FROM THE TREE TO THE CROSS

Was Jesus born on the wrong side of the fence?

At first glance this appears to sound like a political statement meant to stir up animosity and anger, but realy it’s not meant to be, it’s simply an observation of history repeating itself that I would like to share because the question is just as relevant today as it was 2000 years ago when Jesus was born and began to preach the coming kingdom of God.  

With all that is going on right now at the border of Israel and even the border of the US it raises the question, what century are we living in? Because it feels like humanity as a whole has not changed at all for the better, we are just as territorial and divided as the people were over 2000 years ago in the time of Jesus.

Don’t misunderstand me, I am not saying that there shouldn’t be borders or a separation of countries.  But what should have changed by now is the consideration, love, and compassion for our fellow man when it comes to securing and enforcing those borders.  Instead, we still resort to discrimination and hate and eventually violence just as they did to Jesus.

Most people know that Jesus was killed by the Roman’s because the religious leaders of the Jews compelled them to, by convincing them that he was claiming to be a king and desired to overthrow the Roman rule of the Jews. But what most people don’t know is that part of the hatred that fueled them into not listening to Jesus and conspiring to murder him was because of where he was born, or at least where they thought he was born.

Jesus was born in the little town of Bethlehem just a few miles south of Jerusalem, but his birth in that town had to be kept a secret  because it had been prophecied in Micah 5:2 that the anointed ruler of Judah and Israel would be born there.  This prophecy concerned king Herod so greatly that he had all of the children that were born there murdered just in the off chance that one of them would try to dethrone him.   So Joseph and Mary escaped to Egypt with the infant Jesus and after king Herod died they returned to Jerusalem, but because king Herods son now ruled in his place, Joseph took them to the small town of Nazareth about 60 miles north of Jerusalem.  Making the choice to move them to Nazareth would group them with a different class of people in a region known as Galilee because of the small body of water called the Sea of Galilee that was the central hub to its economy.

So why was Galilee considered a different class of people by the Jews? Well, we might have to go back a little farther in time to get the full picture. 

When the Israelites (or children of Jacob)  came out of egypt and arrived at the promised land, God instructed Moses and Joshua to divide up the land into 12 sections so that each tribe could have its own lot.   It didn’t take very long for arguments and disagreements to arise, and eventually, a division formed between the 12 tribes that would become two sides, a northern side known as Israel and a southern side known as Judah.    This line of territory was fiercely enforced by each side until the Babylonians came and conquered both of them around 600 bc.   When the Jews returned to their land around  520 bc, they found that the Jewish people who had not been taken into captivity had mixed with the Assyrian people and created a mixed race that they labeled Samaritans.  The Jews who took back possession of Jerusalem refused to allow the Samaritans to be part of their worship in Jerusalem, so once again, lines were drawn, and fences were created to seperate one people from another.  So the Samaritans simply created their own temple on top of Mt Gerazim in order to mimic the temple at Jerusalem and have their own place for religious sacrifice and ceremonies.

Over the next 500 years the territory would become even further defined and separated when Greece and  Alexander the great conquered the area, then followed by the Roman’s who would develop and populate the areas of their choosing by building small towns and temples to their pagan gods along the northern coast as well as at Mt Hermon and the Sea of Galille area. Which meant that anyone who chose to live there were now discriminated against by the jews in Jerusalem because they considered them to be living in pagan god towns and prospering off of a roman economy that was built around pagan worship and temples.   The Sea of Galilee became such a town because of the  fishing industry there.  Anyone from Jerusalem would have considered them to be comparable to filthy wicked sailors who only cared about making money off of the Roman’s and living a life of pleasure in a continuous drunken stupor.

Nazareth, the little town that Jesus grew up in, was about 15 miles west of the sea of Galilee, even though it was to far away to be considered part of this Roman economy around the Sea of Galilee in some ways it was looked down on even worse because it was so small of a town that it was hardly even known to exist,  and only the poor labor class lived there such as carpenters.  Nathaniel even pointed out its ridiculed status as a town in John 1:46 when he said to Phillip, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?    To make matters even worse, Nazareth was right on the northern border of Samaria which meant that from a traditional Jewish perspective of someone living in or around Jerusalem, Jesus might as well have been from both Samaria and Galilee.

So let’s try to take all of that historical information and put it into perspective.   There were three separate and segregated groups of people at that time, the traditional Jews who lived in Judea in the south and had Jerusalem as their holy place where their temple and religious leaders were.  And then above them  was the region of Samaria that consisted of the Samaritans who the jews considered to be a mixed race of people not worthy to call themselves jews or to come to Jerusalem to worship.   Above them was the region of Galilee that consisted of fishermen and the poor working class who the Jews of Jerusalem disliked because they drank and made money off of the Roman’s.

Now imagine Jesus, a man not clothed in expensive outfits like the priests in Jerusalem did, because he grew up in Nazareth, a small border town of poor people that might as well be mixed race  Samaritans, along with his group of 12 disciples most of whom were fisherman from Galilee going around preaching and healing people and telling them to repent because the kingdom of heaven is at hand.  Then Jesus and his disciples came to the temple, and Jesus began to turn over the tables of money that the priests made their living off of, and rebuke them for making Gods house a den of thieves.  This was the last straw for them, he had to go.  They immediately paid Judas to lead them to him secretly at night so that they could trap him away from the public and charge him with false charges and then have him crucified by the romans because they could not legally punish anyone with death because of the Roman rules.

They considered him to be a nobody, just a nuisance that needed to be gotten rid of, but the question then comes back to the original question that I asked.  Was Jesus born on the wrong side of the fence?  The religious leaders who were responsible for the death of Jesus knew the law and the prophecy of the Bible very well.  They knew that the Messiah would come from the lineage of David and that he would be born in Bethlehem, the birth town of David.

Jesus, as far as they knew, was not born in Bethlehem, they thought he was born in Nazareth of the region of Galilee, which meant he was a nobody, because not even a prophet had been said to come from Galilee. John 7:52
So would it have changed anything if they had known that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and was a descendant of King David.   It’s very possible that it would have, and if knowing he was possibly the Messiah because of where he was born changed how they viewed him, then it means that they did think it was ok to murder Jesus simply because he was born on the wrong side of the fence.

How sad is the truth of this reality? And why have we not learned anything from it even to this day?

The irony of it all is that Jesus himself preached to everyone without discrimination,  class or hate and told them to love everyone as if they were yourself or your family, no matter who they are or where they come from because even though turning the other cheek may get you struck again, love is the only way to get back love in return.  Hate will always only grow and be returned with more hate.