Pilate's Plate

Tomorrow we are concerned with various kinds of washing. Cleanliness was next to godliness in the days Jesus walked the earth. Washing was a religious ritual - being clean before one prayed or for humility. At the Last Supper, Jesus washed the feet of his disciples - these weren’t the scum of the street; they were his friends, those who knew, loved and had followed him through his ministry. Maundy Thursday is our one day of the year to get so humble as the feet of street people and those we might not normally associate with, sadly.  It will make you feel humbled, for a moment.

An annual Buddhist tradition of washing was going on when I was in Laos at Easter time. It was a hoot. For three days every single statue of Buddha, all his types, every pot and pan, must be washed. A short boat ride to a rocky dock from which one climbed steep stairs to an enormous cave packed to overflowing with Buddha statues and everyone associated with him, put me in a popular place to wash Buddha. One buys water in a coke bottle or drinking water to pour over a bunch of statues and everything would be considered clean for the year to come. Back in Siem Reap, tourist and locals were having water fights with the latest of water guns/ Buckets of water were tossed on all of us and our vehicle, and those who had cleaned the black iron pots had smudged their faces with the blackness that had been removed from those cauldrons. It’s a scene. It was joyful with much laughter.

During our Holy Week, we skip from throwing palm fonds in front of a donkey to the hidden Last Supper to Jesus hanging on the cross and many of the important events are passed over. Jesus’ final days were much more than that. There is the whole Vaudevillian show of Pontius Pilate. Pilate has fascinated me. I try to see his possibilities, his angst. In my ministry in the crime and punishment environment, working with people who most people don’t want to be around, I try to see the other side and get to the heart of the person, not the crime. So I feel empathy with Pilate because he was a victim to the role he was chosen to pray.

Pilate tried desperately to convince the masses that Jesus should not be punished with crucifixion. I see him as sort of a ranting frustrated public defender for Jesus, since Jesus had no one else on earth sticking up for Him. Even the apostles, those “loyal” friends, fled and or turned their backs on their friend Jesus. The problem, tragically on the one hand, but thankfully on the other hand since it designed our faith and hope, was that Pilate washed his hands of the whole affair. He gave up. The buck needed to stop at Pilate, but it didn’t. He instead had to tiptoe around the edge of possibly losing his powerful position. And he had a nagging shrew of a wife tearing at his morality. John’s gospel about the trials and tribulations that put Jesus on the cross is an example of due process gone bad. Let me walk you through it.

The scene started in the Praetorium, which was the government house of the governor of Judea. It had an outside court where the Jews could assemble. Because it was Gentile territory (remember, at that moment everyone was either Jew or Gentile) and heated activities took place there. It was an unclean place for the Jews. And they had to wash on departure. It was the time of the Passover feast when cleanliness was godliness. The High Priests, Sanhedrin and Pharisees had completed their Holy Wash and therefore could not enter the Praetorium for fear of contaminating themselves and not being able to share the Passover lamb. Ironic, isn’t it, that unwittingly, these Jewish High Priests were delivering up to death the very one who is the Lamb of God and thus making possible the true Passover. 

These leaders were strict to the law of Moses about cleanliness, on the one hand, but willing to condemn an innocent man to death, breaking that same law on the other. The High Priests ascertained that Jesus was a troublemaker and revolutionary and they wanted him out of the way during the crowded festival period, to get him off the streets, away from the ears of pilgrims. It must have been similar to when security forces round up dangerous criminals and terrorists during Olympic or major international events.

When the proceedings started, Jesus was their prisoner, a religious criminal, so to speak, and He needed an official state trial. Unable to reach a conclusion in their own Jewish courts, the High Priests could only come up with a charge of blasphemy, a religious crime punishable by death. Yet, the Jews, in a Roman state, could not execute a capital sentence.

If Jesus was to die, He must be sentenced and executed by the Romans and the Roman governor, in this case, was Pontius Pilate. Anxious to put Jesus to death, the Sanhedrin and High Priests threw all the responsibility into Pilate’s lap. Pilate spent the next six hours running in and out of the Praetorium trying to appease the crowds, the Jews and at the same time trying to save Jesus of Nazareth from a sentence far too violent for his trumped-up charges. He tried to release Jesus, assured that he was politically harmless and no threat to the Emperor.

Since the High Priests would not enter the Praetorium, Pilate, the person supposedly in control of the country, became a buffoon, a Tom the Cat in Tom and Jerry cartoons, running back and forth, now to Jesus, now back outside to consult with the Jewish leaders.

First Pilate was outside speaking to the Jews to find out the charge against Jesus. They accused Jesus of breaking Jewish law. Pilate said, “Then you get rid of him using your own laws.” They retort: “We want him crucified (they had already decided the punishment). And we need your approval to make it legal.” If the High Priests had put Jesus to death by Jewish law, it would have to be by stoning, not crucifixion, which was a Roman method.

