Pilate

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.  John 18:28–38 (NIV) Then the Jewish leaders took Jesus from Caiaphas to the palace of the Roman governor. By now it was early morning, and to avoid ceremonial uncleanness they did not enter the palace, because they wanted to be able to eat the Passover. So Pilate came out to them and asked, “What charges are you bringing against this man?” “If he were not a criminal,” they replied, “we would not have handed him over to you.” Pilate said, “Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.” “But we have no right to execute anyone,” they objected. This took place to fulfill what Jesus had said about the kind of death he was going to die. Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?” “Is that your own idea,” Jesus asked, “or did others talk to you about me?” “Am I a Jew?” Pilate replied. “Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it you have done?” Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.” “You are a king, then!” said Pilate. Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” “What is truth?” retorted Pilate. With this he went out again to the Jews gathered there and said, “I find no basis for a charge against him.” CONSIDER THIS After a belabored interrogation at night, Jesus was taken from the house of Caiaphas to the palace of the Roman governor in the morning. The fifth of the procurators of Judea, Pontius Pilate was initially installed in AD 26 during the reign of Tiberius. Normally the Roman governor would reside in Caesarea Maritima, but since a Jewish feast was approaching, Pilate made his way, along with his troops, to the praetorium, or palace, that was likely located north of the temple area. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (AD 37–100) noted the troubled relationship between Pilate and the Jewish nation in three separate incidents.1 By now, with Jesus soon to appear before him, and with the Jewish leaders so upset, Pilate knew he had to tread carefully. Because the Passover feast was approaching, and the Jews did not want to be defiled by entering the home of a Gentile (and thereby become unable to celebrate the feast), they refused to enter the praetorium. The Mishnah, a commentary on various oral traditions going back to the time of Ezra (around 458 BC), took its final form in the third century AD. It expressed this concern of defilement in terms of the Pentateuch (the first five books of Moses), the book of Numbers in particular: “But some of them could not celebrate the Passover on that day because they were ceremonially unclean on account of a dead body” (9:6a). The specific issue in terms of this Roman setting had to do with the belief, likely held by first-century Jews, that the homes of Gentiles were unclean because its members “throw abortions down the drains.”2 The solidified violence, as well as the sheer unholiness of this practice, were simply nonstarters. Another significant issue here has to do with the timing of the celebration of the upcoming feast. Since Jesus had already eaten a Passover meal with his disciples, where Judas had been poised to betray him, then this fact raises the question of proper sequencing. This matter can be resolved by the observation on verse 28 of our text that Chrysostom, a Greek church father, made in the late fourth century: But what does it mean, “that they might eat the Passover”? He had already done this on the first day of unleavened bread. Either he calls the whole feast “the Passover” or means that they were then keeping the Passover, while Jesus had done so one day sooner, reserving his own sacrifice for the preparation day, when the Passover was celebrated of old.3 In terms of the temporal reckoning of the Gospel of John, then, Jesus would be on the cross at the same time that the Passover lambs were being slain.4 He, therefore, had to celebrate the feast earlier. Respectful of Jewish sensibilities with regard to matters of ceremonial cleanliness, Pilate went out to the Jewish leaders, leaving Jesus inside the praetorium. In the conversations that followed, Pilate went back and forth between Jesus and the Jewish leaders and he, therefore, at least in some sense, functioned as an intermediary. In addressing the crowd in front of the Roman headquarters Pilate, no doubt, raised his voice in order to be heard: “What charges are you bringing against this man?” The reply the Jewish leadership offered: “If he were not a criminal . . . we would not have handed him over to you,” actually evaded Pilate’s frank and specific question. That is, it was a reply that was not an answer at all, for no specific crime was mentioned. There was nothing here that warranted the attention of Rome. Likely sensing then that this was a matter of Jewish, not Roman, law Pilate responded: “Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.” When the Jewish leaders objected to Pilate that they “have no right to execute anyone,” in one sense this statement was true; but in another sense, it was false. Granted the ius gladii, or the right of the sword, was zealously guarded by Rome in terms of conquered peoples; as the Roman governor, Pilate, and he alone, held the imperium or the supreme power. That much was clear. Nevertheless, there were some notable exceptions to this policy as, for example, later on when Stephen, the first martyr of the church, was stoned to death by Jews (Acts 7:54–60) or when King Herod had James Zebedee, the brother of John, put to death by