"His Blood Is On Us"
Sitting in the midst of Matthew’s passion narrative is a verse that has been referred to as the “darkest and hardest verse in this gospel.” [1] The infamous “blood libel” (Matthew 27:25) has certainly had a dark and unfortunate past in the history of the church. The worst of which involves this verse being used to support the anti-Semitic agenda of those who would want to point the finger towards the Jewish people assigning them perpetual responsibility for the death of Jesus. So powerful has this been that when Mel Gibson produced his The Passion of the Christ in 2004 this verse was spoken in Aramaic (by the Jewish priests) but deliberately omitted from the English subtitles. At the outset such a misinterpretation of this verse must be rejected outright.