Pilate on trial

Pilate on trial

Michael Yaconeelii in his book ‘messy spirituality’ shares a story of a young boy by the name of Norman. One spring, his class decided to put up the play of Cinderella. As soon as his teacher announced the play, every student’s hand shot into the air volunteering to be one of the characters. “I want to be Cinderella!” every girl yelled. “I want to be the handsome prince!” the boys shouted. Realizing that not everyone could have the same part, the students soon erupted into urgent requests for the other parts. “I want to be the wicked stepmother!” “I want to be the ugly step sister!” Somehow the teacher was able to wade through all the requests, and soon everyone was assigned a part, except Norman, who was sitting right at the end. Concerned because there weren’t any characters left the teacher said to him “I’m afraid all the main parts have been taken for Cinderella but I’m sure we can find an extra part for you. What character would you like to be?”

Norman didn’t hesitate. “I would like to be a pig,” he declared. “Pig?” the teacher said bewildered. “But there is no pig in the Cinderella story.” Norman smiled and said, “There is one now!” Norman designed his own costume-paper cup for a nose and pink underwear with a pipe-cleaner tail. Since there was nothing in the script explaining what the pig was supposed to do, the action was left up to Norman. As it turned out, Norman gave himself a walk-on part. The pig walked along with Cinderella wherever she went. He became a mirror of action on stage. If Cinderella was happy the pig would be happy; if Cinderella was sad, the pig was sad. One look at Norman and you knew the emotion of the moment. At the climax, when the Prince finally placed the glass slipper on Cinderella's foot and the ecstatic couple hugged and rode off to live happily ever after, the pig went wild with joy, danced around on his hind legs, and broke his silence by barking. During rehearsals, the teacher had tried explaining to Norman that even if there was a pig in the Cinderella story, pigs don't bark. But as she expected, Norman explained that this pig barked.

The play was an instant hit. At the curtain call, guess who received a standing ovation? Norman, of course, the barking pig. He was, after all, the real Cinderella story. What is impressive about Norman is his attitude which refused to be limited by the script. On the contrary, he stole the show away from those who were supposed to be the key players of the story. That evening as the guests went back home no was talking about Cinderella or the stepmother, or the wicked sisters, but about Norman-the barking pig, who had become the star of the show.
Norman was so like Jesus. When Jesus was on the stage of the world history, the key players were people like the religious leaders, Caesar and Pilate, but compared to Jesus they are forgotten names today. Where as Jesus continues to rule and reign in the hearts of millions. Jesus would time and again turn the tables on his opponents, refusing to be limited by the “script” given to him. Jesus’ trail before Pilate is a good example, where instead of Jesus; Pilate seems to be the one under trail. It was not so much that Jesus was defending himself but Pilate who was trying to get out of a sticking situation. The way Pilate responded to Jesus then is the same as many people respond to the claims of Jesus Christ today.

Evasion
When Jesus was brought before Pilate, Pilate’s first response was to evade his own responsibility. Pilate tried passing the buck. He told the Jewish leaders to judge Jesus themselves, but they refused because they couldn’t execute him (John 18:31-32). He suggested, perhaps sarcastically, that they should go ahead and crucify him themselves (John 19:6-7), even though Pilate knew that crucifixion was legal only under Roman authority. At one point during the “trial” of Jesus, Pilate tried to pass the buck to Herod Antipas, who, as Tetrarch over Galilee, had the legal right to put Jesus to death. But Herod didn’t grab the bait, and used his meeting with Jesus as an occasion to mock him (Luke 23:6-12).

What Pilate tried to do was nothing out of the ordinary. Even today we see the blame game played so often. Our politicians do this all the time. When ever anything goes wrong, their immediate reaction is to point fingers at the opposite party. In fact passing the buck is ingrained in the human nature. Adam, in the Garden of Eden, did the same. When God asked him if he had eaten of the forbidden tree, Adam responded saying “the woman you put here with me she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” When God turned to the woman and asked her why she had done that, she in turn passed the buck by saying “the serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
Why do we evade responsibility? One of the main reasons is that we live in the illusion that if we don’t make a decision, we won’t make a mistake. What we forget is that not making a decision is also a decision in itself. When we choose not to act we in fact make a choice. Neutrality in reality is an illusion. Jesus said in Matt 6:24 “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” Jesus himself demanded from the disciples their uncompromising allegiance to himself, and declared that the criterion of their final judgment would be their response to him. He called people to believe in him, to trust him. Claims like that drive people to extremes. Either you accept his authority as tantamount to that of God himself, which is what his disciples did; or you declare the man a dangerous imposter, and determine to destroy him. Eduard Schweizer puts it even more strongly: “Neutrality is in any case impossible as a definitive attitude, for his summons is such that whoever seeks to remain neutral has already rejected him”

When Pilate tried to be neutral, he had already made his choice; that was to reject Jesus as the Messiah. It is the same choice that faces us today. To say that Jesus was a good man or a mere prophet is to reject his true claim to be the Son of God. He does not give us the luxury of sitting on the fence undecided. On the contrary he puts us on the spot by asking us “Who do you say I am?”

