Verses 1-40
Chapter 18
18:1-11 When
Jesus had said these things he went out with his disciples across the
Kedron Valley to a place where there was a garden, into which he and his
disciples entered; and Judas, his betrayer, knew the place for Jesus
often met with his disciples there. So Judas took a company of soldiers,
together with officers from the chief priests and Pharisees, and went
there with lanterns and torches and weapons. Jesus knew the things which
were going to happen to him, so he came out and said: "Who are you
looking for?" They answered: "Jesus of Nazareth." Jesus said to them: "I
am he." And Judas, his betrayer, stood there with them. When he said to
them: "I am he," they stepped back and fell on the ground. So Jesus
again asked them: "Who are you looking for?" They said: "Jesus of
Nazareth." Jesus said: "I told you that I am he. If it is I for whom you
are looking, let these go, so that the word which scripture said may be
fulfilled--I have lost none of those whom you gave me." Now Simon Peter
had a sword and he drew it; and he struck the high priest's servant and
cut off his right ear. The servant's name was Malchus. Jesus said to
Peter: "Put your sword in its sheath. Shall I not drink the cup which my
Father gave me?"
When the last meal was finished and when Jesus' talk and prayer
with his disciples were ended, he and his friends left the upper room.
They were bound for the Garden of Gethsemane. They would leave by the
gate, go down the steep valley and cross the channel of the brook
Kedron. There a symbolic thing must have happened. All the Passover
lambs were killed in the Temple, and the blood of the lambs was poured
on the altar as an offering to God. The number of lambs slain for the
Passover was immense. On one occasion, thirty years later than the time
of Jesus, a census was taken and the number was 256,000. We may imagine
what the Temple courts were like when the blood of all these lambs was
dashed on to the altar. From the altar there was a channel down to the
brook Kedron, and through that channel the blood of the Passover lambs
drained away. When Jesus crossed the brook Kedron it would still be red
with the blood of the lambs which had been sacrificed; and as he did so,
the thought of his own sacrifice would surely be vivid in his mind.
Having crossed the channel of the Kedron, they came to the Mount
of Olives. On its slopes lay the little garden of Gethsemane, which
means the oil-press, the press where the oil was extracted from the
olives which grew on the hill. Many well-to-do people had their private
gardens there. Space in Jerusalem was too limited for private gardens,
for it was built on the top of a hill. Furthers there were ceremonial
prohibitions which forbade the use of manure on the soil of the sacred
city. That was why the wealthy people had their private gardens outside
the city on the slopes of the mount of Olives.
They show pilgrims to this day a little garden on the hillside.
It is lovingly tended by the Franciscan friars, and in it there are
eight old olive trees of such girth that they seem, as H. V. Morton
says, more like rocks than trees. They are very old; it is known that
they go back to a time before the Moslem conquest of Palestine. it is
scarcely possible that they go back to the time of Jesus himself; but
certainly the little paths criss-crossing the Mount of Olives were
trodden by the feet of Jesus.
So to this garden Jesus went. Some wealthy citizen--an anonymous
friend of Jesus whose name will never be known--must have given him the
key of the gate and the right to use it when he was in Jerusalem. Often
Jesus and his disciples had gone there for peace and quiet. Judas knew
that he would find Jesus there and it was there that he had decided it
would be easiest to engineer the arrest.
There is something astonishing about the force which came out to
arrest Jesus. John said that there was a company of soldiers, together
with officers from the chief priests and Pharisees. The officers would
be the Temple police. The Temple authorities had a kind of private
police force to keep good order, and the Sanhedrin hid its police
officers to carry out its decrees. The officers, therefore, were the
Jewish police force. But there was a band of Roman soldiers there too.
The word is speira (Greek #4686).
Now that word, if it is correctly used, can have three meanings. It is
the Greek word for a Roman cohort and a cohort had 600 men. If it was a
cohort of auxiliary soldiers, a speira (Greek #4686)
had 1,000 men--240 cavalry and 760 infantry. Sometimes, much more
rarely, the word is used for the detachment of men called a maniple
which was made up of 200 men.
Even if we take this word to mean the smallest force, the
maniple, what an expedition to send out against an unarmed Galilaean
carpenter! At the Passover time there were always extra soldiers in
Jerusalem, quartered in the Tower of Antonia which overlooked the
Temple, and men would be available. But what a compliment to the power
of Jesus! When the authorities decided to arrest him, they sent what was
almost an army to do it.
Few scenes in scripture so show us the qualities of Jesus as does the arrest in the garden.
(i) It shows us his courage. At Passover time it was
fun moon and the night was almost like daylight. Yet the enemies of
Jesus had come with lamps and torches. Why? They did not need them to
see the way. They must have thought that they would have to search among
the trees and in the hillside nooks and crannies to find Jesus. So far
from hiding, when they arrived, Jesus stepped out. "Who are you looking
for?" he demanded. "Jesus of Nazareth," they said. Back came the answer:
"I am he." The man they had thought they would have to search for as he
skulked in the trees and the caves was standing before them with
glorious defiance. Here is the courage of the man who will face things
out. During the Spanish Civil War a city was besieged. There were some
who wished to surrender, but a leader arose. "It is better," he said,
"to die on our feet than to live on our knees."
(ii) It shows us his authority. There he was, one
single, lonely, unarmed figure; there they were, hundreds of them, armed
and equipped. Yet face to face with him, they retreated and fell to the
ground. There flowed from Jesus an authority which in all his
loneliness made him stronger than the might of his enemies.
(iii) It shows us that Jesus chose to die. Here again
it is clear that he could have escaped death if he had so wished. He
could have walked through them and gone his way. But he did not. He even
helped his enemies to arrest him. He chose to die.
