February 25, 2018
How many of you remember the TV game show, To Tell the Truth? It is a game where three panelists all pretend to be the same person, a person with an unusual job or skill. One of them actually is that person, the other two lie as best they can to convince the judges that they are indeed who they claim to be. The judges seek to determine who is really who they are claiming to be by asking pertinent questions. I was reminded of this by the exchange between Pilate and Jesus on the day of his crucifixion. As you may recall, my Lenten series is about people and events from the last week in Jesus' life. Pilate is a man we don't hear many sermon's about but who is the only person other than the mother of Jesus mentioned in the Apostle's creed. “Suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, dead and buried.” Let's start with a brief examination of what life would have been like for this governor of the Roman Province of Israel. Then we'll look with more detail at his interaction with Jesus.
When I try to delve into the backgrounds of the biblical characters, it means a bit of study and research along with some imagination, intuition and logic. There was no facebook for them to tweet their thoughts and actions, no news channel keeping record of the daily news in Jerusalem. So we have four gospel accounts and a few secular writers, notably Josephus, who give us the bare bones of the times. For Pilate, history confirms that he was assigned governor of Jerusalem in 26 AD. Before we meet him in the gospels, there are some events recorded by Josephus that may be helpful in understanding the man. Pilate originally entered the city with the Roman standards bearing the image of Caesar, the “divine” ruler. This blasphemy didn't sit well with the Jews. Another time he raided the temple treasury to build an aqueduct in the city. His greatest error in dealing with Jerusalem, he placed golden shields in the city with inscriptions of various gods. Josephus writes about that incident, “Immediately multitudes of excited Jews hastened to... petition him for the removal of the obnoxious ensigns. For five days he refused to hear them, but on the sixth he took his place on the judgment seat, and when the Jews were admitted he had them surrounded with soldiers and threatened them with instant death unless they ceased to trouble him with the matter. The Jews thereupon flung themselves on the ground and bared their necks, declaring that they preferred death to the violation of their laws. Pilate, unwilling to slay so many, yielded the point and removed the ensigns."
(The Standards- Josephus, War 2.169-174, Antiq 18.55-59)
Pilate had what could be called an uneasy truce with the leaders of Jerusalem. He had made his mistakes, but he also gave them some freedom in their governance and worship. Here's a little intuitive thought I'd add here; don't you suppose the Jewish leaders had some leverage over Pilate? If he slipped up again, these reports would be forwarded and maybe Pilate's term be abruptly ended? We can't romanticize the era. Politics played a key role at every level. Even the priests weren't above using whatever leverage they had to promote their positions.
With these mistakes in mind, they came to Pilate from a position, not of power, but not of weakness either. Pilate had plenty of political interest in keeping the Jewish leaders happy.
And so we look at Good Friday. The leaders have had Jesus arrested, tried by the Sanhedrin, sentenced to death. But, Roman law prohibited them from carrying out the death penalty. They needed the governor to condemn the prisoner. The gospels have multiple pages about the events of that day. I chose a very few verses to share to give us an outline of what happened that day, and you may notice the hints of To Tell the Truth here.
Then Pilate entered the Praetorium again, called Jesus, and said to Him, “Are You the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight, so that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now My kingdom is not from here.” Pilate therefore said to Him, “Are You a king (or not?)?” Jesus answered, “You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.” Pilate said to Him, “What is truth?” And when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews, and said to them, “I find no fault in Him at all.
After having Jesus flogged, Pilate sought to release him but the leaders insisted on a crucifixion.
So Pilate again said to Jesus, “Where are You from?” But Jesus gave him no answer. Then Pilate said to Him, “Are You not speaking to me? Do You not know that I have power to crucify You, and power to release You?” Jesus answered, “You could have no power at all against Me unless it had been given you from above. Therefore the one who delivered Me to you has the greater sin.”
From then on Pilate sought to release Him. But they cried out, “Away with Him, away with Him! Crucify Him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar!” Then he delivered Him to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus and led Him away.
It is quite a story; an innocent man, a judge knowing he is innocent, a mob forcing the death penalty. The idea of truth is mighty important in determining guilt or innocence, but is ignored here. We promise “to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” But truth, that idea of facts and nothing but the facts, that temporal truth-telling is not what Jesus means by truth. Oh, we understand that the gospel includes being honest; the ten commandments have the not-lying clause, number 9 “Thou shall not bear false witness...” This is not truth Jesus is speaking of when he told Pilate, “Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.” Let me try to explain what this use of truth means. Pastor Truman and I are sharing a reading exercise for Lent, we are reading the same two books as a discipline. One is Walk With Jesus by Henri Nouwen. As I read my section for Monday, I ran across this paragraph. Listen as he explains truth as Jesus used it, “The truth of which Jesus speaks is not a thesis, or a doctrine, or an intellectual explanation of reality. It is the very relationship, the life-giving intimacy between himself and the Father of which he wants us to partake. Pilate could not hear that nor can anyone who is not connected to Jesus. Anyone, however, who enters into communion with Jesus will receive the Spirit of truth-the Spirit who frees us from the compulsions and obsessions of our contemporary society, who makes us belong to God's own inner life, and allows us to live in the world with open hearts and attentive minds... Jesus' death, instead of being the execution of a death sentence, became the way to the full truth, leading to full freedom.”