Compromise
When evading his responsibility did not work, Pilate tried a new method. He tried to compromise between the two sides. In John 18:38-39 after he questioned Jesus. Pilate came before the crowds and said “I find no basis for a charge against him”. Pilate was even willing to release Jesus as it was a custom to release one prisoner at the time of the Passover, but then in John 19:1 we read that Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. Now why would Pilate do that if he was convinced that Jesus was innocent? For a simple reason - Pilate was trying to please both sides. He thought if he flogged Jesus he could appease the crowd and get rid of them and at the same time he would save Jesus’ life and not have him crucified. Pilate tried to please both sides!

Today’s spirituality is marked by this characteristic; wanting the best of both the worlds. The New Age movement that has become so popular in today’s day and age is largely due to the fact that it offers spirituality without morality. Cult groups like Sai Baba are especially popular among politicians and the affluent class of the Indian society because they make no moral demands on one’s public or private life. One can have healing for one’s ailment, prosperity for one’s children, peace of mind all without anyone raising awkward questions about one’s political thuggery, racist policies or dubious commercial transactions. The attraction of the New Age movement lies in the offer of a religion without repentance. Sadly, this philosophy has also crept into the Church. What is promoted as ‘faith in God’ often turns out, on closer inspection, to be a means for obtaining emotional security or material blessing in this life and an insurance policy for the next. William Booth the founder of Salvation Army once said “I consider that the chief dangers which confront the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, and salvation without regeneration.” People want all the benefits of the spiritual life without having to give up any of the worldly pleasures.

In contrast to this, the discipleship that Jesus spoke about involved self denial and dying to one self. In Matt 16:25 Jesus said “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” Christian living is a challenge to a radical commitment to the Lordship of Jesus Christ which leaves no room for compromise.

Verdict
Pilate tried to evade his responsibility, he tried to compromise between the two sides but finally he had to take a stand. In his verdict to have Jesus crucified, Pilate made it clear, that for him, his position and power meant more than the truth. Pilate, following the lead of the Jewish authorities, chose to protect his own political and personal interests over justice (John 19-12:16). Although at one point Pilate had asked Jesus “What is Truth?” Pilate did not care about the truth.

He did not want to crucify Jesus, but he did not want to believe in Jesus either. Pilate reflects the attitude of this world. Many just don't care about another life or another kingdom; they only want to rule their little world here. The famous novelist G.K Chesterton once remarked that ‘the problem with Christianity is not that it has been tried and found wanting but that it has been found difficult and left untried..’ People turn away from the Gospel, not because they do not see the truth of the Gospel but because they do not want to respond to the truth.

Aldous Huxley, the grandson of Charles Darwin’s “bulldog” Thomas Huxley, said candidly of his atheism, "I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption.” Huxley goes on to write "For myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaningless was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom; we objected to the political and economic system because it was unjust. The supporters of these systems claimed that in some way they embodied the meaning (a Christian meaning, they insisted) of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotical revolt: we could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever." For Huxley and friends, the only way to justify their immoral living was by cutting God loose from this world. The truth was only valuable to Huxley if it served his interests. If not; he wanted nothing to do with it.
Pilate rejected Christ in order to save his power and position, Huxley rejected Christian values in order to vindicate his own depraved philosophy.

Many today reject Christ for the same reason, to continue to live in their sin. John 3:19 says ‘this is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light, because their deeds were evil.’ It is their deliberate choice to live in darkness that keeps them away from the Light.

Cross of Christ
Pilate began by evading his responsibility; he then tried to compromise and finally rejected Christ for his own gains. In contrast to this when we turn to the cross of Christ we encounter a God who did exactly the opposite. God did not pass the buck and say ‘Sin is not my problem’ He took the initiative to deal with our problems by sending His Son to die for us. ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.’ (John 3:16) The cross also reveals God’s uncompromising nature. God in His justice cannot overlook sin and God in His love cannot condemn us to eternal damnation. The scripture tells us in Isaiah 53:6 ‘… the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.’ In the cross we see both God’s justice and God’s love work simultaneously. The cross is also a reminder that for us God gave the best that He had, He did not hold back anything. Paul writes in Philippians 2:6-7 ‘Who, being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing taking the very nature of a servant.’ Unlike Pilate who rejected Christ for earthly power, Jesus gave up his heavenly place for our salvation.

We share a common humanity with Pilate. At times we know the right and choose to do the wrong. Pilate had his moment in history and now we have ours. What have we done with our opportunities and responsibilities? What judgment have we passed on Jesus?

Rev. Paras Tayade