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John 18:28-40 · Jesus Before Pilate
Pilate's Dilemma
John 18:28-40
Sermon
by King Duncan
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Pilate was a politician. That says it all, doesn’t it?

I read recently that 53 percent of Americans can’t name their representative in Congress. That doesn’t keep Congress from being highly unpopular. As someone once asked, “If pro is the opposite of con, is progress the opposite of Congress?”

Someone else has said that the reason a person in Congress try so hard to get re-elected is that they would hate to have to make a living under the laws they’ve passed.

I heard about one southern Congressman who had been working desperately throughout his district for reelection. He was relaxing one evening, following a speech, in the home of a friend.

“I have heard your speeches,” his friend said, “but the real question is what will you do if you are reelected?”

“No,” said politician, “the real question is what will I do if I am not reelected?”

Pontius Pilate could sympathize with that Congressman. Pilate married into a political family. His wife Claudia was the granddaughter of Caesar Augustus. So, Pilate was a member of the Emperor’s family by marriage, not merit.

Pilate served as the Roman prefect of Judea for ten years, from A.D. 26-36. A prefect is like a governor. It is a position of power, but not absolute power. Pilate took his orders from Rome and for that reason, he was insecure in his position. He ruled at the whim of his wife’s family. Being appointed prefect of Judea was a mixed blessing in itself. Judea was a hotbed of insurrection. The Jews were a restless people, ready to begin a rebellion at the drop of a hat.

Pilate got in bad with the Jews from the very beginning. As soon as he took office in 27 AD, he needlessly provoked the pious folks in Jerusalem by riding into the city with his troops bearing their standards in full view. On the top of every flagpole that the soldiers bore was a carved image of Caesar. For the Jews this was a transgression of the commandment to have no graven images. Even more grievously, because of the Roman custom of emperor worship, Pilate’s action smacked of blatant idolatry. This thoughtless action provoked a riot. So Pilate was in trouble from the beginning of his reign.

There were some skirmishes in which Pilate proved himself a brutal ruler. Luke 13 mentions one of these an occasion where Pilate’s soldiers killed some Galileans. To compound their crime, however, the soldiers then took the Galileans’ blood and mixed it with sacrifices to their pagan gods. It was a despicable act.

Pilate’s brutality probably grew out of his fear of being deposed. He was caught between a Roman government which had little respect for him and a civilian population that was known for its intractability. And then he had to deal with Jesus.

It was the religious leaders who brought Jesus to Pilate’s palace. It’s interesting. They brought him to Pilate, but they refused to enter Pilate’s palace. Why? Because this would make them ceremonially unclean by entering the residence of a lowly Gentile. Jews believed that if you took two steps over a Gentile threshold you defiled yourself. So they wanted Pilate to do their dirty work, but they wanted to keep their distance from him while he did it.

To show you how afraid Pilate was of offending the religious authorities, he agreed to come out to them. The dialogue is intriguing. Pilate asked the religious authorities, “What charges are you bringing against this man?” referring to Jesus.

“If he were not a criminal,” they answered defensively, “we would not have handed him over to you.” That alone tells us what we need to know about the charges brought against Jesus. They were totally unsubstantiated.

Pilate knew of no Roman law Jesus had broken. He tried turning him back over to the religious leaders: “Take him and judge him according to your law.”

That didn’t work. “We are not permitted to put anyone to death,” they said.

And it was true. The only man in the city who had the authority to pass a death sentence was Pontius Pilate. And the religious leaders were determined that Christ be put to death.

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 answered somewhat cryptically, “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.”

And it is here that Pilate cynically asked, “What is truth?”

Listen to political debates on television and you will ask the same thing: “What is truth?” Truth is whatever is left over after the politicians spin the facts.

Then the religious leaders hit Pilate’s weak spot: “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.”

There is no question Pilate was frustrated by Jesus. It was also clear to him that Jesus posed no threat to the empire. He said himself that his kingdom was not of this world. Pilate went out again to the religious authorities and said, “I find no basis for a charge against him.”

Pilate tried to reason with them. Then he tried to bribe them. He remembered that the Jews had a tradition that they would release one prisoner at Passover. He offered to release a notorious political prisoner named Barabbas! Still they would not be appeased. “Crucify him, crucify him,” they shouted, referring to Jesus.

