ANNUAL FORTY DAY FAST
for the
TRUTH OF GOSPEL NONVIOLENCE
FAST FOOD: Eighth Helping
Who murdered Jesus?
Jesus did not die in bed of cancer. Nor, was Jesus murdered by assassination. Jesus was murdered via two prestigious legal systems, the Roman and the Hebrew. All the required legalities in both systems were met, and then He was murdered. An assassination can be, but does not have to be, the work of single person acting alone. But murder via the religious and secular legal systems demands not only more than one person but people with religious and secular clout. The everyday man in the street or woman in the pew has zero ability to employ a secular or religious legal system to do his or her killing for them.
In yesterday’s FAST FOOD, to the question, “Who murdered Jesus,” I responded that “a minuscule number of Jews and Romans, spiritually and psychologically disordered as a consequence of the Fall—as are human beings universally in various ways—murdered Jesus.” I now suggest that an important religious truth may open up to us if we ask the question, “Who were the “minuscule number of Jews and Romans” whom orchestrated the murder of Jesus?”
The following passages from the Gospels seem to pin point the answer rather clearly: Mt 12:14, Jn11: 53, Mt 26:59, Lk 22:2, Mk14: 1, Jn 7:32, Mk 3:6, Mt 26:4, Mk 11:18, Jn 7:25, etc. Now you may or may not want to spend the time to look up these citations, but in case you don’t, what they communicate is that Pilate and the Romans come on the scene late in the drama of Jesus’ murder. In fact they are not on stage until Good Friday. But, long, long before Good Friday the religious elites of Jerusalem were plotting His murder and waiting for the right time to execute it. The upper echelon of a professional religious cabal in Jerusalem planned the murder of Jesus and rigged the Hebrew judicial apparatus to accomplish their desire to be rid of Him permanently. And, while Pilate order Jesus’ death and physically carried it out—apparently under serious political arm twisting from the religious elite, there is no record of Pilate previously desiring or plotting to kill Jesus.
-ECM
(To be continued in FAST FOOD: Helping Nine)