Truth is about relationship; communion with Jesus. I left this banner up because it is all about relationship. The way is Jesus. The Truth is Jesus. Life is through Jesus. Pilate was in the presence of Jesus and missed this particular truth. Oh, his curiosity was piqued. He was kind of like the judges on To Tell the Truth. But his questions did nothing to find the deeper truth. “Do I look like a Jew? Your people turned you over, what did you do? “Are you a king or not?” “Won't you answer me? Don't you know I have the authority to pardon you or crucify you?” Pilate was looking for intellectual truth; Jesus was offering life-giving truth.
Pilate then was faced with a choice. Do what is right or do what is expedient. Another venture into what might have been but is not recorded. Pilate had probably heard of Jesus. I am using Max Lucado's And the Angel's Were Silent to help my imagination of the events. He writes, “Pilate reflects on (what he'd heard). 'The strange story of the man over in Bethany. Dead for, what was it? Three, no four days. This is the rube they said called him up from the grave. And that gathering in Bethsaida. Numbered up to several thousand...they wanted to make him a king. Oh, yes, he fed the crowd. We could use a king...a king who make sense out of this mess.'”
He was interested. But not interested enough to truly discover who Jesus was. Pilate was faced with two decisions that day. One, would he stand up for what is right and release Jesus despite the great pressure to crucify him? We know he caved on that one. Second, what would he do with this man who claimed to be an other-worldly king? “Where do you come from?” he asked Jesus. Pilate was a man with authority, but he recognized a different sort of authority in Jesus. “Don't you know I have the authority to pardon you?” And the response of Jesus, “You would have no authority over me unless it had been given you from above.” That seemed to reach Pilate as John says, “From then on, Pilate tried to release him.” Tried to release him. But he caved in to the pressure of the crowd, who were pressured by the leaders to get rid of this troublemaker once and for all.
There were other interesting tidbits we don't have time to get into, but are worth mentioning. Pilate's wife, generally called Claudia in accounts of this day but her name is never given, she tried to persuade Pilate to let Jesus go because of a dream she'd had. Pilate sent Jesus to the puppet king, King Herod, ruler over Galilee. He hoped that Herod would handle this affair. But Herod simply questioned Jesus, hoping to see some miracles, then sent him back to Pilate. Finally, Pilate dredged up an old custom of releasing a prisoner at Passover. He offered the choice to between releasing Jesus or an insurrectionist and murderer named Barabbas...Barabbas was chosen. In the end, Pilate did get a jab in at the Jewish leaders by posting a sign on the cross, “The King of the Jews”.
So he came close to getting the choices right. He tried to release Jesus. He gave Jesus the title of King. But he never was able to answer for himself the question he asked the Jewish leaders, “What will I do with this man, Jesus?”
That is the question we are all called on to answer, “What will I do with Jesus?” We have many of the same choices that Pilate faced. We can wash our hands of him and go on with our lives as though we have no responsibility and no call to relationship with God. We can keep asking questions...and never listen to the answers; our relationship never goes beyond the “Who are you” stage. We can try to make our answer yes by working hard in our church activities...and keep Jesus at arm's length. We can say the right words, proclaim Jesus as King and fail to ever know Jesus.
Our truth is that Jesus is King; that he does have authority over the things of this world, and that we live under that authority. Jesus said in today's gospel, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” Living in the truth of Christ means sacrifice, it means serving others. But it also means living as a child of God; the brother or sister of Jesus by faith!
Pontius Pilate was in the very room with the savior. He was able to ask all the questions he wanted; but he rejected Jesus as a Jewish religious king. Four times he tried to release Jesus, instead, four times he listened to the voice of the world. The voice of compromise for the sake of peace. The voice of expediency instead of doing what is right. The voice of politics in order to advance his own career. The voice of conscience was drowned out by all the other voices.
But we don't get into that room with Jesus. We build our faith on the words of others. And as Paul wrote in today's Romans passage, “For this reason it (righteousness) depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace.” I haven't used that word yet today. Grace is what Jesus offers as King of the Jews, our savior and king.
Our choice is made by faith. Reason figures in as well; it has to make sense. Pilate had to make his choice. He climbed on the fence and waffled. Then he chose to wash his hands of the case. He chose to send Jesus away. He chose to listen to the voice of the people rather than to the voice of Jesus. Today, listen to the voice of the Sprit calling you into relationship with Jesus!
The best record we have of what happened to Pilate comes again from the writing of the historian Josephus who wrote, “It is worthy of note that Pilate himself, who was governor in the time of our Savior, is reported to have fallen into such misfortunes under Caius, (an man who became emperor after Pilate's time in Judea)... that he was forced to become his own murderer and executioner; and thus divine vengeance, as it seems, was not long in overtaking him.” (Flavius Josephus. Antiquities of the Jews 18.4.2.)
There is the legend that Claudia became a Christian. And that legend says that Pilate's eternal home is a mountain lake where he daily surfaces, still plunging his hands into the water...trying to wash away his guilt...not for the evil he did but for the kindness he didn't do.
Let us learn the lesson from Pilate that there is a choice to be made and the right choice is to trust in Jesus as Savior and Lord. We know the truth...Jesus is Lord and Savior, and that truth is life; a Spirit-lead life right now and life in the presence of God forever and ever. Amen.
He Never Said a Mumblin' Word 95 PH