“WHO KILLED JESUS?”

I enjoy a good “Whodunnit” where I try to get into the mind of the detective working from whatever clues are available to see if I can spot the killer before the others do. Not all cases are closed and that is the challenge. Are we sure, for instance, that we know who killed Jesus?

Bringing suspects before the courts hasn’t been fruitful. The common response, even in the ICAC, is an almost automatic loss of memory with the words tumbling out, “I cannot recall.” Fortunately, in this case, we have at least four reliable witnesses, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John who have faithfully recorded irrefutable evidence that the murder took place.

The soldiers who hammered those spikes into healing hands claim they were only acting under the Governor’s orders. This Governor has been exposed in our traditional creeds when Jesus was described as having “suffered under Pontius Pilate”. Pilate pleads that the baying crowd would have had him reported to Rome so he acted “under duress”. The people point their fingers at Caiaphas and the other religious leaders – “They made us do it.” Caiaphas is on record for excusing himself with those unforgettable words, “It is expedient that one man should die for the people”.

Fingers, disclaiming responsibility, are pointing everywhere. Lawyers thrive today because taking responsibility for what goes wrong is simply “not done”. Victims cruelly suffer and suffer even more when no one can be held accountable. Obeyed most scrupulously is the Eleventh Commandment, “Thou shalt not be found out”.

Likewise, the killing of Jesus is commemorated as something inexplicable that happened so long ago but we are rightly disturbed when we sense ourselves more involved than we intended to be. Somehow, all these people there at the time remind us too much of what we tend to say and do. Consequences happen and we find that we “have done those things we ought not to have done and left undone those things we ought to have done”.

Looking around at the wrongs that are happening around us and the good that is left undone, we can only look within to find that we have fallen short in rectifying the situation. Lent up to Good Friday reminds us only too well that suspicion for the killing of Jesus does not simply rest on those there at the time, but that we are implicated as complicit after the event. Human behaviour, then and now, have continued to contribute to the steps that led Jesus to the loneliest of hills outside Jerusalem’s wall.

Yes, in this climactic twist, this “Whodunnit” has nailed the killers – you, me, and the whole damned world. The one to be killed, Jesus, looks at us all knowingly, and still goes on his tragic way. His murder becomes his self-sacrifice because he knows.

Easter occurs for us so that we have that new opportunity to live as if Jesus has come back to us again to put behind us that behaviour which craves victims for our ego, and to live that life, expressed in Jesus, that God wants for his created world.