(iv) It shows his protective love. It was not for
himself that he took thought; it was for his friends. "Here I am," he
said. "It is I whom you want. Take me, and let them go." Among the many
immortal stories of the Second World War that of Alfred Sadd, missionary
of Tarrawa, stands out. When the Japanese came to his island, he was
lined up with twenty other men, mostly New Zealand soldiers who had been
part of the garrison. The Japanese laid a Union Jack on the ground and
ordered Sadd to walk over it. He approached the flag and, as he came to
it, he turned off to the right. They ordered him again to trample on it;
this time he turned off to the left. The third time he was compelled to
go up to the flag; and he gathered it in his arms and kissed it. When
the Japanese took them all out to be shot, many were so young that they
were heavy-hearted, but Alfred Sadd cheered them up. They stood in a
line, he in the middle, but presently he went out and stood in front of
them and spoke words of cheer. When he had finished, he went back but
still stood a little in front of them, so that he would be the first to
die. Alfred Sadd thought more of others' troubles than his own. Jesus'
protecting love surrounded his disciples even in Gethsemane.
(v) It shows his utter obedience. "Shall I not drink,"
he said, "the cup that God has given me to drink?" This was God's will,
and that was enough. Jesus was himself faithful unto death.
There is a figure in this story to whom we must do
justice, and that is Peter. He, one man, drew his sword against
hundreds. As Macaulay had it:
How can man die better
Than facing fearful odds?
Peter was soon to deny his master, but at that moment he was
prepared to take on hundreds all alone for the sake of Christ. We may
talk of the cowardice and the failure of Peter; but we must never forget
the sublime courage of this moment.
18:12-14,19-24
The company of soldiers and their commander and the officers of the Jews
took Jesus, and bound him, and led him first of all to Annas. He was
the father-in-law of Caiaphas who was High Priest in that year. It was
Caiaphas who had advised the Jews that it was better that one man should
die for the people.... The High Priest questioned Jesus about his
disciples and about his teaching. Jesus answered him: "I spoke openly in
the world. I taught at all times in the synagogue and in the precincts
of the Temple, where all the Jews assemble, and I spoke nothing in
secret. Why do you ask me questions? Ask those who heard me what I said
to them. See! These know what I have said." When he had said these
things, one of the officers who was standing by, dealt Jesus a blow. "Do
you answer the High Priest like this?" he said. Jesus answered: "If I
have spoken ill, produce evidence about the ill; if I have spoken well,
why do you strike me?" So Annas sent him bound to Caiaphas the High
Priest.
For the sake of keeping the narrative continuous we take
together the two passages which deal with the trial before Annas; and we
will do the same with the two passages which deal with the tragedy of
Peter.
Only John tells us that Jesus was brought first of all to Annas.
Annas was a notorious character. Edersheim writes of him: "No figure is
better known in contemporary Jewish history than that of Annas; no
person deemed more fortunate or successful, but none also more generally
execrated than the late High Priest." Annas was the power behind the
throne in Jerusalem. He himself had been High Priest from A.D. 6 to 15.
Four of his sons had also held the high priesthood and Caiaphas was his
son-in-law. That very fact is itself suggestive and illuminating. There
had been a time, when the Jews were free, when the High Priest had held
office for life; but when the Roman governors came, the office became a
matter for contention and intrigue and bribery and corruption. It now
went to the greatest sycophant and the highest bidder, to the man who
was most willing to toe the line with the Roman governor. The High
Priest was the arch-collaborator, the man who brought comfort and ease
and prestige and power not with bribes only but with close co-operation
with his country's masters. The family of Annas was immensely rich and
one by one they had intrigued and bribed their way into office, while
Annas remained the power behind it all.
Even the way in which Annas made his money was most probably
disgraceful. In the Court of the Gentiles there were the sellers of
victims for the sacrifices, those sellers whom Jesus had driven out.
They were not traders; they were extortioners. Every victim offered in
the Temple had to be without spot and blemish. There were inspectors to
see that it was so. If a victim was bought outside the Temple it was
certain that a flaw would be found. The worshipper was then directed to
buy at the Temple booths where the victims had already been examined and
where there was no risk of rejection. That would have been convenient
and helpful but for one thing. Outside the Temple a pair of doves could
cost as little as 4 pence; inside they could cost as much as 75 pence.
The whole business was sheer exploitation; and the shops where the
Temple victims were sold were called The Bazaars of Annas. They were the
property of the family of Annas; it was by the exploitation of the
worshippers, by trading on the sacred sacrifices that Annas had amassed a
fortune. The Jews themselves hated the household of Annas. There is a
passage in the Talmud which says: "Woe to the house of Annas! Woe to
their serpent's hiss! They are High Priests; their sons are keepers of
the treasury; their sons-in-law are guardians of the Temple; and their
servants beat the people with staves." Annas and his household were
notorious.
Now we can see why Annas arranged that Jesus should be brought
first to him. Jesus was the man who had attacked Annas' vested interest;
he had cleared the Temple of the sellers of victims and had hit Annas
where it hurt--in his pocket. Annas wanted to be the first to gloat over
the capture of this disturbing Galilaean.
The examination before Annas was a mockery of justice. It was an
essential regulation of the Jewish law that a prisoner must be asked no
question which would incriminate him. Maimonides, the great Jewish
medieval scholar, lays it down: "Our true law does not inflict the
penalty of death upon a sinner by his own confession." Annas violated
the principles of Jewish justice when he questioned Jesus. It was
precisely of this that Jesus reminded him. Jesus said: "Don't ask me
questions. Ask those who heard me." He was, in effect, saying: "Take
your evidence about me in the proper and legal way. Examine your
witnesses, which you have every right to do; stop examining me, which
you have no right to do." When Jesus said that, one of the officers hit
him a slap across the face. He said, in effect, "Are you trying to teach
the High Priest how to conduct a trial?" Jesus' answer was: "If I have
said or taught anything illegal, witnesses should be called. I have only
stated the law. Why hit me for that?"
Jesus never had any hope of justice. The self-interest of Annas
and his colleagues had been touched; and Jesus was condemned before he
was tried. When a man is engaged on an evil way, his only desire is to
eliminate anyone who opposes him. If he cannot do it by fair means, he
is compelled to resort to foul.
18:15-18,25-27
Simon Peter was following Jesus with another disciple. That disciple was
known to the High Priest, and he went in with Jesus into the courtyard
of the High Priest's house. Peter was standing at the door outside. The
other disciple, who was known to the High Priest came out and spoke to
the door-keeper, and brought Peter in. The maid-servant, who kept the
door, said to Peter: "You are not one of this man's disciples, are you?"
