Abstract
Writers in the ancient world did not waste words. The scarcity of pens, ink, parchment or papyrus made these materials expensive, so being concise mattered. Not only did authors avoid wordiness, but to save parchment they wrote without spaces between words, or punctuation. If you were producing scrolls to be circulated within a dispersed community, the shorter, and therefore lighter, the scroll could be, the easier it was to transport.
In the densely packed narrative we’ve heard today – featuring individuals and crowds, Romans and Judeans, the powerful and the outcast – each group or character identifies Jesus differently. Let’s retrace our steps, considering the identities discerned by those actors, their various responses to the Jesus they see.
First, of course, is Pilate, governor of Judea, Idumea, and Samaria; if you drew maps of the Holy Land in your school days, picture it as the middle and lower areas of Palestine, plus some land south of the Dead Sea. Pilate was the Romans’ top man in Palestine, overseeing both the tax-gathering requirements of Rome, and keeping the peace in a mixed and highly volatile population. His methods were often blunt, brutal, and bloody. Presented with Jesus, Pilate’s first question is inevitably political: ‘Are you the King of the Judeans?’ Note, he does not ask if Jesus is king of the ‘Jews’, because there was no separate term to identify those who practised the religion that was then transforming from the worship of ancient Israel into modern Judaism. Pilate asks a political question, because he wants to know if Jesus is a threat to his rule in Jerusalem and the surrounding province. Astonished at Jesus’ silence in the face of his accusers’ charges, Pilate concludes that whatever challenge this prisoner presents to the religious authorities, he is no threat to the peace of the empire. Pilate had more than enough work to do, without being dragged into petty local disputes, and would have been happy to dismiss the matter immediately, freeing Jesus as part of official recognition of the feast of Passover.
Bearing in mind what we said earlier, about the importance of brevity in ancient writing, how odd that our author invests 27 words (in Greek) in an apparently throw away line, about an unnamed character, to whom no other biblical author refers. Matthew’s gospel is the only one to tell us of Pilate’s wife and her dream. True, it tells us no more than the barest of bare details, that she had a dream about Jesus, which she found very disturbing, and sent a message to her husband warning him to have nothing to do with a man she describes as innocent / upright / honest / righteous / good – the word is dikaiō, which can mean any and all of those things. She believes Jesus is innocent but, instead of pleading for his release, she urges her husband to have nothing to do with him.
Spurred on, possibly(?), by his wife’s note, Pilate tries again to release this seemingly harmless prisoner, but the crowd demands Barabbas instead. Are these the people who, less than a week earlier, cheered as Jesus rode into the city? We can’t be sure, but it seems unlikely, even knowing how quickly a mob can turn. Remember, this trial took place a few days after Jesus overturned the tables of moneychangers and merchants in the temple courts, probably to the delight of the poor and the ne-‘er-do-wells among the watching crowds. The middle class tradesmen involved, dependent as they were upon the good will of the temple bureaucracy, and still smarting from that affront to their dignity, could easily have been persuaded to side with the Sanhedrin, to yell for Jesus’ blood. These were established businessmen, preserving what their fathers had passed to them, the businesses they hoped to leave to their own sons. Better, surely, for them and their children to bear the blood of this insignificant rabble-rouser, than risk their livelihoods if he went free?
It says Pilate saw there was nothing he could do. Nothing? Really? With a reputation for violence second only to that of Herod the Great, and several hundred soldiers on hand in case of festival-related emergencies, there was nothing Pilate could to about a potential riot? Perhaps there was nothing more he could be bothered to do, other than wash his hands of the affair and send Jesus to be flogged in preparation for the crowd’s chosen method of execution.
How ghoulish the soldiers are. The man is already half dead, after flogging yet they see fit to mock him. Bullyboys of the first century superpower, they pretend Jesus is really king. They see a king fit for this tiny conquered state, before whom Rome and its army cannot imagine bowing, since he wages peace not war, reconciliation not violence. The soldiers have forgotten any history they may have known, how empires fall, be they Greek, Egyptian, or possibly, one unimaginable day, Roman.
Nailed to a cross, lifted high for all to see, naked and bleeding, people still look at Jesus, seeing what they expect to find. The passers-by throw taunts about power to destroy and rebuild the temple. For them, he is just another wonderworker whose wonders have fallen flat. The prisoners on either side of Jesus have given up on all things supernatural, religion has lost its meaning, provides no answers to their questions. They have no time for any god that fails to fulfil their earthbound dreams.
Scribes, priests, and elders loiter a while. They know who the real religious authorities are around here, and it’s Them. The sign over his head infuriates them, saying that this northerner, this Galilean, is King of the Judeans, but Pilate refuses to amend it, no matter how it offends their ethnic and class sensitivities. Still, it’s obvious God’s not on Jesus’ side; why would God want to disturb the smooth running of his temple? They pat each other on the back as they move away, back to the comfort of sacrifice and ritual.
A desolate scene. Jesus cries aloud, dies, and the earth is shaken. The few remaining soldiers look up with dawning horror, and recognition – this IS the Son of God!
But which Son of God did they see? Did they see the fullness of Christ’s challenge to both them and us?
Jesus stood before Pilate, who feared a political threat, and that’s what Jesus was and is. If we follow Jesus, we put loyalty to him above all political commitments. My country right or wrong can never be the watchword of a Christian. Jesus troubles the powerful, the bully, the violent, and his followers do likewise.
Pilate’s wife saw an innocent man, and tried to avoid deciding either way, wanting to walk a neutral. But here can be no neutrality with Christ. By doing nothing, we effectively reject him, saying ‘No’ to life, forgiveness, and the call to walk his way.
The merchants saw Jesus as a threat to business, his concern for the poor demanding they put the needs of others above their own desires. You and I face the same choice, every day, with how we use our money. Whose needs come first? Do we care more for future generations of our own families than for the children of the poor or the stranger?
Do we believe might is right, that violence can end violence? Jesus shows by his cross that such a hope is wrong, is utterly hopeless. Violence fuels violence, and peace comes only by peaceful means. Peaceful actions frighten us, making us vulnerable, naked and exposed.
Have we lost belief in God, trusting only in science and the elusory promises of our twenty-first century world? How many centuries must we delude ourselves, thinking humans are the real gods, only to find that in the end we have no power and rule nothing? Jesus is more than a wonderworker to those who love him, but the wonders that he works are rarely the flashy ones we think we want.
You and I stand today before the Son of God crucified. Who is he to you: political activist, urging us on in our programmes for social justice? Is he the revolutionary, calling us to stand up for the poor and the voiceless, protesting and campaigning to make his Kingdom visible? Do you see the innocent one, punished for our sins, God utterly at one with suffering humanity, an example of the cost and ultimate reward of love? Is Christ most visible to you in the face of the prisoner of conscience, those persecuted for their faith, for their dedication to truth? Are you looking for the wonderworker who will turn your life around?
Jesus was, and is, all these things, and we must recognise and decide for him in all areas of life. Those who know him in one aspect need him in the others too. None of us can walk by, look away from the figure on the cross, and say that the scene is meaningless for us or demands nothing of us.