This Must Stop

Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen. Acts 4: 27-28

Today's Reading: Nehemiah 12-13: Acts 4: 23-37

The passage above was said in a prayer. In it the apostles are talking to God about how it was God’s will that Jesus took one for the team.

Here’s my question… why do some Christians assert that Jewish folks are to blame for killing Jesus?

This ridiculously wrong notion is the foundation for much of the Anti-Semitism of the last two millennia. Why is it wrong beyond the borderline of stupidity? Here is a quick summary of the last days as recounted in the gospels.

1. Jesus comes into Jerusalem to much fan fare.
2. Jesus rolls into the temple and wreaks havoc on all of the folk trying to hustle their wares on the holy ground.
3. He speaks openly in the day amongst the multitudes of people. Many people come to hear his message and receive healing.
4. The high priest needs a traitor on the inside to bring him down. Judas sells out like a punk.
5. The high priest, some Pharisees, roman soldiers and Judas come after the Last Supper, in the cover of night to arrest Jesus.
6. They bring him to Pilate and essentially accuse him of being a nuisance and the rest goes from there.

If you are a Christian then you believe that all of these things were foretold by the prophets… so… why are you blaming an entire people for this? Clearly it was God’s will that he died and rose again… so… he had to die right?

Also the fact that they had to come and snatch him up like thieves in the night proves that the “Jews” didn’t kill him (as is commonly said in churches during Easter). The people loved him!!! Whether or not they thought he was a great man, or a prophet, or the son of God… the multitudes would not have stood for him being arrested during the day.

Why is this important? It’s important because the stakes are too high. I recently watched a documentary by James Carroll called Constantine’s Sword. It was about Anti-Semitism in the Catholic Church. It talked about how the church did everything from trying to exterminate Jewish folks on multiple occasions to rounding up Jewish folk in Rome in ghettos for hundreds of years, to even hand delivering Jewish folks in Rome to Hitler during World War II. Many of their Cardinals also helped Hitler do his thing.

This is why it matters. This is a lie that even a casual reading of the bible would destroy. But it is a lie that has been powerful enough to endanger the lives of countless people for the past 1700 years.

It’s wrong, and I’m tired of it.

Sure, I don’t think that the majority of folks believe this but the fact that a relatively few powerful people in history have used this lie to do unspeakable evil speaks to the ignorance of the regular folk who sat idly by and watch it happen.

So if you hear someone say this, and that person is a “Christian”, hold back from slapping them just long enough to tell them to read the Bible that they say they believe in to get their facts straight.

This has gone on too long. 

Crazy Talk

Remember, I pray, the word that You commanded Your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations; but if you return to Me, and keep My commandments and do them, though some of you were cast out to the farthest part of the heavens, yet I will gather them from there, and bring them to the place which I have chosen as a dwelling for My name. Nehemiah 1: 8-9

Today’s Reading: Nehemiah 1-3; Acts 2:1-21

In keeping with the theme of redemption this is pretty interesting to me.

It’s not so much what he said but how he said it. It was like he was calling God out. This is how I read this one.

“Yo man… you know what you said. You followed through on the bad stuff but will you follow through on the good?” – New Living Clarence Translation

At first I was thinking, man, it takes some audacity to call out God like that. But then the more I thought about it, it wasn’t really audacity… Rather it was a whole lot of faith and humility.

Dude believes so much and so securely that in the same moment of humble repentance he can flip it by asking God to come through on the promise that he made to Abraham.

That’s pretty big to me.

This is a man who clearly understands that God isn’t just this big abstract figure who looms mysteriously large over all the happenings of the earth. God is also an entity with which we all can have a personal relationship.

God made a promise, and Nehemiah is calling him to task on it.

Most people these days view this line of thinking is craziness. Who does he think he is to talk to God that way? Or, why does he think that God cares about his daily life to such a degree?

Well… I feel you Nehemiah. God said that his word is bond. So why not call him to it?

That’s some herculean faith right there.