Barabbas

PRAYER OF CONSECRATION Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.  Abba, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Abba, we belong to you.  Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.  Luke 23:13–22 (NIV) Pilate called together the chief priests, the rulers and the people, and said to them, “You brought me this man as one who was inciting the people to rebellion. I have examined him in your presence and have found no basis for your charges against him. Neither has Herod, for he sent him back to us; as you can see, he has done nothing to deserve death. Therefore, I will punish him and then release him.” [Now he was obliged to release to them at the feast one prisoner.]1 But the whole crowd shouted, “Away with this man! Release Barabbas to us!” (Barabbas had been thrown into prison for an insurrection in the city, and for murder.) Wanting to release Jesus, Pilate appealed to them again. But they kept shouting, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” For the third time he spoke to them: “Why? What crime has this man committed? I have found in him no grounds for the death penalty. Therefore I will have him punished and then release him.” CONSIDER THIS Pilate addressed the chief priests, the rulers, and the people once more and repeated their fabricated charge that Jesus was a political revolutionary who had incited the people to rebellion against Caesar. Pilate had conducted an examination of Jesus earlier, and then he had tried to hand off his responsibility to Herod, but the tetrarch simply could find nothing of capital concern, or what was morally or politically troubling in Jesus, and so he sent him back. After all of this, Pilate reported to this mass of people now before him that he had examined Jesus and could discover nothing, absolutely nothing, to substantiate any charge that should warrant death. It was deja vu, and it was getting old by now, and repetition here resulted in an unmistakable and ongoing posture—at least as far as Pilate was concerned: Jesus was innocent. After this, the Roman governor declared that he would punish Jesus, through scourging as it turned out, and then he would release him. The problem with this last pronouncement, however, is that if Jesus was indeed innocent, as Pilate believed him to be, then why should he be punished at all? It is likely that this chief Roman official offered this course of action in order to satisfy, at least on some level, the bloodlust of the people. Seeing the gore and the open wounds of Jesus might evoke some measure of sympathy or even compassion among the Jews that could dissuade them from their intended course of action. At this point, Pilate still believed that Jesus would be ultimately released, and so he began to make preparations precisely for that with a suggestion, actually an offer.2 It is rare in a journey of this kind that we have to take up a textual consideration, what scholars call lower criticism (we have tried to keep such matters in the background), in order to figure out what’s going on. However, we are compelled to do so here. In most popular English translations of the Bible today, such as the NIV, NRSV, NJB, ESV, and CEB, there is no Luke 23:17! This verse, which helps us to understand the current context better in which Pilate will make an offer to the Jews for the release of Jesus, is simply missing. The reason for this omission is that this verse is not found in the most ancient manuscripts that we have. Scholars believe that a later copyist basically imported the substance of Mark 15:6 (“Now it was the custom at the festival to release a prisoner whom the people requested”) into our Lucan text.3 The KJV and the NASB are virtually alone, then, in including this verse, and we have reproduced the NASB translation as a part of our text in order to help readers come to greater understanding. At any rate, Pilate believed he had finally found a way out of his distressing predicament; he could get off the hook. A custom had emerged among the Jews, although this is not attested beyond the Gospels,4 that during the Passover celebration a prisoner would be set free. What the later scribe or copyist had inserted into our text as Luke: 23:17 stated: “Now he [meaning Pilate] was obliged to release to them at the feast one prisoner” (NASB). Convinced of the innocence of Jesus, Pilate perhaps believed that the crowd, during this celebratory feast of deliverance, would call out none other than the name of Jesus for release. Instead, they shouted: “Away with this man! Release Barabbas to us!” Luke informs us that Barabbas had been imprisoned for the crimes of both insurrection and murder—hardly a likely choice for clemency. Pilate was probably stunned. Though there were chief priests and rulers (the Sanhedrin) among them, “the whole crowd” had shouted: “Away with this man! Release Barabbas to us!” It’s possible that among this multitude were some of the very same people who had earlier lined the path in Jerusalem in the midst of shouts of “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” (Luke 19:38). Recall that the religious leaders and a contingent of Roman soldiers had arrested Jesus at night (22:53), perhaps because they wanted to avoid any interference with their efforts that a crowd of support for Jesus during the day might bring. Why, then, has this reversal of the crowd—from shouting “Hosanna!” (John 12:13a) to screaming “Crucify!”—occurred at all and in so little time? Though our text in Luke offers no clue to solving this puzzle, the three remaining Gospels do so in a very helpful manner. Matthew is typical of this material: “But the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus executed” (Matt. 27:20). The religious leaders, once again, were the principal actors here. Their powers of persuasion—working the crowd, if you will—have illuminated for us some uncomfortable truths playing out here, not only how easily the masses can be swayed to the ill will of a few, an unfortunate fact of life, but also how fickle in general human beings can be. Heedless self-interest can deflect virtually anything. Think of it: in just a few short days, Judas had betrayed Christ; Peter had denied him; and some of the people who had once celebrated Jesus—“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” (John 12:13b)—now abandoned him. Then to top it all, they went on to actually accuse him! But it gets worse. The insurrectionist and murderer that the whole crowd preferred over the humble, donkey-riding Jesus had a very interesting name, one that calls for comment: Barabbas. What’s in a name? Well, this particular name is composed of two key Hebrew words (transliterated): bar, meaning “son,” and abbas, meaning “father.” And so, if we add these two together we come up with “son of the father,” as the name of this rebel. Ambrose, a fourth-century church father, explored the significance of this distinct name in his Exposition of the Gospel of Luke as follows: “The interpretation of the name gives the likeness of the image, because Barabbas means ‘son of the father.’ He belongs to those to whom it is said, ‘You are of your father the devil.’ They [the religious leaders and the crowd] were about to choose the Antichrist as son of their father, rather than the Son of God.”5 To be sure, we believe that Ambrose was onto something here in pointing out how the crowd chose darkness over light, how they preferred evil over the good. Let’s make a brief comparison then between Barabbas, the people’s choice, and Jesus, the one who was despised and rejected. Barabbas and Jesus Compared Barabbas the sinner is set free . . . . . . Jesus the Holy One is arrested Barabbas the guilty is shown favor. . . . . . Jesus the Innocent is shown ruthlessness and cruelty Barabbas the rebel is offered mercy. . . . . . Jesus the Obedient One is offered condemnation Barabbas the criminal is chosen . . . . . . Jesus the Wonder Worker is rejected Barabbas the murderer is offered life . . . . . . Jesus the Word of Life is sentenced to death Even after the crowd had cried, “Release Barabbas,” Pilate was still intent on setting Jesus free and so he “appealed to them again.” But the crowd wouldn’t hear of it; they were determined by now to achieve their design and so “they kept shouting, ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’” Now, of all the dastardly ways of executing people, in which wickedness and cruelty are on full display, crucifixion has to be one of the most dreadful of all. The prescribed course of action in bringing about the death of the victim would be roughly as follows: first of all, a condemnation, along with a sentence, would be pronounced by the Roman authorities. Second, a flogging might take place at this point (as in the case of Jesus, see Matthew 27:26b–31) or it might occur at the place of execution itself, an execution, however, that would always happen outside the city.6 Third, the condemned would then be forced to carry a crossbeam behind the execution squad, usually made up of four soldiers,7 one of whom who would hold forth a sign announcing the reason for the execution (usually treason or desertion), so that onlookers would be warned of the terrible consequences of challenging Roman power and might. At the place of execution—as in the case of Jesus, Golgotha (the place of the skull)—the arms of the victim would either be nailed or tied to the crossbeam. This beam would then be attached to a perpendicular pole and the entire structure would be raised, set in the ground, so that the condemned would be forced to face onlookers, that is, whoever wanted to witness this public spectacle, friend or foe alike. And, finally, in attaching the crossbeam to the pole, the executioner might have done it in such a way that the victim’s knees would be bent so that breathing would become all the more difficult.8 Hanging on a cross in the heat of the day, let’s say from noon to three in the afternoon, subjected the condemned to so many kinds of torture: to exposure, to the sun beating down mercilessly with no chance for cover or shade; to the annoyances of biting insects that could not be shooed away, of itches that could not be scratched, and of sweat that could not be wiped; to deprivations of food and drink (some crucifixions lasted days) leading to agonizing hunger and thirst; to blood loss, weakness, and lightheadedness, even fainting, that resulted from both the prior flogging (with sharp pieces of stone on the ends of the whip) and from the nailing to the crossbeam with piercing spikes; and, finally, as a culminating effect of all of this gruesome punishment, the crucified would succumb to exhaustion in which the entire body was spent, worn out, in its ongoing struggle to move the diaphragm just a little (very difficult to do in these circumstances) simply in order to breathe. Many of those crucified by Rome died of exhaustion, aggravated by blood loss, that together resulted in asphyxiation. The heroic battle to breathe would ultimately be lost. Death followed almost as a mercy but a mercy of a very strange sort. All of this, however, as horrific as it is, especially in the case of Jesus, constitutes simply one dimension (the physical) of the awful realities of crucifixion. We shall consider two more dimensions of this vicious practice in the chapters ahead, which will entail even more suffering. But for now, we have to turn back to the religious leaders, who had been busy working the crowd, for one final observation. When the religious leaders had first brought Jesus to Pilate from the house of Caiaphas, the high priest, they seemed especially concerned about putting Jesus to death. Noting their powerlessness in this area, they even told the governor: “we have no right to execute anyone” (John 18:31). Another, even more dark, motivation might have been present as well. Thinking through our text does seem to imply it. It’s something hidden in plain sight, so to speak. Consider this: the crowd that was continually calling out, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” was obviously made up of chief priests and religious leaders (the Sanhedrin) as well. Now these same leaders were well acquainted with the manner of Roman crucifixion that entailed affixing the victim to a pole for public display as noted earlier. Add to this piece of information that these same religious leaders surely knew their Bible very well, the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) in particular, especially those passages, as found in Deuteronomy, for example, that related to the curses of God. Do we see the picture that is now beginning to emerge once we bring these two facts together: the Roman practice of execution and Jewish scriptural knowledge? Just what did the Torah declare in a verse that those religious leaders shouting, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” before Pilate surely knew? Wait for it: “Anyone who is hung on a pole is under God’s curse” (Deut. 21:23b). There may have been far more here than we have imagined. THE PRAYER Lord Jesus, I receive your innocence for my guilt and your obedience in place of my rebellion. I cherish your standing in my place—indeed hanging on a cross, though you yourself knew no sin. Help me this day and always to choose light over darkness, good over evil, the way of your kingdom over the ways of this world.