He said: "I am not." The servants and the officers stood beside a
charcoal brazier they had kindled, because it was cold, and they were
warming themselves; and Peter too was standing with them warming himself
... Simon Peter was standing warming himself. They said to him: "Surely
you too are one of his disciples?" He denied it, and said: "I am not."
One of the servants of the High Priest, a relation of the man whose ear
Peter had cut off, said: "Did I not see you in the garden with him?"
Again Peter denied it, and immediately cockcrow sounded.
When the other disciples forsook Jesus and fled, Peter refused
to do so. He followed Jesus, even after his arrest, because he could not
tear himself away. So he came to the house of Caiaphas, the High
Priest; and he was in the company of another disciple who had the right
of entry to the house, because he was known to the High Priest.
There have been many speculations about who this other disciple
was. Some have thought that he was simply some unknown disciple whose
name we can never know. Some have connected him with either Nicodemus or
Joseph of Arimathaea who were both members of the Sanhedrin, and must
both have known the High Priest well. One very interesting suggestion is
that he was Judas Iscariot. Judas must have had much coming and going
to arrange the betrayal and would be well known both to the maid-servant
who answered the door and to the High Priest himself. The one thing
that seems to invalidate this theory is that, after the scene in the
garden, Judas' part in the betrayal must have been quite clear; and it
is almost incredible that Peter would have had anything more to do with
him. The traditional view is that the unnamed disciple was John himself;
and the tradition is so strong that it is difficult to set it aside.
The question becomes, in that case, How could John from Galilee be
known, apparently intimately, to the High Priest?
Two suggestions have been made to explain this.
(a) In later days a man called Polycrates wrote about the Fourth
Gospel. He never doubted that John wrote the gospel and that he was the
beloved disciple, but he says a very curious thing about him. He says
that John was by birth a priest, and that he wore the petalos, which was
the narrow gold band, or ziz, inscribed with the words, "Holiness unto
the Lord." which the High Priest wore upon his forehead. If that were
so, John would be actually of the High Priest's kin; but it is difficult
to believe that he could be of the priestly line, for the gospels so
clearly show him as a Galilaean fisherman.
(b) The second explanation is easier to accept. It is clear that
John's father had a very flourishing fishing business because he could
afford to employ hired servants (Mark 1:20).
One of the great Galilaean industries was salt fish. Fresh fish was a
great luxury because there was no way of transporting fish in such a way
that it would remain fresh. On the other hand, salt fish was a staple
article of diet. It has been supposed that John's father was in the salt
fish trade, and that he actually supplied the household of the High
Priest. If that were so, John would be well-known to the High Priest and
to his servants, because often it would be he who would bring the
supplies. There is some kind of support in legend for this theory. H. V.
Morton tells us of visiting in the back streets of Jerusalem a little
building which was presently an Arab coffee house. In it were certain
stones and arches which once had been part of a very early Christian
church, believed to have stood on the site of a house which belonged to
Zebedee, John's father. The family, so the Franciscans believe, were
fish merchants in Galilee with a branch office in Jerusalem and supplied
the household of Caiaphas the High Priest with salt fish, which was why
John had entry into the High Priest's house.
However these things may be, Peter was brought into the
courtyard of the High Priest's house and there he three times denied his
Lord.
There is this very interesting thing. Jesus had said that Peter
would deny him three times before the cock crew. There are difficulties
about that. According to Jewish ritual law, it was not lawful to keep
cocks in the holy city, although we cannot be sure whether that law was
kept or not. Further, it is never possible to be sure that a cock will
crow. But the Romans had a certain military practice. The night was
divided into four watches--6 p.m. to 9 p.m., 9 p.m. to 12 midnight, 12
midnight to 3 a.m., and 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. After the third watch the guard
was changed and to mark the changing of the guard there was a trumpet
call at 3 a.m. That trumpet call was called in latin gallicinium and in
Greek alektorophonia, which both mean cockcrow. It may well be that
Jesus said to Peter: "Before the trumpet sounds the cockcrow you will
deny me three times." Everyone in Jerusalem must have known that trumpet
call at 3 a.m. When sounded through the city that night Peter
remembered.
So in the courtyard of the High Priest's house Peter denied his Lord.
No man has ever been so unjustly treated as Peter by preachers and
commentators. Always what is stressed is his failure and his shame. But
there are other things we must remember.
(i) We must remember that all the other disciples, except John,
if he is the unnamed disciple, had forsaken Jesus and fled. Think what
Peter had done. He alone drew his sword against fearful odds in the
garden; he alone followed out to see the end. The first thing to
remember about Peter is not his failure, but the courage which kept him
near to Jesus when everyone else had run away. His failure could have
happened only to a man of superlative courage. True, he failed; but he
failed in a situation which none of the other disciples even dared to
face. He failed, not because he was a coward, but because he was brave.
(ii) We must remember how much Peter loved Jesus. The others had
abandoned Jesus; Peter alone stood by him. He loved Jesus so much that
he could not leave him. True, he failed; but he failed in circumstances
which only a faithful lover of Jesus would ever have encountered.
(iii) We must remember how Peter redeemed himself. Things could
not have been easy for him. The story of his denial would soon get
about, for people love a malicious tale. It may well be, as legend has
it, that people imitated the crow of the cock when he passed. But Peter
had the courage and the tenacity of purpose to redeem himself, to start
from failure and attain to greatness.
The essence of the matter was that it was the real Peter who
protested his loyalty in the upper room; it was the real Peter who drew
his lonely sword in the moonlight of the garden; it was the real Peter
who followed Jesus, because he could not allow his Lord to go alone; it
was not the real Peter who cracked beneath the tension and denied his
Lord. And that is just what Jesus could see. A tremendous thing about
Jesus is that beneath all our failures he sees the real man. He
understands. He loves us in spite of what we do because he loves us, not
for what we are, but what we have it in us to be. The forgiving love of
Jesus is so great that he sees our real personality, not in our
faithfulness, but in our loyalty, not in our defeat by sin, but in our
teaching after goodness, even when we are defeated.