the sword (12:1–2). Moreover, if Gentiles had ever dared to enter certain parts of the temple (the Court of Women and the Court of Israel, for example), then the Jews themselves could execute for this capital offense.5 That also was clear. So then, there appears to be much more going on here. Our text is fraught with subtext. Not only did the Jewish leaders likely fear the people, given the growing popularity of Jesus (and they, therefore, refused to take matters into their own hands), but they also evidently were not satisfied with the usual method of Jewish executions—stoning, strangling, beheading,  and the like. Given the hatred they had already expressed toward Jesus on several occasions, the Jewish religious leadership might have preferred the Roman manner of execution as well—nearly naked and nailed to a tree. Having already judged Jesus guilty of the worst religious offense of all—blasphemy—they likely favored this method of execution because it was especially degrading and humiliating, far more than stoning or beheading, which were neither as public nor as long. Earlier Caiaphas, as the chief priest, had asked Jesus a religious question: “Tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God” (Matt. 26:63b). Now Pilate, as the Roman governor, posed a political one: “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus evidently recognized this shift, and so he questioned Pilate himself: “Is that your own idea . . . or did others talk to you about me?” Pilate would, of course, be concerned about any claim to dominion over areas or over a people that Rome considered under its own authority. But Rome would care nothing about a religious charge, one of blasphemy. This dialogue, then, suggests that the religious leaders possibly had already spoken to Pilate and had translated their original religious concerns into more manageable political ones that would draw the attention of any Roman leader. At any rate, Pilate questioned Jesus further, expressing some frustration with the direction of the conversation: “Am I a Jew? . . . Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me.” Then he added in order to get things back on track: “What is it you have done?” The response of Jesus to this last question of Pilate—“What is it you have done?”—is remarkable in that he ignored it. Instead, Jesus went back to the earlier question of the governor: “Are you the king of the Jews?” Even here, however, there was a twist. In his reply, Jesus did not directly address the issue of kingship, Pilate’s chief concern, but of kingdom: “My kingdom is not of this world.” Then Jesus added, no doubt for emphasis, “my kingdom is from another place.” What does that mean? Showing little interest in this manner of reply, of otherworldly kingdoms and the like, Pilate directed the conversation once more back to his original concern: not of kingdoms but of kingship—that is, here-and-now rule that could possibly cause him trouble: “You are a king, then!” Earlier, Caiaphas had demanded, under the power of an oath, that Jesus tell him if he were “the Messiah, the Son of God” (Matt. 26:63). Jesus responded very carefully, given this difficult context, and stated a clear fact: “You have said so” (v. 64a). In a similar fashion, Jesus answered the implied question of Pilate: “You are a king, then!” once again by being both careful and descriptively accurate: “You say that I am a king.” Such a cautious reply, with its measure of affirmation, suggested that what Jesus and Pilate had in mind about kingship were very different things. After this foray, Jesus turned the conversation toward the reason he had been born and why he had come into the world (see also John 1:9–13) in the first place. Simply put, it was to “testify to the truth.” In a much different context earlier, that is, among his own disciples, Jesus had claimed: “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6a). However, Pilate would have little appreciation of how a person, with an emphasis on a proper relationship with him, could possibly be the truth. Relationships and their careful ordering were things unseen, nebulous—and therefore, for many people, largely out of mind. What really mattered, in the mind of someone like Pilate, what held weight, was not the invisible but the visible: in other words, what could be counted (like money and taxes), what could be commanded (like troops), and what could be ordered (like executions). The years of political machinations, of power struggles and compromise, of seeing some of the worst sides of people, of selling out any number of values for the sake of political or administrative expediency or to be in harmony with the will of Caesar himself—all of this had likely taken its toll upon the outlook of Pilate. Indeed, his reply to Jesus was hardly above the level of cynicism: “What is truth?” One can almost hear the dismissive tone of Pilate’s voice. Afterward, the governor went outside once more and addressed the Jewish leaders: “I find no basis for a charge against him.” In Pilate’s eyes, then, Jesus was likely judged to be some misguided visionary, a fanciful, idealistic leader, one who had little understanding of what actually mattered. Dreams and kingdoms from another place were no threat to Rome. THE PRAYER Jesus, I acknowledge you as king of both the seen and unseen worlds. Help me to move through your kingdom with the heart and character of your holy ambassadors, representing you faithfully to those looking in from the outside.