Some stories in the Bible are so essentially visual that they almost demand that we act them out to understand them. Like the rest of the Bible, such stories are intended to be read and heard, of course, but they have the added quality of being vivid, pictorial, perhaps even theatrical, and they seem to release their full power only when they are seen in action. In order to grasp their truths, we are compelled to scramble up on a stage -- at least one constructed in our imagination -- to don a costume, to summon a cast of supporting actors, and to put the story into dramatic motion.
It is one thing, for example, to hear the story of Zacchaeus; it is quite another actually to see him -- this tiny man swallowed by the always-taller crowd; this lilliputian tax collector lost in a sea of NBA centers; this diminutive bureaucrat flexing himself up on his tiptoes, craning his neck in vain as he tries to find a decent sight line, finally lifting his skirts and shinnying immodestly up the nearest sycamore tree. Or again, it is one thing to read Jesus' parable of the lost sheep, but quite another to experience it in the theater of the absurd. In the *Sermon emphasis John 18:28--19:22 ear it all sounds rather manageable, perhaps even tame: A sheep is lost, the shepherd goes to find it, and that's that. But to the eye it releases its outrageous truth. To watch in astonishment as a seemingly sane shepherd walks away from 99 perfectly good sheep, leaving them to the perils of the wilderness, while he searches with wild and passionate abandon for one scraggly runaway is to be confronted with some extravagant and unruly grace at the heart of the gospel.
The story in the Gospel of John of the trial of Jesus before Pontius Pilate is another example of a biblical story that discloses itself only through dramatic reenactment, a story that must be seen in motion to be believed. Only when we allow the primary characters to move through their paces do we discern how intricate and intriguing a piece of theological drama we have here.
What becomes most evident in the staging of this story is the restless and ceaseless activity of Pontius Pilate, tramping in and out of his headquarters, pacing back and forth time and again. Such fretfulness is unexpected. He is, after all, the chief judge in this trial; he is the one ostensibly in charge. What we would expect of him is resolute calm, perhaps even bored passivity. We imagine him heavy-lidded and drowsy, interrogating Jesus between barely stifled yawns as he sleepwalks his way through yet another procedural matter. Or maybe we anticipate Pilate scarcely paying attention to Jesus' testimony, his mind's eye wandering lazily past this insignificant Galilean and out the open window to the beckoning freedom of the coming holiday weekend.
Whatever we expect, it is not the fitful, fidgety Pilate that we see when we put this narrative into production. Not just once, not just twice, not even three times, but seven times -- seven times -- Pilate changes location.1 Out to the crowd he stamps, then back inside the headquarters to confront the prisoner, then returning to the shouting mob, only to rush back inside, and on it goes. We have, then, seven moves by Pilate, seven scenes, seven glimpses of a nervous and troubled politician, seven shifting moods, seven occasions for Pilate to speak his mind and to reveal his soul before he shuffles off the canvas of history into infamy -- in sum, we find here the seven last words of Pilate.
But what does this seven-fold shuttling mean? What is disclosed as we track this turmoil and overhear the seven last words of Pilate? To begin with, we discover that the roles have been reversed. It is Jesus who is calm, Pilate who is frenzied. It is Jesus, the accused, who resolutely presides as judge; it is Pilate, the prosecutor, who acts out the inner conflicts of the defendant.
In the scenes out on the porch, as Pilate faces the restive crowd, every speech shows him more and more convinced of Jesus' innocence and more and more fearful of the political consequences. Inside the headquarters, every statement shows Pilate more and more confounded by this mysterious presence. Pilate is no poised diplomat; he is a ping-pong ball slapped back and forth between his public fears and his inner doubts. He pleads, he bullies, he begs, he vacillates, and finally he folds: "Then he handed Jesus over to them to be crucified" (John 19:16). The irony is clear: It is Jesus who is convicted, but it is Pilate who is guilty. It is Jesus who is to be crucified, but it is Pilate and all like him who are defeated. It is Jesus who will suffer death, but it is the world that is perishing.
