It's easy to throw the first stone at Judas...or Pilate...or Caiaphas. But, maybe we have more in common with them than we would like to believe. Let me share some quotes from a book I read this morning.
"Let us look at some of the people who brought Jesus of Nazareth to crucifixion. They were not monsters, but ordinary men and women like you and me.
Pilate receives most of the blame for Jesus' death, and yet Pilate didn't want to crucify the man. Why did Pilate condemn Jesus? Because Pilate was a coward. He cared more about his comfortable position than he did about justice. He didn't have the courage to stand for what he knew was right. It was because of this relatively small flaw in Pilate's character that Jesus died on the cross...
And Caiaphas, was he such a monster? Far from it. He was the admired and revered religious leader of the most religious people in that ancient world...Why did he seek to have Jesus condemned? He did it for the simple reason that he was too rigid...Caiphas's essential flaw was that he thought he had the whole truth...
Why did Judas betray his master?...Judas had wanted Jesus to call upon heavenly powers, to take control of the situation and throw the Romans out of Palestine. When he failed to do this, Judas no longer wanted anything to do with him. Judas' fault was he couldn't wait. When we can't wait and want to push things through, when we think we can accomplish a noble end by human means, we are just like Judas...
Then there was the nameless carpenter who made the cross. He was a skilled workman. He knew full well what the purpose of that cross was. If you questioned him he probably would have said: "But I am a poor man who must make a living. If other men use it for ill, is it my fault?" So say all of us who pursue jobs which add nothing to human welfare or which hurt some people...
These were the things that crucified Jesus on Friday in Passover week A.D. 29. They were not wild viciousness or sadistic brutality or naked hate, but the civilized vices of cowardice, bigotry, impatience, timidity, falsehood, indifference - vices we all share, the very vices which crucify human beings today." (Morton Kelsey in Bread & Wine, pages 210 . 212.)
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