The Evidence of Jesus: John 19:1-16
When we look at the arrest, trial and crucifixion of Jesus, we are confronted with questions we cannot avoid. Once we have been asked the question, we have to answer. How do we respond to God? How do we respond to the Cross? How do we respond when we are challenged by the evidence of Jesus to follow in his way?
We pick up the story tonight halfway through Jesus’ trial before Pilate; and we begin with a question: what was Pilate thinking? At the end of chapter 18 Pilate has tried to release Jesus and the Jews demanded Barabbas.
If we look at Matthew, Mark and Luke, we are told that the crowd demanded Barabbas, so Pilate releases Barabbas and hands Jesus over to be flogged and crucified. John has more detail of the trial.
Pilate has Jesus’ flogged and then he brings him back into the place. What is going on in Pilate’s mind?
Is Pilate trying to find a way of releasing Jesus? Does Pilate think that if Jesus is flogged and humiliated, the Jews will give up on their demands and allow Pilate to let Jesus go free?
Pilate knows there is no legal justification for the flogging. It was a bitterly cruel exercise. The whip, or the scourge, was made with a number of leather thongs, into which were inserted pieces of bone and lead which pierced and tore the flesh when making contact. I remember my devoutly Christian school teacher saying she had sympathy with Pilate up to the point when he subjected Jesus to this cruel torture. Some scholars say that scourging was a preparation for execution, it made the prisoner weaker and hastened death.
When we look at John 19:1, it is hard to understand what Pilate is doing. Perhaps he genuinely believes that if he reduces Jesus to a broken and pathetic figure, the Jews will be satisfied and the matter will be at an end.
Pilate knows the flogging is illegal, he says in verse 4, ‘I find no basis for a charge against him. He brings Jesus out for the crowd to see, ‘Here is the man’, he says.
Jesus stands before them and he stands before us: his body is broken and bleeding from the scourge; a crown of sharp thorns has been jammed upon his head; a purple robe has been thrown around his shoulders. ‘Behold the man’.
The word Pilate uses is anthropos; it is a word for a human being. ‘This is a human being’, Pilate seems to be saying to the crowd.
This is a human being; this is the Son of God. How did they respond? How do we respond to such a God? The figure standing there before us demands an answer. We cannot just turn and walk away.
Jesus’ accusers gave their answer. They want nothing to do with this man. ‘Crucify! Crucify!’ they shout.
In the verse that follow, Pilate the politician seems to take over from Pilate the chief justice.
In verse 7 we see Jesus’ enemies change their tactic. Their disagreement with Jesus was religious. In 18:19 the high priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and about his teaching. When they bring Jesus to Pilate they make a political charge; in 18:33 Pilate asks Jesus, ‘are you the King of the Jews?’ By 19;7 the accusation has changed back, they are accusing Jesus of heresy; it is a religious disagreement again. It is the first time they have made a specific accusation , ‘he claimed to be the son of God’.
Pilate is rattled. He is out of his depth here. Pilate is a hard-nosed government official, he has no interest in religion. Pilate knows enough to realise that he knows nothing. Pilate is like our modern secular politicians; they have no strong religious views themselves and they can’t understand those who have strong beliefs. I remember from the years I lived in the North that one of the weaknesses of the Government ministers sent from London was that they tended to come from an English liberal (with a small ‘l’), secular background and they had little understanding of deep religious feelings.
Secular people think that their view is the normal one. They assume their answers must be the correct ones. They are concerned with the things of the material world and have no response to make to the big questions of life.
Pilate is no different from secular politicians. Pilate could cope with the day-today questions, but when it came to spiritual matters, Pilate was at a loss. He couldn’t understand what people were talking about.
Pilate is floundering. He is losing control of the situation. In verse 9, he goes back into the palace and he tries to get a hold on things again. “Where do you come from?” he asks Jesus. Pilate is trying to assert his superiority; if Jesus answered ‘Nazareth’, Pilate could have made play of the fact that he himself was from Rome, a much more significant and important place and that Jesus should therefore listen to him.
Jesus doesn’t answer, so Pilate resorts to using threats, “I have the power to free you or to crucify you”. The answer Jesus gives is the answer any devout Jew would have given. The Jews believed that God was Lord of all and that all power therefore came from him. Jesus is also making the point that his arrest, trial and crucifixion were within the authority of God. They were God’s way of saving the people who have rejected him.
There are verses in the story of Jesus’ trial that have been used in a very anti-Jewish way down through the centuries; verses like 19:1 “Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of greater sin”.
In medieval times and onwards, Jews suffered bitter persecution and violence; they were labelled ‘Christ-killers’ by the Church and suffered the most appalling crimes. Anti-Semitism culminated in the demonic Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust. Sad to say, ant-Semitism still persists in the neo-Nazi groups across Europe.
The Christian Gospel should never ever have been used as a basis for attacks on the Jews. Jesus is Jewish; those who wrote the Gospel accounts were Jewish. The issue here is not the Jews rejecting a Christian, there was no such thing as Christianity; it only begins after the resurrection. The issue here is God’s own beloved people rejecting his love.
In Jesus God’s love is made available to all people everywhere. The rejection of that love, which began in Jerusalem, is just as strong amongst those who would claim to be members of the Christian church as it is among any other people. If we had been in Jerusalem, would we have behaved any differently?
Jesus’ enemies realise by verse 12 that Pilate is not interested in their religious dispute, so watch how the charge against Jesus switches again. It was religious; then it is political; then it is religious; and now they switch to a political charge, ‘If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar’. This is their trump card against Pilate. They know he has been in trouble in the past; if he gets in trouble again, he will be heading down the road.
Pontius Pilate knows he is cornered and he very deliberately takes a legal role. Jesus is brought out and Pilate sits down in the judge’s seat. What is going on in Pilate’s mind. He seems to be in turmoil. He has tried to release Jesus at least three times. Even for a hard-headed man, it must have been difficult to accept that he was going to have to execute an obviously innocent man.
Pilate has one last trick. ‘Here is your king’, he says to the Jews. He is taunting them, provoking them. They respond as before, ‘Crucify him!’ Then Pilate asks them slyly, ‘Shall I crucify your king?’ and they walk into his trap, ‘we have no king but Caesar’.
Pilate has conceded the life of his prisoner, but the Jews have conceded everything in which they believed. They have disowned God and everything they have stood for ‘we have no king but Caesar’.
Disowning God, disowning everything we stand for, is a danger within our own community. There are people who would identify themselves as Church of Ireland who would disown everything we stand for. Steven Baggs was contacted by a woman who was interested in starting a youth group—when he talked about his work she said, ‘Oh no, I don’t want anything religious’. If Pilate asked our community the question we would honestly have to say, ‘we have no king but materialism’.
We cannot reflect on those events in Jerusalem without reflecting on our own lives. Pontius Pilate and the crowd are both confronted by the evidence of this person, Jesus, and they reject him. When faced with the same evidence, how do we respond?