At this point, Pilate had Christ flogged, hoping that would appease the mob, but it did not. He had his soldiers mock Christ. They put a purple robe on him and thrust a crown of thorns on his head, and called out in derision, “King of the Jews.” That still wasn’t enough.

He tried turning Jesus over to Herod. But that didn’t work either. Pilate was getting desperate. The mob was determined for Jesus to die, while Pilate’s sense of justice told him the man was innocent. According to Matthew’s Gospel, even Pilate’s wife Claudia wanted Pilate to have nothing to do with Jesus. Matthew 27:19 states, “While Pilate was sitting on the judge’s seat, his wife sent him this message: ‘Don’t have anything to do with that innocent man, for I have suffered a great deal today in a dream because of him.’”

Pilate simply didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t in good conscience find Jesus guilty, but it was not politically expedient to set him free. Three times, Pilate tried to release Jesus, fully convinced of Jesus’ innocence, but the mob would not listen. “Crucify him, crucify him,” they shouted.

It is Matthew who reports that when Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “It is your responsibility” (27:24).

And with that Pilate handed Jesus over to be crucified. It was a cowardly act, one that has stained Pilate’s record for more than 2,000 years.

Oh, one thing more: Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross on which Christ died. The notice read like this: “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.”

Many of the residents of Jerusalem read this sign, says Luke, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek. The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews.”

Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”

If Pilate had only known how those words would haunt him. He was the man who had the innocent Son of God put to death. And this time, it wasn’t because he was brutal. It wasn’t because he was trying to rob Jesus of his life. He was not. Pilate’s only crime was, he was weak.

And friends, that is true of so many of us. If we do wrong, it will probably never be because we are brutal, or greedy or even hard-hearted. It will probably be because we are weak morally weak, spiritually weak. We will keep quiet when we should have spoken up, we will give in when we should have walked away, we will strike a bargain when we should have remained true to our values.

You know about weakness, don’t you moral weakness, spiritual weakness? The kind that wrecks families and ruins lives. The kind that refuses to speak out in the face of evil? Weakness sometimes takes the form of sexual temptation. Sometimes it entraps us in chemical dependency.

In his novel, The Testament, John Grisham paints a powerful word portrait of one man’s weakness and his subsequent surrender to God.

Nate O’Reilly, a disgraced corporate attorney, is plagued by alcoholism and drug abuse. After two marriages, four detox programs, and a serious health crisis, Nate acknowledges his need for God. Grisham describes the dramatic transformation in these words: “With both hands, he clenched the back of the pew in front of him. He repeated (his) list, mumbling softly every weakness and flaw and affliction and evil that plagued him. He confessed them all. In one long glorious acknowledgment of failure, he laid himself bare before God. He held nothing back. He unloaded enough burdens to crush any three men, and when he finally finished Nate had tears in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered to God. ‘Please, help me.’ As quickly as the fever had left his body, he felt the baggage leave his soul. With one gentle brush of the hand, his slate had been wiped clean. He breathed a massive sigh of relief, but his pulse was racing.” *

I wonder if Pilate ever experienced that kind of release from the baggage of his misdoing? It’s possible. After all, he spent considerable time in the presence of the Messiah. He is one of the few people on earth to have a one-on-one interview with the Son of God.

Pilate asked, “What is truth?” Here’s the truth: After Pilate had scorned Christ and had him flogged, mocked and crucified, if Pilate had confessed his weakness, Christ would have forgiven him. He, too, would have experienced the grace of Jesus Christ.

And that is true of each of us. If we have been weak, if we have sometime or another, betrayed our values, if we have ever followed the crowd rather than voicing our convictions, if we have committed some grievous sin, not because we are mean, not even because we are bad, but simply because we are weak, there is room at the foot of the cross for us.

Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu once put it this way: “We tend to turn the Christian religion into a religion of virtues, but it is a religion of grace. You become a good person because you are loved. You are not loved because you are good.”

There is hope for weak persons like you and me. There was even hope for Pontius Pilate if he was willing to accept it. But he did not. Friend, do not make that same mistake. Accept the grace of God today.

*The Rev. Dr. Leslie Holmes, http://day1.org/1060-quitting_aint_an_option.

ChristianGlobe Networks, Inc., Dynamic Preaching First Quarter 2013, by King Duncan