That is what has so thoroughly gripped me since seeing this movie: My sins (albeit long after the fact) made this necessary. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa...
Don't know how I'm going to handle the Good Friday service...
I realize that your motives in making such a statement are laudatory in trying to diffuse the responsibility of those who actually put Jesus to death. But we must be careful of taking Christ's death out of space-time history into such never-neverland of 'timelessness'.
His death and resurrection were actually events in time. They occurred at a specific place and at a specific time with real people and real nails and a real cross. You and I clearly weren't there.
It is fair to say "they were just like us" or "I would have had the same predilections that they did" -- if that's the way you feel. But to say "I persecuted Jesus" is to confuse the message of the cross and resurrection of Christ.
By the way, don't forget that Jesus' followers did not kill Him. There were those in that day - with the same nature as you and I -- who followed Him faithfully to cross, to the grave and to the uttermost parts of the world.