So Pilate returned to his headquarters to speak to Jesus. He begged for an answer. “Are you really the King of the Jews?” Give me an answer I can live with, Pilate was thinking. But Jesus frustrated his efforts to dodge the issue and so answered with a question: “Your kind of King or the Jewish kind of King?”

Pilate, even more frazzled, said, “Am I a Jew? How do I know what Jews think? Your people brought you here. What have you done?”

Jesus replied, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it was, my followers would have taken appropriate action against the Jews.” In other words, his followers would have rescued Him from them.

Then Pilate got back to the point: “But you are the king, then?”

And Jesus answered: “Yes, I came to bring truth to all the world. If you love truth, you are my follower.”

Pilate, not sure of what truth was any longer, but convinced of Jesus’ political innocence, ran back out into the crowd and told them Jesus was NOT guilty of any crime. At the same time, he remembered a Passover custom of releasing a prisoner. Maybe he had an out to free Jesus. Wouldn’t releasing the King of the Jews be a popular act? So Pilate suggested it to the crowd. But the crowd preferred the infamous armed rebel and robber Barabbas.

Oh my God, Pilate thought. I made an error. The rabbling crowd turned that down. And calling Jesus, “King of the Jews” stirred up the masses and the High Priest, none of whom believed Jesus was the Messiah.

Pilates record placating the Jews was depressing. He had once taken the standards of the Roman Empire into the temple and caused a riot. Then he tried to substitute Jewish money with coins bearing the heads of the Roman Emperors. This was bad crisis management. Once again, he tried to please the Jews and he bombed. So Pilate tried to drum up sympathy for Jesus’s freedom by having him flogged.

John’s gospel said Pilate laid open Jesus’ back with a leaded whip - hoping maybe that would satisfy the blood thirsty crowds. (We certainly know thirsty crowds after our January 6 nightmare.) He pushed Jesus, bleeding and ripped apart, out before the masses. He was decorated in a crown of thorns and a kingly purple robe. Holding Jesus with his hands, Pilate declared: “Behold the Man.”

To the Jews, this smacked of Son of Man, which Jesus had claimed to be, but the Jews denied. If Pilate had said, “Look at this man rather than The Man”, it might have had a better result.

So the Chief Priests cried: “Crucify Him.”

Pilate responded, “You do it. I find Him not guilty.”

The High Priests said it was forbidden by law for them to take an action because Jesus called himself the Son of God. This frightened Pilate and he pushed Jesus back inside the palace. In one more pathetic effort, Pilate asked Jesus: “Where are you from?”

Jesus was silent.

Then Pilate asked, “Why won’t you talk to me?” He was probably thinking; don’t you realize I am trying to get you released? In his official role, the power was his.

Jesus calmly explained to Pilate that the only power He had come from above, from God. But the hour had come when Jesus must lay down His life for mankind. And through God’s plan, at that hour, Pilate had power over Jesus only because he happened to be governor of Judea that year.

Like a whipped dog, like a worn our filibuster, he went back out to the Jews, the Sanhedrin priests who recognized Jesus’ authority, and the Pharisees, who denied both Jesus and the Roman authority. So entered political blackmail. The priests shouted out: “If you release this man, you are no friend of Caesar .” Pilate stood in shock. They had threatened to denounce him to Rome, to his boss Caesar Anyone who was declared King of anything was defying the power of Caesar. Pilate would lose all his power and all he had and would undergo harsh punishment. He did not want to lose his job. He was done in.

Weakened by his efforts, his indecision and his go with the flow attitude, Pilate sadly lead Jesus to Gabatha, the last seat of judgement before the Jewish leaders. “Here is your King,” he cried.

Meanwhile, the crowds shouted out: “Crucify Him, Crucify Him.”

Pilate asked once more, “Crucify your King?”

The very Jewish leaders who hated and refused to recognize the Roman Emperor as authority, responded in blasphemy: “We have no king but Caesar. “

This denial of the Messiah took place at noon on Passover eve, the very hour when the priests would have begun slaughtering the Paschal lambs in the temple precincts. During the Passover meal, the chief priests must sing the Haggadah. It goes:

 “From everlasting to everlasting thou art God. Beside thee we have no King, Redeemer, Savior. No Liberator, deliverer, provide, no one who takes pity in time of struggle. We have no king but thee.”

Yet to Pilate, the Chief Priests responded: “We have no King but Caesar.”

Pilate, exhausted, defeated, gave Jesus over to them to be crucified. He washed his hands of the whole affair and later, not able to deal with the guilt, Pilate committed suicide.

In Pilate we can see our own explaining things away to look right, to making excuses. In Pilate we can see our efforts at self-preservation, our own selfishness in moments of decisions. I pray that we never let the world win when we know the right thing to do. May we not be Pontius Pilates. God bless.

 ~ Rev
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