18:28-40 They
brought Jesus from Caiaphas to the governor's headquarters. It was early
in the morning and they themselves did not enter into the headquarters,
in case they should be defiled; but they wished to avoid defilement
because they wished to eat the Passover. So Pilate came out to them and
said: "What charge do you bring against this man?" They answered him:
"If he had not been an evildoer, we would not have handed him over to
you." Pilate said to them: "You take him, and judge him according to
your laws." The Jews said to Pilate: "It is not permitted to us to put
anyone to death." This happened that there might be fulfilled the word
of Jesus, which he spoke in indication of the kind of death he was going
to die. So Pilate went again into his headquarters, and called Jesus,
and said to him: "Are you the King of the Jews?" Jesus answered: "Are
you saying this because you have discovered it yourself?. Or did others
tell it to you about me?" Pilate answered: "Am I a Jew? Your own
countrymen and the chief priests handed you over to me. What have you
done?" Jesus answered: "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom
was of this world, my servants would have fought to prevent me being
handed over to the Jews. But, as it is, my kingdom does not have its
source here." So Pilate said to him: "So you are a king then?" Jesus
said: "It is you who are saying that I am a king. The reason why I was
born and came into the world is that I should bear witness to the truth.
Every one who is of the truth hears my voice." "What is truth?" Pilate
said to him.
When he had said this,
he again went out to the Jews and said to them: "I find no fault in
him. You have a custom that I should release one person to you at the
Passover time. Do you wish me to release the King of the Jews for you?"
They shouted: "Not this man, but Barabbas." And Barabbas was a brigand.
Then Pilate took Jesus
and scourged him; and the soldiers plaited a crown of thorns, and put
it on his head. And they put a purple robe on him; and they kept coming
to him and saying: "Hail! King of the Jews!" And they dealt him repeated
blows. Pilate came out again and said to them: "See! I bring him out to
you, because I want you to know that I find no fault in him." So Jesus
came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And Pilate
said to them: "See! The Man!" So, when the chief priests and officers
saw him, they shouted: "Crucify him! Crucify him!" Pilate said to them:
"You take. him, and crucify him! For I find no fault in him." The Jews
answered him: "We have a law, and by that law he ought to die, because
he made himself out to be the Son of God." When Pilate heard this
saying, he was still more alarmed.
He went into his
headquarters again, and said to Jesus: "Where do you come from?" Jesus
gave him no answer. Pilate said to him: "Do you refuse to speak to me?
Are you not aware that I have authority to release you, and authority to
crucify you?" Jesus answered him: "You would have no authority against
me whatsoever, unless it had been given to you from above. That is why
he who betrayed me to you is guilty of the greater sin." From this
moment Pilate tried every way to release him; but the Jews kept
insistently shouting: "If you release this man, you are not Caesar's
friend. Every man who makes himself a king is an opponent of Caesar." So
when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out. He took his seat
on his judgment seat, in the place that is called the Pavement--in
Hebrew, Gabbatha. It was the day of the preparation for the Passover. It
was about twelve o'clock midday. He said to the Jews: "See! Your king!"
They shouted: "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." Then he handed him over to them to be
crucified.
This is the most dramatic account of the trial of Jesus in the
New Testament, and to have cut it into small sections would have been to
lose the drama. It has to be read as one; but now that we have read it
as one, we shall take several days to study it. The drama of this
passage lies in the clash and interplay of personalities. It will
therefore be best to study it, not section by section, but in the light
of the actors within it.
We begin by looking at the Jews. In the time of Jesus the Jews
were subject to the Romans. The Romans allowed them a good deal of
self-government, but they had not the right to carry out the death
penalty. The ius gladii, as it was called, the right of the sword,
belonged only to the Romans. As the Talmud records: "Forty years before
the destruction of the Temple, judgment in matters of life and death was
taken away from Israel." The first Roman governor of Palestine was
named Coponius, and Josephus, telling of his appointment as governor,
says that he was sent as procurator "having the power of life and death
put into his hands by Caesar." (Josephus, Wars of the Jews, 2, 8, 1).
Josephus also tells of a certain priest called Ananus who determined to
execute certain of his enemies. Jews of more prudent mind protested
against his decision on the grounds that he had no right either to take
it or carry it out. Ananus was not allowed to carry his decision into
practice and was deposed from office for even thinking of doing so.
(Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 20, 9, 1). It is true that
sometimes, as, for instance, in the case of Stephen, the Jews did take
the law into their own hands; but legally they had no right to inflict
the death penalty on anyone. That was why they had to bring Jesus to
Pilate before he could be crucified.
If the Jews had themselves been able to carry out the death
penalty, it would have been by stoning. The Law lays it down: "And he
who blasphemes the name of the Lord, shall be put to death, all the
congregation shall stone him" (Leviticus 24:16).
in such a case the witnesses whose word proved the crime had to be the
first to fling the stones. "The hand of the witnesses shall be first
against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the
people" (Deuteronomy 17:7). That is the point of John 18:32.
That verse says that all this was happening that there might be
fulfilled the word of Jesus in indication of the kind of death he was
going to die. He had said that when he was lifted up, that is, when he
was crucified, he would draw all men to him (John 12:32).
If that prophecy of Jesus was to be fulfilled, he must be crucified,
not stoned; and therefore, even apart from the fact that Roman law would
not allow the Jews to carry out the death penalty, Jesus had to die a
Roman death, because he had to be lifted up.
The Jews from start to finish were seeking to use Pilate for
their purposes. They could not kill Jesus themselves, so they were
determined that the Romans would kill him for them.
But there were more things about the Jews than that.
(i) They began by hating Jesus; but they finished in a very
hysteria of hatred, howling like wolves, with faces twisted in
bitterness: "Crucify him! Crucify him!" In the end they reached such an
insanity of hatred that they were impervious to reason and to mercy and
even to the claims of common humanity. Nothing in this world warps a
man's judgment as hatred does. Once a man allows himself to hate, he can
neither think nor see straight, nor listen without distortion. Hatred
is a terrible thing because it takes a man's senses away.
