The Saturday Night Theologian is part of Progressive Theology
Exegesis of Word and World, based on readings from the Revised Common Lectionary
Palm Sunday: Luke 22:14-23:56
We are so accustomed to hearing a conflated version of the passion narrative that reading the narrative in just one gospel sounds strange. Yet even when we read from only one gospel, we still have the tendency to "read in" material from the other gospels. When we just read one gospel, any of them, we find a picture of the passion that is somewhat different than the harmonized picture with which we're so familiar.
Reading from Luke's gospel, we can see several ways in which Luke presents his distinct rendition of Jesus' death. The most obvious of these is that Luke takes great pains to craft his story in such a way that the Romans receive almost no blame for Jesus' crucifixion, while the Jews receive almost all the blame. While blaming the Jews rather than the Romans is common to the other gospels, Luke alone among the Synoptic Gospels omits any reference to the Roman soldiers mocking Jesus and giving him a crown of thorns (the Gospel of John is even more deferential to the Romans, particularly Pilate). Luke also has Pilate repeat three times his belief in Jesus' innocence. Luke alone mentions Pilate sending Jesus to Herod in an attempt to free him, or at least shift the burden of condemning Jesus to someone else. Finally, after Jesus dies, the Roman centurion at the foot of the cross acknowledges Jesus' innocence (as opposed to his comment in Matthew and Mark, "Surely this was the Son of God").
All these attempts to shield the Romans from guilt in Jesus' death make sense when one remembers that Luke is writing his gospel, as well as the book of Acts, for a certain Theophilus, who is probably a Roman official of some sort. Luke is aware that only the worst criminals suffered the fate of crucifixion, and he seems to have shaped his gospel the way he did in order to make it palatable to Roman citizens. Jesus, he stresses, was innocent of the crimes of which he was accused. Furthermore, the Romans played no major part in his death, which Luke blames on errant Jewish leaders.
I don't believe that the author of the Gospel of Luke and Acts was prejudiced against Jews as a people; his close association with Paul mentioned several times in Acts supports this assertion. On the other hand, as a member of a persecuted minority, he clearly believes that the Romans were more likely to accept this new religion than the Jews were. Christians did suffer rejection and probably a measure of persecution by some Jews during the first century, as the testimony of Paul and the Jewish prayer identifying Christians as heretics show. It is not surprising for a group that feels itself persecuted to lash out verbally against those it perceives to be its persecutors, so Luke can hardly be blamed for his depiction of events. However, in the centuries that followed, after Christians outnumbered Jews and came to have much more power, particularly after the time of Constantine, many Christians misappropriated the passion narratives in all the gospels and used them as a license to persecute the Jews.
In today's world, where anti-Semitism is still so prevalent, how should we read Luke's passion narrative? I think we must do so honestly, acknowledging the hostility between Christians and Jews that is evident in it. We must read it with an understanding of history, and Christians must be especially cognizant of the fact that the persecution of Christians by Jews lasted a hundred years or less and affected only a relatively small number of people, whereas the persecution of Jews by Christians has gone on for almost two thousand years and has devastated the lives of millions. Finally, Christians must read Luke's passion narrative through the eyes of Jesus, who proclaimed from the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." To follow the example of Christ, Christians today must make every effort to reconcile with their Jewish brothers and sisters, asking forgiveness for the sins we and our ancestors have committed against them and seeking ways in which we can walk together on our respective journeys of faith. And while we're at it, let's do the same for other groups Christians have wronged over the centuries who represent other faiths, as well as those who profess no faith at all.