalm? Wouldn't that be. Where did we get that from? Okay, got it from the Jews. Alright? Everything about Catholicism that's strange, we always get it from the Old Testament and from ancient Jewish tradition. There's so many things we've drawn on that we're not aware of, but that's how it was. So when Jesus, Mary and Joseph went up to the temple at Passover, what are they singing in the temple? The Psalms. What are the Levites chanting in the temple? The Psalms. What songs did people know? They knew the Psalms. They didn't have radio. Right. They didn't have mass produced music. They had popular music as well. But the Psalms were the language of the people. And so just like today, certain lines of songs, popular songs, as I say the first line, what does it do? It calls to mind the whole thing, right? Even to this day, Catholics, when we quote a papal encyclical, the title of the encyclical, like Humanae Vitae about birth control in Latin, is just the first words of the encyclical in Latin. That's the way we evoke the whole document. Okay? So when Jesus cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? If you want to understand what he means, you got to go back and not just read the line, you have to read the context. Now we don't have time to do the whole psalm, but I just want you to read the Psalm, which by the way, Jesus himself prayed the Psalms. Ever thought about that? When you pray the Psalms, when you recite the psalms, when you sing the Psalms, you are praying the very prayers that Jesus himself in his humanity prayed. This was his prayer book. He didn't have the imitation of Christ or like, you know, what is it? The Magnificat you know, he didn't have these. They're wonderful. But his prayer book was the Book of Psalms, and so was Mary's and so was Joseph's. So when you pray the Psalms, you're praying the very words that were inspired by the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity, prayed by the Son, the second Person of the Holy Trinity to the Father. You're entering into the Trinity, the life of the Trinity, every time you pray the Psalms. That's why throughout the world, what does the Church do in the Liturgy of the Hours? Praise the Psalms over and over and over again. All right, side note, sorry, little tangent, but just I want to impress upon you what it would have meant to them. So when Jesus says these words, everybody knows he's quoting the Psalms. At least all the Jews. The Roman centurion probably didn't know, but the Jews did. So what does the psalm say? Look at the context. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me? From the words of my groaning? Oh, my God. I cry by day, but. But you do not answer by night, but find no rest. Yes, dogs around about me. A company of evildoers encircle me. They have pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones. They stare and they gloat over me. They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots. You who fear the Lord, praise him, all you sons of Jacob. Glorify him and stand in awe of him, all you sons of Israel. Now pause there for just a second. Was David persecuted in his lifetime? Yeah. I mean, this psalm is attributed to him. Was he ever crucified? Were his hands and feet ever pierced? Was his clothing divided and lots cast for it? No, these are metaphors for David. These are metaphors expressing his persecution and his desolation. But what's symbolic and metaphorical, for the author of the psalm is now being fulfilled prophetically in time, in space, in history, in Jesus passion. So, once again, it's the argument from what prophecy? But the psalm doesn't stop there. Notice what it says. And it's talking about God. Here, look at the next line. For he, meaning God, has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted. He has not hid his face from him. Some Christians say, oh, on the cross, the Father turned his back on the Son. Not according to the psalm that Jesus is quoting on. On the cross. So on the one hand, there's an experience of desolation and the suffering of the cross. But the truth of the matter is that God has not hid his face from the suffering righteous one, from the afflicted one, but he has heard him when he what cried to him. And if you fast forward to the end of the psalm, how does it end? It ends not just in triumph, but with the turning of the pagans to God, the God of Israel. Listen to this. All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord and all the families of the nations. The Hebrew word there is goyim, or Gentiles shall worship before him. For dominion belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nation. Psalm 22. So notice, how does Psalm 22 begin? It begins with the anguish of the anointed one of David, right? Which then begins in anguish. But it ends in not just victory, but in the conversion of the Gentiles to the one God of Israel. Now what's striking about that is you look at Mark's Gospel. After Jesus cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The veil of the temple is torn in two. But then what happens? The Roman centurion cries out, surely this man was the Son of God. And in that moment, another prophecy is fulfilled in his very midst. At the very moment of the crucifixion, the nations begin to turn to the Lord in the person of the centurion. You see it. So Jesus quotes those words, not because he's being abandoned by God, he isn't. But in the desolation of the cross, he's fulfilling the Scriptures. Every moment of his life is a fulfillment of prophecy. And above all, this moment. And with that centurion, the nations begin to convert. And they're still converting. And you're proof of it, because you're all here. That's why Jesus said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken? All right. Third, and finally, what about the piercing of Jesus side after his death? In the gospel of John 19:31, 35, we read John's account of what happened after the Lord gave up his spirit. And this is what it says, since it was the day of preparation, in order to prevent the bodies from remaining on the cross on the Sabbath. For that Sabbath was a high day. The Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away. So what they would do here is they smash the knees of the men with a mallet so that they could no longer hold themselves up. Because by holding yourself up, you could continue to breathe, but once you can't, your lungs would collapse. And you would asphyxiate. It's