Friday like no other

"Turn the other cheek", he said. "Go the extra mile." And when it came to his own turn, he did.

Mind you, it wasn't a universal, timeless call to inaction or passivity. It had a context – where the nationalist agenda of armed resistance to the occupying army was actually a pagan way of doing things. Using Caesar's methods to kick out Caesar might have seemed a good idea to some, but it wasn't the way to make Israel the light of the world. It certainly wasn't the way God's rule was going to arrive. But it most definitely would be the route to national calamity. "If only you could have seen", he said, "what would bring you peace."

So it's really ironic that, when he was executed, it was as a revolutionary – that's what the charge sheet over his head implied. Of course, the authorities also needed a different charge to satisfy the general population, who rather admired a revolutionary. The conviction they secured was one of blasphemy, and that did the job just fine.

They're two of the charges that still produce most vilification. One half of the world wants to execute all blasphemers. The other half wants to kill all terrorists. Neither has any intention of coming to terms with the possibility that the meek might inherit the earth. But the one who was executed, meekly, on this day in history, for being both a blasphemer and a terrorist, was indeed blazing a trail for doing just that.