However it came about, a confrontation occurred at the temple.  It appears Roman troops applied lethal force and some from the same province as Jesus paid with blood that coagulated with the sacrificial blood of the temple rites. 

If there were some who thought Jesus' own blood would boil at news that guys from his "hood" were cut down this way they were disappointed.  Jesus broke an unwritten rule that expects blind loyalty on the basis of tribe, ethnicity, or address.  Even today when a guy from your block or your shift or your team gets hassled, one common expectation is that others from the same class will take it as personal insult and jump to the defense.  Gangs operate this way.

Because Jesus was a Galilean, the tale-bearers expected Jesus to either exonerate these casualties and blast Pilate or explain how these guys were "bad apples" and got what was coming to them for being worse sinners than the majority of generally upstanding Galileans.

People expected Jesus to take a side and either stand up for his "home boys" or join the prevailing opinion in most other quarters that Galileans were largely low-class, backwater hooligans.    

Jesus did neither.  He would not participate in uncritical allegiance to people just because they hale from a particular place.  Nor would Jesus rid himself of association with those of bad reputation and renounce the place or people from which He himself had come.  The occasion was not one for judgment but for sorrow.

How quickly we leap to conclusions.  Prejudice, class warfare, snootiness, condescension, racism, chauvinism, and every form of self-justification over against others show that the verdict is in.  The bad guy is somebody else- Pilate, the Galileans, or maybe even God who on a different occasion let a tower fall on eighteen folks in Siloam.

Doesn't somebody have to bear the blame?  Either those eighteen tower fatalities were warranted because the people were bad or God was bad for not getting them out from under it.  

When some told Jesus about the bloody Galilean incident, they expected him to say who was in the wrong.  When Jesus added the other big news story about the Siloam tower and its death toll, He understood where they were coming from- a forgone conclusion that somebody had either simply gotten what was coming to them or were innocent and didn't deserve it.  The whole line of reasoning is flawed.

Laying blame and taking sides is a universal human pastime that gets us nowhere.  It focuses on an end point instead of the beginning point.  It draws lines and points fingers.  It passes judgment and vindicates by degrees.

Only Jesus gets it right.

The beginning point for every one of us is that we are not one jot or tittle better than the most miserable sinner.  Whether self-inflicted or caused by another, no blood from our veins deserves even the slightest sympathy from God.  Even if we would or could drain ourselves in suffering, toil, or even forfeiture of life, we would still be good-for-nothing offenders.

To maintain that we don't deserve having a ton of bricks descend on us or that having a Roman butcher snuff out our life isn't fair completely ignores our beginning point as reprobates and sinners.  We deserve nothing.  We merit nothing.  We have no call to criticize others or pass around blame.  We don't warrant any slack because of our skin color, our "good behavior," our hometown or reputation.

It is time to consider nothing but our own contemptibility which has nothing to do with the company we keep or the prestige attached to our address.  It does no good to allege all those class-A celebrities at last night's Oscars are no higher than dirt when I myself am chief of sinners.  It does no good to grant sainthood to little girls just because they are left dead by their abusers when I am no better than the coward who commits such crimes.  Who am I to say another "has suffered enough" or "didn't deserve it" or "surely is a decent person."

Least of all should I ever clear myself at the expense of people like Pontius Pilate who one day would wash his hands of Jesus' blood.  That blood is on my hands.

Let me repent.

Let me plead guilty for my offenses and claim no rights when I have none but to perish.

Once acknowledged and confessed, my sins being scarlet, I discover blood on my hands, but it is not my blood.  I have Jesus' blood on my hands, but not just on my hands.  I have his blood on my head and my heart as well.  His blood, not mingled with the sacrifice but as the one Sacrifice shed for all.

The man from Galilee, against whom were all our offenses, took our place, and was not ashamed to call us brothers (Heb. 2:11).  He came, not with judgment and finger-pointing but with tears and sorrow.

Such sorrow was not merely for the tragedy of falling stones at Siloam or flashing steel in the temple, but over the greater heartbreak and ruin of my sins.  For the forgiveness of them all, Jesus bore the cross.  He was slain in Jerusalem for Jewish Galileans and Gentile Romans alike.  He endured the judgment of God against sin which was not his own yet which He assumed for us.  It came down upon him like a ton of bricks, like towers falling, so that all of us under the devastation of our sin could rise again by sins forgiven and fear no more.

Yes, his blood is on our hands, but no longer because we put it there.  His blood is there because He chose to yield it ... to give it as His saving answer to our wreckage and repentance, and precisely so we do not perish but have everlasting life." (John 3:16)