Church of the Holy City

Pilate and Christ

Pilate and Christ
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
April 3, 2015
Good Friday

Luke 23:1-46 Psalm 22

The words of Pilate and Jesus capture the human situation. Jesus forgives, as God forgives. But Pilate shows us that in our human condition, we may yield to forces of darkness that are at work in our world. We are poised between God and chaos, between light and darkness, between heaven and hell.
It still moves me that Jesus is able to forgive His persecutors. He is unjustly accused; unfairly convicted; cruelly executed. Yet Jesus says, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” I thought of another aspect to Jesus’ forgiveness. There is absolutely no retaliation, no divine retribution. Jesus is the Word made flesh; The Holy One; Emmanuel–God with us. This is whom the angry mob is murdering. They are killing God in the flesh. Think of the acts we read about in the Old Testament in which God punishes Israelites for turning to idols or to other Canaanite Gods. In contrast, Jesus’ message is one of forgiveness. The earth doesn’t open up and swallow the angry mob, as it did the Israelites who challenged Moses’ authority (Numbers 16). Fire doesn’t fall from the sky and destroy Jerusalem as it did Sodom. No. In Jesus’ unjust execution there is no divine revenge. There is only that plea from Jesus, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Jesus forgives.
Lately I have been talking about the nature of God. I have stated that God can do only good to humanity. God loves the human race. God loves us so much that He came down to earth to re-establish a bond that had been severed by humanity. As I indicated above, there are places in the Bible where God is said to be angry and to take revenge on humans. I see this as a record of God written by a bronze age people–or maybe even a stone-aged people–in a warrior society. They would see God differently than we do, due to the society in which they lived. How can God really be angry or take revenge? Humans can’t! We are taught to put away angry feelings; we are taught not to take revenge. How could a loving God do the same things humans are forbidden to do? And as Christians, we are taught to follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ and embrace His forgiveness. My God is the loving, forgiving Jesus Christ that we read about in the New Testament.
God forgives; God loves us; God does only what is good to us. But that isn’t the whole story. For there is the very real specter of evil in the world. We live in a world so broken that it could crucify the very God who came to save us. We live in a world in which we witness unspeakable acts of cruelty, some even done in the name of peaceful religions. This brings us to the figure of Pilate.
Pilate was torn between two courses of action. One was to release Jesus whom Pilate knew was innocent. The other course of action was to appease the angry mob and surrender to their will.
I have always pitied Pilate in his predicament. Maybe it is because Pilate is so human. Maybe it is because Pilate is in a situation we all know only too well–whether we will follow our conscience or surrender to forces of darkness.
Pilate tried to release Jesus. In Luke’s Gospel Pilate tries to set Jesus free three times. In each case the mob cries out for Jesus’ death. As we know, Pilate finally surrenders to the will of the mob. Luke’s wording is interesting in this. Luke says that Pilate doesn’t convict Jesus. What Luke says is that Pilate, “Surrendered Jesus to their will” (23:25). Pilate doesn’t sentence Jesus to death. Rather he hands Jesus over to the mob and lets the mob do what it will.
While I am sympathetic to Pilate, I do not mean to let him off the hook. Pilate knew what the right thing to do was. Pilate knew Jesus to be innocent and Pilate knew that the right course of action was to release Jesus. What Pilate did was to surrender to the powers of darkness. In our reading at the beginning of this service we read from John, “The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it” (1:5). Pilate surrendered the Light of the World to the darkness. In doing so, Pilate demonstrated the potential we all have to succumb to the darkness. While I think that Jesus forgave Pilate, as He even forgave the angry mob, Pilate still remains culpable for his failure to act according to his conscience.
We who call ourselves Christians follow the light. But we exist in a world that contains darkness. In this world, we will have trouble and struggles. We will be put in situations in which we are torn between doing good deeds and so turning to the light, or doing evil and so turning from the light. John tells us this,
Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come to the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God (John 3:20-21).
Jesus loves every one of us, and forgives everyone of us. Jesus does nothing but good to us. Jesus will not be angry; will not take revenge, or punish. But the message of Good Friday is that we live is a world that is broken, and that we are broken humans. Still, the message that began with the incarnation on Christmas and continues through Good Friday into Easter is this, “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave the power to become children of God” (John 1:12).

PRAYER

Lord you have given us the Bible to teach us your ways. In the stories and sayings, we learn what you would have us do and what we ought not to do. We learn from all the characters in the Bible. We learn from your life how to follow in your footsteps. We see in your Word the potential we have to fall away from you. We see the betrayal of Judas, we see the denial of Peter, and we see the horrors of mob violence. And we also see your unfailing forgiveness. Lord, we pray that you guide us ever toward you. Lead us, Lord, away from our potential to sin. Strengthen our faith in your saving grace, and plant our footsteps firmly in godly deeds. And bring us, we pray, into eternal joy with you in your heavenly kingdom.