Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, “I find no guilt in him. 39
But you have a custom that I should release one man for you at the Passover. So do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?” 40
They cried out again, “Not this man, but Barabbas!” Now Barabbas was a robber. 19:1 Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him.
2 And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe.
3 They came up to him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and struck him with their hands.
4 Pilate went out again and said to them, “See, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in him.”
5 So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold the man!”
6 When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, “Crucify him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.”
7 The Jews[a]answered
him, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has made himself the Son of God.”
8 When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid.
9 He entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, “Where are you from?” But Jesus gave him no answer.10
So Pilate said to him, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?”
11 Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.”12
From then on Pilate sought to release him, but the Jews cried out, “If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.”
13 So when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called The Stone Pavement, and in Aramaic Gabbatha.
14 Now it was the day of Preparation of the Passover. It was about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, “Behold your King!”
15 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.”
16 So he delivered him over to them to be crucified.
Pilate continues to press the authorities by asking “Do you want me to release the king of the Jews?” And the crowds, spurred on by the religious leadership, end up
asking for the release of a real criminal while calling for the death of Jesus whom everyone knows is innocent.Through all the lies and the chaos the Jews slip in 19:7 and reveal the true basis of their hatred toward Jesus, it becomes clear what this is really
about!
The Jews had grasped something of the nature of the claim that Jesus was making – a claim of equality with God, as the Son of God. For Pilate the notion that Jesus
was the Son of God, or could be the Son of God, seemed to make him nervous. You can understand this: He had just ordered that Jesus be flogged, and now those who hated him are saying that He says He says He is the Son of God…equal to God…What if Jesus was
right…I mean he knows the Jews aren’t right, Pilate must have wondered what he was getting himself into.
The Jews play the trump card in verse 12, if Pilate sides with Jesus then he is no friend of Caesar and the fact is, Tiberius who was Caesar at the time, was known
to be the sort of ruler who was deeply distrusting of his subordinates and was exceedingly cruel when exacting punishment. So, Pilate’s amusing himself at the expense of the Jews has now been turned on its head, and the Jews seemed to have the upper hand.
Perhaps, in resentment, because the Jews have laid a trap for him that he knows he cannot escape, he digs the knife in once more, “Here is your king.”
Now, you have to picture this. Pilate says, “here is your king”, and there stands Jesus, already bloodied and beaten, with worse waiting for him, seemingly helpless…The
Lion of the Tribe of Judah…the Lamb slain…Oh brothers and sisters do you see it? The kingdom…the kingdom’s king. Doesn’t look anything like what one might think. I want you to hang on to that thought for a moment.
Some time ago I read a book by Bruce Lockerbie, entitled Dismissing God: Modern Writers’ Struggle Against Religion. The book tells the story of some very famous
authors of Western literature: Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Thomas Hardy, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. All of these folks were exposed to evangelical Xnty when they were young. Some were
brought up in the church, others had fathers who were ministers or strong evangelical mothers and yet, all of them rejected Christianity, they rejected Jesus and made a great point of their rejection. Some of them seemed to be preoccupied in their writing
with their condemnation of Christian belief sometimes very overtly and other times somewhat underhandedly. I am interested to know, from a human perspective, from bright people who were exposed to the gospel, what about it offended them so? And there is nothing
in the book that is not in some way illustrated right here in this text. And what are those reasons?
First, Jesus makes a claim on truth, absolute truth and that outside of Him there is no truth. Jesus is claiming that He is the answer to life and there is no other
answer to be found. This whole truth search can become a bit complicated because in our modern world we have changed the discussion. It used to be that man was to seek truth with the real option that you might be able to find it. But today even the search
for truth has been gutted.
Christians have, somewhere along the line, embraced the idea that something can be true for me but not for you. The very meaning of the word true becomes irrelevant.
The bottom line is that Jesus’ claim that He is truth and that truth comes in and through a relationship with Him, is not being rejected today out of hand, but being moved into the category of personal preference…Jesus is truth for you, but pantheistic, neo-pagan
lesbianism is true for me…You see the problem.
The exclusive claim of Jesus must be rejected today because if it is true, if He is true, then Pilate, the Jews and everyone has to bow the knee to Him. No one cares
if you think Jesus, or Christianity is truth, but they care deeply and will want you silenced if you are saying, which we must, that Jesus and Christianity are the only truth. For this, they rejected Jesus and they STILL reject Jesus.
The second reason why people rejected Jesus and still do is that Jesus would not let them do whatever they wanted to do. Jesus told the people that what they were
doing was evil and that how they were living was evil. He told them that playing a game with God, saying that you belong to Him but living to yourself is hypocrisy and no matter how religious you might look, you don’t know God. He told them, no, you don’t
get to live however you want, and do whatever you want, and be however you want, you have to live from the inside out, from the heart, a true and real love for and dependence upon God and His Messiah. And they would have none of it, they hated him for telling
them how they ought to live their lives!
