Why Did The Jewish Public Not Believe Series

Friday of the Fourth Week of Easter 2025

Why is it, do you think, that the vast majority of the Jews living in the early days of the Church found themselves unable to believe in Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God, the answer to their prayers and the fulfillment of the OT? After all, He had lived three years with the people of Galilee and Judea, performing healings everywhere and sharing teachings that seemed to round out the message of Torah. Here in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 13, Paul is summarizing the whole history of Israel held in the hands of God and saved by God for a mission to the whole world. Yesterday we heard the story up until John the Baptist told his listeners that he himself was only a preparatory messenger, not the Messiah. Today we heard Paul proclaiming Jesus as Son of God and Messiah, but one not recognized by the authorities, who then fulfilled all the prophecies of the Suffering Servant by murdering Him, after which God raised Him up as Messiah and Lord.

So why did the Jews largely turn their backs and even try to murder the messengers, while the Gentiles favorable to Judaism embraced Paul’s teachings? It has to do with Messianic expectations. Jesus, in the language of today, missed checking all the Messianic boxes. Was He pure and sinless? Check. Was He virgin-born? Check. Was He a direct descendant of King David through His earthly father? Check. Was He teaching dynamically in accord with Torah? Check.

But was He mustering an army? Nope. Was He inspiring hatred for the occupying Romans? Not at all. He preached love for enemies. Was He supported by the leaders in Israel? No. They were afraid His movement would make the Romans take away their power. Was the center of His popular movement in the City of David? No. He was clearly a Galilean, and some even doubted His birth in Bethlehem, and the Jerusalem crowd despised Him. And a “suffering servant of the Lord”? That was too much to stomach. It helps explain why the Jerusalem crowd shouted “crucify Him” when Jesus was arrested, even though He had done nothing deserving of any punishment.

Remember that even after the Resurrection, and forty days spent in the presence of the Lord in glory, when it came time for Christ to ascend to the Father so He could send the Holy Ghost, some of the disciples still doubted. We cannot be surprised that the Jews of that day did not jump right on the Way of Jesus bandwagon.

Today’s Gospel tells us that Jesus discerned trouble in their hearts, and so He assured the disciples at that Last Supper that He would prepare a place in the kingdom for all of them. They were already nervous. The next day’s catastrophe would be too much for most of them to bear. Let’s not think that we would have had more faith than they did, if we had been with Jesus from the start. Only John came back to be a witness with Christ’s mother to His death. That didn’t look to the observer like what we read in the second psalm. He was a king on a rude cross with a crown of thorns, not with a golden crown on Zion’s holy hill. He was not breaking Roman heads with a rod of iron, or dashing them to pieces like a broken pot. But He would on the third day rise from death, and if death is defeated, then we really do not have anything to fear if we are in Christ. Blessed be His Holy Name forever.