(ii) The hatred of the Jews made them lose all sense of
proportion. They were so careful of ceremonial and ritual cleanness that
they would not enter Pilate's headquarters, and yet they were busy
doing everything possible to crucify the Son of God. To eat the
Passover, a Jew had to be absolutely ceremonially clean. Now, if they
had gone into Pilate's headquarters, they would have incurred
uncleanness in a double way. First, the scribal law said: "The
dwelling-places of Gentiles are unclean." Second, the Passover was the
Feast of Unleavened Bread. Part of the preparation for it was a
ceremonial search for leaven, and the banishing of every particle of
leaven from every house because it was the symbol of evil. To go into
Pilate's headquarters would have been to go into a place where leaven
might be found; and to go into such a place when the Passover was being
prepared was to render oneself unclean. But even if the Jews had entered
a Gentile house which contained leaven, they would have been unclean
only until evening. Then they would have had to undergo ceremonial
bathing after which they would have been clean.
Now see what the Jews were doing. They were carrying out the
details of the ceremonial law with meticulous care; and at the same time
they were hounding to the Cross the Son of God. That is just the kind
of thing that men are always liable to do. Many a church member fusses
about the sheerest trifles, and breaks God's law of love and of
forgiveness and of service every day. There is even many a church in
which the details of vestments, furnishings, ritual, ceremonial are
attended to with the most detailed care, and where the spirit of love
and fellowship are conspicuous only by their absence. One of the most
tragic things in the world is how the human mind can lose its sense of
proportion and its ability to put first things first.
(ii) The Jews did not hesitate to twist their charge against
Jesus. In their own private examination the charge they had formulated
was one of blasphemy (Matthew 26:65).
They knew well that Pilate would not proceed on a charge like that. He
would have said it was their own private religious quarrel and they
could settle is as they liked without coming to him. In the end what the
Jews produced was a charge of rebellion and political insurrection.
They accused Jesus of claiming to be a king, although they knew that
their accusation was a lie. Hatred is a terrible thing and does not
hesitate to twist the truth.
(iv) In order to compass the death of Jesus the Jews denied
every principle they had. The most astonishing thing they said that day
was: "We have no king but Caesar." Samuel's word to the people was that
God alone was their king (1 Samuel 12:12).
When the crown was offered to Gideon, his answer was: "I will not rule
over you, and my son will not rule over you: the Lord will rule over
you" ( 8:23).
When the Romans had first come into Palestine, they had taken a census
in order to arrange the normal taxation to which subject people were
liable. And there had been the most bloody rebellion, because the Jews
insisted that God alone was their king, and to him alone they would pay
tribute. When the Jewish leader said: "We have no king but Caesar." it
was the most astonishing volte-face in history. The very statement must
have taken Pilate's breath away, and he must have looked at them in
half-bewildered, half-cynical amusement. The Jews were prepared to
abandon every principle they had in order to eliminate Jesus.
It is a terrible picture. The hatred of the Jews turned them
into a maddened mob of shrieking, frenzied fanatics. In their hatred
they forgot all mercy, all sense of proportion, all justice, all their
principles, even God. Never in history was the insanity of hatred so
vividly shown.
Now we turn to the second personality in this story--Pilate.
Throughout the trial his conduct is well-nigh incomprehensible. It is
abundantly clear, it could not be clearer, that Pilate knew that the
charges of the Jews were a series of lies, that he knew that Jesus was
completely innocent, that he was deeply impressed with him, and that he
did not wish to condemn him to death--and yet he did. First, he tried to
refuse to deal with the case; then he tried to release Jesus on the
grounds that at the Passover a criminal was always released; then he
tried to compromise by scourging Jesus; then he made a last appeal. But
he refused all through to put his foot down and tell the Jews that he
would have nothing to do with their evil machinations. We will never
even begin to understand Pilate unless we understand his history, which
is set out for us partly in the writings of Josephus and partly in the
writings of Philo.
To understand the part that Pilate played in this drama we must
go back a long way. To begin with, what was a Roman governor doing in
Judaea at all?
In 4 B.C. Herod the Great died. He had been king of the whole of
Palestine. For all his faults he was in many ways a good king, and he
had been very friendly with the Romans. In his will he divided up his
kingdom between three of his sons. Antipas received Galilee and Peraea;
Philip received Batanea, Auranitis and Trachonitis, the wild unpopulated
regions of the north-east; and Archelaus, who at the time was only
eighteen years old, received Idumaea, Judaea and Samaria. The Romans
approved this distribution of the kingdom, and ratified it.
Antipas and Philip governed quietly and well; but Archelaus
governed with such extortion and tyranny that the Jews themselves
requested the Romans to remove him, and to appoint a governor. The
likelihood is that they expected to be incorporated into the large
province of Syria; and had that been so, the province was so large that
they would very probably have been left pretty much to carry on the way
they were. All Roman provinces were divided into two classes. Those
which required troops stationed in them were in the direct control of
the Emperor and were imperial provinces; those which did not require
troops but were peaceful and trouble-free, were in the direct control of
the senate and were senatorial provinces.
Palestine was obviously a troubled land; it needed troops and
therefore it was in the control of the Emperor. Really great provinces
were governed either by a proconsul or a legate; Syria was like that.
Smaller provinces of the second class, were governed by a procurator. He
was in full control of the military and judicial administration of the
province. He visited every part of the province at least once a year and
heard cases and complaints. He superintended the ingathering of taxes
but had no authority to increase them. He was paid a salary from the
treasury and was strictly forbidden to accept either presents or bribes;
and, if he exceeded his duties, the people of his province had power to
report him to the Emperor.
It was a procurator that Augustus appointed to control the
affairs of Palestine, and the first one took over in A.D. 6. Pilate took
over in A.D. 26 and remained in office until A.D. 35. Palestine was a
province bristling with problems, one which required a firm and a strong
and a wise hand. We do not know Pilate's previous history, but we do
know that he must have had the reputation of being a good administrator
or he would never have been given the responsible position of governing
Palestine. It had to be kept in order, for, as a glance at the map will
show, it was the bridge between Egypt and Syria.
But as governor Pilate was a failure. He seemed to begin with a
complete contempt and a complete lack of sympathy for the Jews. Three
famous, or infamous, incidents marked his career.
The first occurred on his first visit to Jerusalem. Jerusalem
was not the capital of the province; its headquarters were at Caesarea.