Today there are many who are pretty honest about this, they will tell you that the reason they don’t want to be a Christian is that it would require them to change
far too much of their lifestyle. They acknowledge that the life Jesus calls them to is NOT a life they want! And we should applaud them for this, they get this much correct, they are right, Jesus isn’t going to let them live however they want!
But even more frightening are all the people who think they can have the favor of Jesus, and STILL live the way they want…the church is filled with those kind of people,
and they too, whether they know it or not, like the Jews who thought to please God but were rejecting Him, are rejecting Jesus…rejecting his claims on them, rejecting the life He has called us to live for His honor, and rejected the kingdom that we are supposed
to be serving. To think Jesus is going to forgive your sins and then to live for yourself, ignoring Him, is to reject Him. That is what the authorities in the text thought to do!
Third, there is the issue of cowardice. I think there are many who deny Jesus for fear of what others will think of them if they really follow Him. Pontius Pilate
could not join with Jesus, he could not even side with Jesus in this situation, and I am sure he had any number of reasons why, even though he knew Jesus was innocent.
It seems there are many for whom this is an issue, perhaps not a matter of whether or not they are a Chrisitan…they profess Jesus after all, but they are nowhere close
to living as you know He has called you to live, there is little if any of the cross in your life, and while you are glad to have Jesus to take away your sin…Living with Him as the Lord of everything, of following Him no matter where it might take you, and
who might or might not think well of you for it…That is just a bit too much.
To put it bluntly: Many are not sold out to Jesus for fear…fear of what others will think…fear of what it might cost them to be so…fear that life will not be what
it is for everyone else. I know we would never want to say this out loud but the truth is, we are ashamed of Him…we are embarrassed by many of the things he says and demands.
But perhaps for many and even for many within the church the reason for a rejection of Jesus whether full or partial, why so many say no to Jesus can be seen behind
the words that Jesus said regarding His kingdom. Jesus makes it quite plain that He is a King, but to suggest his kingdom to be that which rules over Rome is far, far too small, for His kingdom rules over the whole of the universe. However, everything about
the kingdom and the rule of Jesus the Messiah is counter-intuitive, opposite of the way we naturally think.
When I first returned from Seminary, I was as green as you could possibly imagine. Seminary taught me that I knew nothing and when I came back to Tacoma my Senior
pastor was more than kind to literally take me everywhere he went. Pastor Rayburn was and is a man highly sought after for his advice, wisdom and Christian discernment. I was allowed to sit with him and others and listen to the problem and listen to his advice.
It was in those rooms, with those men and women, hurting, angry, confused that I learned the kingdom. Often I thought I knew what the answer was for this particular person, and then Rob would speak and it would be the opposite of what I was thinking.
I would say…Oh, now I get it…He was always speaking of what it means to take up the cross…what it means to get low…How the power of our Kingdom is seen not in demanding
but in loving, serving, giving life away. His counsel was never easy, it was never what my flesh would have wanted him to say had he been advising me, it was so counterintuitive to the way this world works. I can remember, like it was yesterday, pastors,
lawyers, elders, housewives, looking him in the eye as if to say, “Really…get lower…love deeper, embrace the cross more tenaciously…that is victory?” Yes. Precisely. That is the kingdom.
Think of what Jesus has told us about our kingdom and what He demonstrated in his own life:
~Humiliation comes before exaltation
~If you want to find life you must give up your life
~If you want to be great, you must be lowest
~The first shall be last
~You must not exalt self, but die to self
~We conquer the world with the weapons of love, forgiveness, service and most importantly, word, sacrament and prayer
~The world says he who dies with the most toys wins, Jesus says, it doesn’t matter how much you have, what matters is what you do with what you have and for Whom you
do it. That’s the kingdom.
The picture in this text is quite provocative because it forces us to make a decision: There is the world, there is the arrogance of man dressed in religious garb
and there is a beaten, bloodied, peasant. Each represents a kingdom, and each of us have to line up behind one of them…one of these kingdoms is going to literally control your thinking, feeling, desires, and purpose in this world. Your life will, in the small
things, in your habits, in your affections be illustrative of one of these kingdoms.
Which will it be? Which kingdom are you going to live and die for?
Prayer: Father, so easily is my heart turned toward those things which have nothing to do with the truth of my Savior and His kingdom. So easily am I drawn to pursue
the empty promises of this world even when I know that they cannot deliver what I am so desperately in need of. Forgive me Father. Give my holy aspirations and set my affections only on Jesus who is the truth and hope of every life. In Jesus Name, Amen.
Hymn: For All The Saints
