Jesus died on the cross as a political prisoner, a victim of death penalty—a God who was sentenced to death without due process. He was killed precisely because his teachings were considered radical, a threat to the religious-political authority of the Sadducees and Pharisees.

To deny the politics of Jesus's death is to deny the political context of his time—a time of numerous struggles between various Jewish sects over doctrine and political power as exacerbated and in the midst of Roman imperialist occupation and the suffering of the common people.

The Sadducees were a more conservative and aristocratic Jewish faction which often coordinated with the Greeks—and later on, the Romans—to retain their elevated social, economic, and political status in Jewish society and were hated by the masses because of this.

While the Gospels portray the Pharisees as arrogant hypocrites, they were popular among the people as a more middle-class oriented (albiet more legalistic) faction who imposed that Jewish law must be obeyed even in everyday life—in opposition to the teachings of the Sadducees.

While the two factions were in constant conflict, they both feared the popularity of Jesus among the people; unlike them, Jesus lived with the masses and grounded his teachings on social justice even in opposition to legalistic and traditional interpretations of Jewish law.

The Sadducees feared Jesus was inciting a rebellion (some Bible scholars suggest he was popular with the Zealots, a radical Jewish faction that called for armed rebellion against Rome and its collaborators) and they feared a total Roman crackdown on Jews and losing their power.

The entry of Jesus to Jerusalem as a king was deemed a blasphemous act of rebellion by the Sadducees (though there were many figures that claimed to be the Messiah in his time) while Jesus angered the Pharisees for his emphasis on compassion over obedience to the law.

Though it must be noted that Jesus did not directly oppose Roman imperialism in a confrontational sense, which is why the people of Jerusalem eventually rejected him when Pilate let them choose between Jesus or the insurrectionist Barabbas during the Paschal Pardon.

The death of Jesus IS political, especially in recognizing the economic and historical of his time where the people suffered under the burden of violent imperialists, heavy taxes, and constant political struggle—and the execution of Jesus became the site of contestation.

Today, we suffer under heavy taxes brought by TRAIN, the hypocrisy of government officials who cozy to imperialists like China and the US while letting the people suffer under fascist and authoritarian policies and rampant state violence.

If the Church teaches that Jesus is in each and every suffering people, Jesus is among the bodies killed in the drug war, among the activists murdered by the state, among the homeless, the landless farmers, contractual workers, among the abused and discriminated women and LGBT+.

If Jesus is in every suffering Filipino, then let us remember the words of Eman Lacaba: "Awakened, the masses are Messiah."

Sa ilalim ng pasistang rehimeng ito, wala tayong maaasahang Bathala o manunubos—ang ating kaligtasa'y nasa ating pagkilos.