Why did Jesus die? This is the central question of our faith. Unless we can answer it in a way that connects the cross with us and our world, then the gospel falls apart. Either Jesus’ death has something to do with us or it doesn’t.
I spend a lot of time reflecting on this question with my freshman theology students. In the early part of the semester, they offer the answers that they grew up with: Jesus died because God wanted him to. Jesus died so our sins can be forgiven. Jesus died so we can go to heaven. But one by one, we unpack these answers and question the theological sleights-of-hand they perform. Why couldn’t God choose to forgive us without having someone killed? Why couldn’t God choose to let us into heaven without having someone killed? Why did God decide to provide our salvation by having someone killed? You see the pattern.
On a historical level, Jesus was killed by Rome because there was something threatening about his growing movement. Of course, this doesn’t mean Jesus himself was threatening; he was famously nonviolent, and you can bet that Roman authorities knew that much about him. But to wind up on a Roman cross, there had to be something about his reputation that made the folks in power think he may have had kingly ambitions. (Why else crucify him as “King of the Jews”?) Riding into Jerusalem on a colt, in a possible send-up of Caesar’s own triumphal entry, would certainly have done the trick. Perhaps that’s why the synoptic gospels place the triumphal entry at the beginning of the events of Passion Week: to show how Jesus’ fatal entry into Jerusalem leads to his arrest later that week.
