Old School versus New School: Sibling Rivalry

Zechariah 12: 10-11 & 13:1

“And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn. In that day there shall be a great mourning in Jerusalem, like the mourning at Hadad Rimmon in the plain of Megiddo. In that day a fountain shall be opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness.”

As different as they may be Judaism and Christianity are brothers. Brothers that are different ages, brothers that don't necessarily look alike, brothers that have a history of arguments but brothers nonetheless. The difference is a little bit more than old covenant versus new covenant. Christianity and Rabbinical Judaism both developed from ancient Judaism at the same time and are both inheritors of the same Scripture: the Hebrew Bible. Known to Jews as the Tanakh and to Christians as the Old Testament the major difference between the two groups starts at how we treat this joint possession. Today's scripture is one that gives an example of where Judaistic and Christian interpretation of Scripture differ. Lead by Jesus, the Apostles created a new school of thought about Scripture. They read an additional analogous meaning into Old Testament Scriptures. Everything in God's Word was seen as a foreshadowing of Scripture's ultimate fulfillment in Jesus (the Word made flesh). So when we come across this passage in Zecheriah that has Messianic implications the answer for Christians is obvious: Jesus is the Messiah so this passage is a prediction of his crucifixion.

The painting "White Crucifixion" by Marc Chagall takes the analogous idea and flips it. Instead of a Jewish Scripture being seen as analogous to a Christian experience, he takes the experiences of Christ and shows that it is analogous to the experiences of the Jewish people. "White Crucifixion" likens Christ's crucifixion suffering to the centuries of persecutory suffering of the Jewish people. The sad fact is that a good majority of this suffering over the years has been exacted by Christians...or those who imagined themselves to be followers of Christ.

White Crucifixion displays an honest and sobering truth. God is the god of the suffering, the persecuted, the marginalized; whomever they may be. Christ's blood was spilled for the meek, the suffering and the mourning. It is only when we, as followers of Christ, relate in mercy to those that he died for, that we become the children of God.