But the procurator paid many visits to Jerusalem, and, when he did, he
stayed in the old palace of the Herods in the west part of the city.
When he came to Jerusalem, he always came with a detachment of soldiers.
The soldiers had their standards; and on the top of the standard there
was a little bust in metal of the reigning Emperor. The Emperor was
regarded as a god, and to the Jew that little bust on the standards was a
graven image.
All previous Roman governors, in deference to the religious
scruples of the Jews, had removed that image before they entered the
city. Pilate refused to do so. The Jews besought him to do so. Pilate
was adamant; he would not pander to the superstitions of the Jews. He
went back to Caesarea. The Jews followed him. They dogged his footsteps
for five days. They were humble, but determined in their requests.
Finally he told them to meet him in the amphitheatre. He surrounded them
with armed soldiers, and informed them that if they did not stop their
requests they would be killed there and then. The Jews bared their necks
and bade the soldiers strike. Not even Pilate could massacre
defenceless men like that. He was beaten and compelled to agree that the
images should thereafter be removed from the standards. That was how
Pilate began, and it was a bad beginning.
The second incident was this. The Jerusalem water supply was
inadequate. Pilate determined to build a new aqueduct. Where was the
money to come from? He raided the Temple treasury which contained
millions. It is very unlikely that Pilate took money that was deposited
for the sacrifices and the Temple service. Much more likely, he took
money which was entitled Korban, and which came from sources which made
it impossible to use for sacred purposes. His aqueduct was much needed;
it was a worthy and a great undertaking; the water supply would even be
of great benefit to the Temple which needed much cleansing with its
continual sacrifices. But the people resented it; they rioted and surged
through the streets. Pilate mingled his soldiers with them in plain
clothes, with concealed weapons. At a given signal they attacked the mob
and many a Jew was clubbed or stabbed to death. Once again Pilate was
unpopular--and he was rendered liable to be reported to the Emperor.
The third incident turned out even worse for Pilate. As we have
seen, when he was in Jerusalem, he stayed in the ancient palace of the
Herods. He had certain shields made; and on them he had inscribed the
name of Tiberius the Emperor. These shields were what is known as votive
shields; they were devoted to the honour and the memory of the Emperor.
Now the Emperor was regarded as a god; so here was the name of a
strange god inscribed and displayed for reverence in the holy city. The
people were enraged; the greatest men, even his closest supporters,
besought Pilate to remove them. He refused. The Jews reported the matter
to Tiberius the Emperor, and he ordered Pilate to remove them.
It is relevant to note how Pilate ended up. This last incident
happened after Jesus had been crucified, in the year A.D. 35. There was a
revolt in Samaria. It was not very serious but Pilate crushed it with
sadistic ferocity and a plethora of executions. The Samaritans had
always been regarded as loyal citizens of Rome and the legate of Syria
intervened. Tiberius ordered Pilate back to Rome. When he was on the
way, Tiberius died; so far as we know, Pilate never came to judgment;
and from that moment he vanishes from history.
It is clear why Pilate acted as he did. The Jews blackmailed him
into crucifying Jesus. They said: "If you let this man go, you are not
Caesar's friend." This was, in effect: "Your record is not too good; you
were reported once before; if you do not give us our way, we will
report you again to the Emperor, and you will be dismissed." On that day
in Jerusalem, Pilate's past rose up and haunted him. He was blackmailed
into assenting to the death of Christ, because his previous mistakes
had made it impossible for him both to defy the Jews and to keep his
post. Somehow one cannot help being sorry for Pilate. He wanted to do
the right thing; but he had not the courage to defy the Jews and do it.
He crucified Jesus in order to keep his job.
We have seen Pilate's history; let us now look at his conduct during
his trial of Jesus. He did not wish to condemn Jesus, because he knew
that he was innocent; and yet he was caught in the mesh of his own past.
(i) Pilate began by trying to put the responsibility on to
someone else. He said to the Jews: "You take this man and judge him
according to your laws." He tried to evade the responsibility of dealing
with Jesus; but that is precisely what no one can do. No one can deal
with Jesus for us; we must deal with him ourselves.
(ii) Pilate went on to try to find a way of escape from the
entanglement in which he found himself. He tried to use the custom of
releasing a prisoner at the Passover in order to engineer the release of
Jesus. He tried to evade dealing directly with Jesus himself; but again
that is precisely what no one can do. There is no escape from a
personal decision in regard to Jesus; we must ourselves decide what we
will do with him, accept him or reject him.
(iii) Pilate went on to see what compromise could do. He ordered
Jesus to be scourged. It must have been in Pilate's mind that a
scourging might satisfy, or at least blunt the edge of, Jewish
hostility. He felt that he might avoid having to give the verdict of the
cross by giving the verdict of scourging. Once again, that is what no
man can do. No man can compromise with Jesus; no man can serve two
masters. We are either for Jesus or against him.
(iv) Pilate went on to try what appeal could do. He led Jesus
out broken by the scourging and showed him to the people. He asked them:
"Shall I crucify your king?" He tried to swing the balance by this
appeal to emotion and to pity. But no man can hope that appeal to others
can take the place of his own personal decision; and it was Pilate's
place to make his own decision. No man can evade a personal verdict and a
personal decision in regard to Jesus Christ.
In the end Pilate admitted defeat. He abandoned Jesus to the
mob, because he had not the courage to take the right decision and to do
the right thing.
But there are still more side-lights here on the character of Pilate.
(i) There is a hint of Pilate's ingrained attitude of contempt.
he asked Jesus if he was a king. Jesus asked whether he asked this on
the basis of what he himself had discovered, or on the basis of
information indirectly received. Pilate's answer was: "Am I a Jew? How
do you expect me to know anything about Jewish affairs?" He was too
proud to involve himself in what he regarded as Jewish squabbles and
superstitions. And that pride was exactly what made him a bad governor.
No one can govern a people if he makes no attempt to understand them and
to enter into their thoughts and minds.
(ii) There is a kind of superstitious curiosity about Pilate. He
wished to know whence Jesus came--and it was more than Jesus' native
place that he was thinking of. When he heard that Jesus had claimed to
be the Son of God, he was still more disturbed. Pilate was superstitious
rather than religious, fearing that there might be something in it. He
was afraid to come to a decision in Jesus' favour because of the Jews;
he was equally afraid to come to a decision against him, because he had
the lurking suspicion that God might be in this.
