It never should have happened to a good Jewish man. At sundown, the beginning of this day as the Jews reckon it, he gathers with his friends for the holy meal of Passover, an act quite pious and proper. By the end of this day, at tomorrow's sundown, he's dead, executed as a traitor. If he really was faithful to his religion and innocent of crime, as even Pilate admitted, how could he be tried and found guilty? And if he really was God's Son, the Messiah, as his disciples claimed, how could he die, as a criminal? It's no wonder the gawkers who stand at the cross beat their breasts. Confusion reigned! The world turned upside down!

On this Passover evening before his death, life seemed so rational and so reassuring. God was on their side, these people of Jerusalem. He always had been. He wou…