During the prime days of the struggle for racial integration in the South, black civil rights workers -- "freedom riders" they were called -- would travel on buses from city to city, challenging segregationist laws. Sometimes they were greeted with violence; often they were arrested. In one town, a bus was halted by the police and the passengers booked and jailed. While they were there, the jailers did everything possible to make them miserable and to break their spirits. They tried to deprive them of sleep with noise and light during the nights. They intentionally oversalted their food to make it distasteful. They gradually took away their mattresses, one by one, hoping to create conflict over the remaining ones.
Eventually the strategies seemed to be taking hold. Morale in the jail cells was beginning to sag. One of the jailed leaders, looking around one day at his dispirited fellow prisoners, began softly to sing a spiritual. Slowly, others joined in until the whole group was singing at the top of their voices and the puzzled jailers felt the entire cellblock vibrating with the sounds of a joyful gospel song. When they went to see what was happening, the prisoners triumphantly pushed the remaining mattresses through the cell bars, saying, "You can take our mattresses, but you can't take our souls." It was the hymn singers who were in jail, but it was the jailers who were guilty. It was the prisoners who were suffering, but the jailers who were defeated. It was the prisoners who were in a position of weakness, but it was the broken and bigoted world of the jailers and of all the Pontius Pilates of history that was perishing.
But there is an even deeper truth to be found in the seven last words of Pilate. As we hear this thin and shrill voice crying out Jesus' innocence to the mob, as we hear his nervous questions -- Are you a king? What have you done? What is truth? Where are you from? -- it slowly dawns on us that we are listening to the unmistakable cadences of Christian worship. Everything Pilate says finds an echo in the church's liturgy. Pilate unwittingly assumes the role of congregational worship leader:
"Is he a king?" liturgist Pilate calls out.
"Yes," responds the church, "the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever."
"What is truth?" prompts Pilate. "He is. He is the way, the truth and the life." "Where is he from?" Pilate prods, continuing the litany. "He is from God on high," sings the church in reply. Most ironically moving of all is the moment when Pilate leads the congregation in a violent doxology. Repeatedly striking Jesus across the face, Pilate and his cohorts nonetheless bow down before him and unintentionally sing an Easter hymn: "Hail, King of the Jews!" (John 19:3).
The point of it is that, even in its starkest moment of violence, the world nevertheless glorifies Jesus. Even when it is trying to reject God, the world ironically worships; it cannot help itself. The very stones cry out. Pilate cannot help himself; he postures and persecutes, but, like Pharaoh of old, he achieves nothing other than magnifying the saving power of God. He cannot help himself; he literally cannot help himself. Only the one who stands before him accused can trully help him. Somewhere in his soul, he senses this. Pilate the cowardly bureaucrat believes that his salvation depends upon political finesse; Pilate the human being stares into the face of Jesus Christ and instinctively knows that "his hope is built on nothing less."
Psychologist Paul Pruyser once wrote of the awkwardness that is often felt at the end of a 50-minute therapy session. The counselee feels it; the therapist feels it. There is no good way to end; something is missing. Pruyser suggests that what is missing, perhaps, is the benediction. "Could a nervous giggle, a great hesitancy in parting at termination, or a tendency to drag the hour on beyond its formal end be interpreted as a nonverbal demand for a ... blessing?"2 Here in a secular therapeutic environment, there is the hunger to close with more than a "so -- we'll see you next time," but with a blessing. The secular cannot keep the sacred out; the world, like Pilate, ironically worships even when it is trying to rid itself of God.
Before Jesus was brought to Pilate, the Pharisees had watched the crowd gathering around Jesus and scowled ironically, "You see, you can do nothing. Look, the world has gone after him!" (John 12:19). With this complaint, they inadvertently proclaimed the gospel: The powers-that-be can do nothing; from Christ's fullness, the world will receive grace upon grace and will finally follow him. And there, perhaps, leading the prayers of the creed, will be old Pontius himself. 1. One of the best descriptions of the seven-fold dramatic and chiastic structure of this story in John can be found in Raymond Brown, The Death Of The Messiah: From Gethsemane To The Grave, Volume 1 (New York: Doubleday, 1994), pp. 757-759. 2. Paul Pruyser, "The Master Hand: Psychological Notes on Pastoral Blessing," in William B. Oglesby, Jr., editor, The New Shape Of Pastoral Theology (Nashville and New York: Abingdon Press, 1969), p. 357.