(iii) But at the heart of Pilate was a wistful longing. When
Jesus said that he had come to witness to the truth, Pilate's answer
was: "What is truth?" There are many ways in which a man might ask that
question. He might ask it in cynical and sardonic humour. Bacon
immortalized Pilate's answer, when he wrote: "What is truth? said
jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer." But it was not in
cynical humour that Pilate asked this question; nor was it the question
of a man who did not care. Here was the chink in his armour. He asked
the question wistfully and wearily.
Pilate by this world's standards was a successful man. He had
come almost to the top of the Roman civil service; he was
governor-general of a Roman province; but there was something missing.
Here in the presence of this simple, disturbing hated Galilaean, Pilate
felt that for him the truth was still a mystery--and that now he had got
himself into a situation where there was no chance to learn it. It may
be he jested, but it was the jest of despair. Philip Gibbs somewhere
tells of listening to a debate between T. S. Eliot, Margaret Irwin, C.
Day Lewis and other distinguished people on the subject, "Is this life
worth living?" "True, they jested," he said, "but they jested like
jesters knocking at the door of death."
Pilate was like that. Into his life there came Jesus, and
suddenly he saw what he had missed. That day he might have found all
that he had missed; but he had not the courage to defy the world in
spite of his past, and to take his stand with Christ and a future which
was glorious.
We have thought of the picture of the crowd in this trial of
Jesus and we have thought of the picture of Pilate. Now we must come to
the central character in the drama--Jesus himself. He is depicted
before us with a series of master-strokes.
(i) First and foremost, no one can read this story
without seeing the sheer majesty of Jesus. There is no sense that he is
on trial. When a man faces him, it is not Jesus who is on trial; it is
the man. Pilate may have treated many Jewish things with arrogant
contempt, but he did not so treat Jesus. We cannot help feeling that it
is Jesus who is in control and Pilate who is bewildered and floundering
in a situation which he cannot understand. The majesty of Jesus never
shone more radiantly than in the hour when he was on trial before men.
(ii) Jesus speaks with utter directness to us of his
kingdom; it is not, he says, of this earth. The atmosphere in Jerusalem
was always explosive; during the Passover it was sheer dynamite. The
Romans well knew that, and during the Passover time they always drafted
extra troops into Jerusalem. But Pilate never at any time had more than
three thousand men under his command. Some would be in Caesarea, his
headquarters; some would be on garrison duty in Samaria; there cannot
really have been more than a few hundred on duty in Jerusalem. If Jesus
had wished to raise the standard of rebellion and to fight it out, he
could have done it easily enough. But he makes it quite clear that he
claims to be a king and equally clear that his kingdom is not based on
force but is a kingdom in the hearts of men. He would never deny that he
aimed at conquest, but it was the conquest of love.
(iii) Jesus tells us why he came into the world. He
came to witness to the truth; he came to tell men the truth about God,
the truth about themselves, and the truth about life. As Emerson had it:
"When half-gods go,
The gods arrive."
The days of guessings and gropings and half-truths were gone. He
came to tell men the truth. That is one of the great reasons why we
must either accept or refuse Christ. There is no half-way house about
the truth. A man either accepts it, or rejects it; and Christ is the
truth.
(iv) We see the physical courage of Jesus. Pilate had him
scourged. When a man was scourged he was tied to a whipping-post in such
a way that his back was fully exposed. The lash was a long leathern
thong, studded at intervals with pellets of lead and sharpened pieces of
bone. It literally tore a man's back into strips. Few remained
conscious throughout the ordeal; some died; and many went raving mad.
Jesus stood that. And after it, Pilate led him out to the crowd and
said: "See! The man!" Here is one of John's double meanings. It must
have been Pilate's first intention to awaken the pity of the Jews.
"Look!" he said. "Look at this poor, bruised, bleeding creature! Look at
this wretchedness! Can you possibly wish to hound a creature like this
to an utterly unnecessary death?" But we can almost hear the tone of his
voice change as he says it, and see the wonder dawn in his eyes. And
instead of saying it half-contemptuously, to awaken pity, he says it
with an admiration that will not be repressed. The word that Pilate used
is ho (Greek #3588) anthropos (Greek #444),
which is the normal Greek for a human being; but not so long afterwards
the Greek thinkers were using that very term for the heavenly man, the
ideal man, the pattern of manhood. It is always true that whatever else
we say or do not say about Jesus, his sheer heroism is without parallel.
Here indeed is a man.
(v) Once again we see here in the trial of Jesus the spontaneousness
of his death and the supreme control of God. Pilate warned Jesus that he
had power to release him or to crucify him. Jesus answered that Pilate
had no power at all, except what had been given him by God. The
crucifixion of Jesus never, from beginning to end, reads like the story
of a man caught up in an inexorable web of circumstances over which he
had no control; it never reads like the story of a man who was hounded
to his death; it is the story of a man whose last days were a triumphant
procession towards the goal of the Cross.
(vi) And here also is the terrible picture of the silence of
Jesus. There was a time when he had no answer to give to Pilate. There
were other times when Jesus was silent. He was silent before the High
Priest (Matthew 26:63; Mark 14:61). He was silent before Herod (Luke 23:9). He was silent when the charges against him were made to Pilate by the Jewish authorities (Matthew 27:14; Mark 15:5).
We have sometimes the experience, when talking to other people, of
finding that argument and discussion are no longer possible, because we
and they have no common ground. It is almost as if we spoke another
language. That happens when men do in fact speak another mental and
spiritual language. It is a terrible day when Jesus is silent to a man.
There can be nothing more terrible than for a man's mind to be so shut
by his pride and his self-will, that there is nothing Jesus can say to
him that will make any difference.
(vii) Finally, it is just possible that in this trial scene
there is a strange, dramatic climax, which is a magnificent example of
John's dramatic irony.