a very, very cruel way to die. So they break the leg, both of the good and the bad thief, he suffered too, you know. But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they didn't break his legs, but one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear and at once there came out blood and water. And then John steps into the Gospel and says, he who saw it has borne witness. His testimony is true and he knows he tells the truth. That you might also believe. Now clearly John wants his readers to know that Jesus side was actually pierced and that blood and water actually came out of it. But it's not exactly clear why that's so important to him. Right. What's the reasoning for this? And people have given lots of different explanations, but for my money, the one that strikes me as being the most probable has to do not just with the historical fact that Jesus is actually dead, but with the theological meaning of the blood and water flowing from the side of Jesus. In order to make this clear, you've got to think like a first century Jew. So let me just make this real quick, kind of paint a picture here. Every year at Passover, when the Jews would go up to Jerusalem, it wasn't just a Passover Seder meal, like maybe some of you have celebrated in your churches, which is a beautiful thing and very informative, but isn't a sacrifice. See, a Seder meal is a meal, but not a sacrifice. But at the time of Jesus, Passover wasn't just a meal, it was a meal and a sacrifice. And the only place you could offer sacrifice was in Jerusalem, in the temple. That's why a million Jews would show up. According to Josephus, he might have exaggerated the number slightly, but they would all go to Jerusalem because the only place you could celebrate Passover was in the city with the temple. And everyone would get a lamb and they would bring the lambs down to the temple and. And you would sacrifice the lamb and the priests would take the blood of the lambs and they would pour it out on the altar. In fact, Josephus, I'm sorry, not Josephus, but the rabbis tell us that the way they did this, because there were so many Jews, was to form these assembly lines where 30 priests in a row would line up with silver bowls behind a low wall. And then the people, the laymen, would bring in their lambs in rows of 30. They would slit, like the layman would slit the throat of the lamb. And then the priest on the other side of the wall would catch the blood in a golden or a silver bull, and then he would hand it to his fellow priest, to another priest, another priest, and they'd pour it out at the bases of the base of the altar. And according to Josephus, one time they did a count of how many lambs were slain, and it was 250,000 lambs in one day. So, I mean, imagine this would be a solemn ceremony. And Jesus did this. He and Joseph and Mary, they went up to Jerusalem every year for Passover. So the question is, well, where did all the blood go? It's a lot of blood. And again, the rabbis tell us that in the temple there was a drain installed at the base of the altar, so that when the priest poured the blood around the base of the altar, it would flow out, down, down through the drain and out the side of the Temple Mount. Listen to the rabbis. This is a quote from the Mishnah. It's a collection of traditions. At the southwestern corner of the altar, there were two holes, like two nostrils, by which the blood that was poured out over the western base in the southern base used to run down and mingle in the water channel and flow out through the brook. Kidron. So if you're going up to Jerusalem and Passover, say around 3 o' clock in the afternoon at the time of the sacrifices, 3 to 5 is when they would do them. And you see the spring, Kidrone, what are you going to see? A spring of blood and water flowing out of the side of the Temple Mount. So when John sees Jesus on the cross and the soldier pierces his side, what does he see flowing out of the side of Christ? Blood and water. And the lights go on because remember the beginning of John's gospel. What did Jesus say? Destroy this temple and in three days I'll raise up another. And they said, well, it took 46 years to build this place. Will you raise it in three days? And John tells us they did not understand he was speaking of the temple of his body. So if Jesus is the true temple, the true dwelling place of God on earth, and his side is pierced and blood and water flow out, what does this reveal to John? That he is the true sacrifice. That his body itself is fulfilling not just the prophecies of the Old Testament, but but of the temple. Now, what's so powerful about that for me is that if Jesus body is the temple and the blood and water used to flow from the altar, then what is the altar of this new temple? It's his sacred heart. Right? Remember the Blood water would flow from the altar in the temple. The altar is the place where the sacrifice is offered. So Jesus body is the temple, his heart is the altar. Why? Because it's not just how much Jesus suffered that atones for our sins, it's how much he loved. Remember when Peter says this love covers a multitude of sins? Well, that's true of human love. What about divine love? What about infinite love? It covers an infinite multitude of sins. So what John's seeing there is the atonement for all of the sins of the world. All the sins of the world from the dawn of time to the end of creation in that image of the blood and the water flowing from the sacred heart of Jesus Christ, the true temple of God. And that's why way back in his public ministry, remember what Jesus said. I say to you, something greater than the temple is here. What could be greater than the temple? For a first century Jewish, only God himself walking about in the world, fully man and fully God. And that's why Jesus goes to the cross. He goes to the cross out of love for the salvation of the world. Because he came to this world not to condemn it, but to save it. And it's through the love of the cross that he offers salvation, not just to the Jews, but to the whole world and to you and to me. When we come back next time. One more mystery to look at. Because the story doesn't end with the cross, does it? Got to go to the resurrection. Why did anybody believe that? Why did anyone believe in the resurrection? Didn't ancient people know that dead people stayed there? When we return, we'll look at the evidence for the resurrection. Thanks.