The scene comes to an end by saying that Pilate brought Jesus
out; as we have translated it, and as the King James Version and Revised
Standard translate it, Pilate came out to the place that was called the
Pavement of Gabbatha--which may mean the tessellated pavement of marble
mosaic--and sat upon the judgment seat. This was the bema (Greek #968), on which the magistrate sat to give his official decisions. Now the verb for to sit is kathizein (Greek #2523),
and that may be either intransitive or transitive; it may mean either
to sit down oneself, or to seat another. Just possibly it means here
that Pilate with one last mocking gesture brought Jesus out, clad in the
terrible finery of the old purple robe and with his forehead girt with
the crown of thorns and the drops of blood the thorns had wakened, and
set him in the judgment seat, and with a wave of his hand said: "Am I to
crucify your king?" The apocryphal Gospel of Peter says that in the
mockery, they set Jesus on the seat of judgment and said: "Judge justly,
King of Israel." Justin Martyr too says that "they set Jesus on the
judgment seat, and said, 'Give judgment for us'." It may be that Pilate
jestingly caricatured Jesus as judge. If that is so, what dramatic irony
is there. That which was a mockery was the truth; and one day those who
had mocked Jesus as judge would meet him as judge--and would remember.
So in this dramatic trial scene we see the immutable majesty,
the undaunted courage and the serene acceptance of the Cross of Jesus.
Never was he so regal as when men did their worst to humiliate him.
We have looked at the main personalities in the trial of Jesus--the
Jews with their hatred, Pilate with his haunting past, and Jesus in the
serenity of his regal majesty. But certain other people were on the
outskirts of the scene.
(i) There were the soldiers. When Jesus was given into their
hands to be scourged, they amused themselves with their crude
horse-play. He was a king? Well then, let him have a robe and crown. So
they put an old purple robe on him and a crown of thorns round his brow;
and they slapped him on the face. They were playing a game that ancient
people commonly played. Philo in his work On Flaccus tells of a very
similar thing that the mob at Alexandria did. "There was a madman named
Carabas, afflicted not with the savage and beastlike sort of
madness--for this form is undisguisable both for sufferers and
bystanders--but with the quiet and milder kind. He used to spend his
days and nights naked in the streets, sheltering from neither heat nor
frost, a plaything of children and idle lads. They joined in driving the
wretch to the gymnasium, and, setting him aloft so that he could be
seen by everyone, they flattened a strip of bark for a fillet and put it
on his head, and wrapped a floor-rug round his body for a mantle, and
for sceptre someone catching sight of a small piece of the native
papyrus that had been thrown on the road handed it to him. And when he
had assumed the insignia of kingship as in theatrical mimes, and had
been arrayed in the character of king, young men bearing staffs on their
shoulders took their stance on either side in place of spearmen, mimic
lancers. Then others approached, some as if to greet him, others as
though to plead their causes, others as though to petition him about
public matters. Then from the surrounding multitudes rang forth an
outlandish shout of 'Marin,' the name by which it is said that kings are
called in Syria." It is a poignant thing that the soldiers treated
Jesus as a ribald crowd might treat an idiot boy.
And yet of all the people involved in the trial of Jesus, the
soldiers were least to blame, for they did not know what they were
doing. Most likely they had come up from Caesarea and did not know what
it was all about. Jesus to them was only a chance criminal.
Here is another example of the dramatic irony of John. The
soldiers made a caricature of Jesus as king, while in actual fact he was
the only king. Beneath the jest there was eternal truth.
(ii) Last of all there was Barabbas whose episode John tells very
briefly indeed. Of the custom of freeing a prisoner at Passover we know
nothing more than the gospels tell us. The other gospels to some extent
fill out John's brief picture and when we put all our information
together we find that Barabbas was a notable prisoner, a brigand, who
had taken part in a certain insurrection in the city and had committed
murder (Matthew 27:15-26; Mark 15:6-15; Luke 23:17-25; Acts 3:14).
The name Barabbas is interesting. There are two possibilities as
to its derivation. It may be compounded of Bar Abba which would mean
"son of the father," or it may be compounded of Bar Rabban, which would
mean "son of the Rabbi." It is not impossible that Barabbas was the son
of some Rabbi, a scion of some noble family who had gone wrong; and it
may well be that, criminal though he was, he was popular with the people
as a kind of Robin Hood character. It is certainly true that we must
not think of Barabbas as a sneak thief, or a petty pilferer, or a
burglar. He was a lestes (Greek #3027),
which means a brigand. Either he was one of the warrior brigands who
infested the Jericho road, the kind of man into whose hands the
traveller in the parable fell; or, perhaps even more probable, he was
one of the Zealots who had sworn to rid Palestine of the Romans, even if
it meant a career of murder, robbery, assassination and crime. Barabbas
was no petty criminal. A man of violence he might be, but his violence
was the kind which might well have a romance and a glamour about it and
make him the popular hero of the crowd and the despair of the law at one
and the same time.
There is a still more interesting thing about Barabbas. It is a
second name and there must have been a first name, just as, for
instance, Peter had been Simon bar-Jonah, Simon the son of Jonah. Now
there are certain ancient Greek manuscripts, and certain Syrian and
Armenian translations of the New Testament which actually give the name
of Barabbas as Jesus. That is by no means impossible, because in those
days Jesus was a common name, being the Greek form of Joshua. If so, the
choice of the crowd was even more dramatic, for they were shouting:
"Not Jesus the Nazarene, but Jesus Barabbas."
The choice of the mob has been the eternal choice. Barabbas was
the man of force and blood, the man who chose to reach his end by
violent means. Jesus was the man of love and of gentleness, whose
kingdom was in the hearts of men. It is the tragic fact of history that
all through the ages men have chosen the way of Barabbas and refused the
way of Jesus.
What happened to Barabbas no man knows; but John Oxenham in one
of his books has an imaginary picture of him. At first Barabbas could
think of nothing but his freedom; then he began to look at the man who
had died that he might live. Something about Jesus fascinated him and he
followed him out to see the end. As he saw Jesus bearing his Cross, one
thought burned into his mind: "I should have been carrying that Cross,
not he. He saved me!" And as he saw Jesus hanging on Calvary, the only
thing of which he could think was: "I should have been hanging there,
not he. He saved me!" It may be so, or it may not be so; but certainly
Barabbas was one of the sinners Jesus died to save.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)