Just Doing My Job
Notes
Transcript
John 18:28 - 19:16
Just Doing My Job
Just Doing My Job
A day in the life of Pilate.
It was an ordinary morning. Time to do a few hours of “work” while the day was still cool. Pilate was a Roman governor. Granted, he was governor out in the boonies of Judea… but a governor was a governor. A rising civil servant to the greatest empire the world has ever known.
But it was springtime and he had a job to do. His primary responsibility was to keep the peace, the Pax Romano, and to keep it with the edge of the sword if necessary. This was a fractious people, rebellion simmering underneath the sermon. It was maybe decades from exploding into open rebellion, but Pilate’s job was to keep the lid on it, keep the people quiet for a few more years. Maybe he could get promoted to a real Roman city.
His first case of the day, another wanna-be King of the Jews. A revolutionary. This one turned in by his own religious leaders. The priests who formed their own kind of shadow government. Apparently they had rushed this man through their own kangaroo court by night and now it was docket number one on his list.
33 So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” 34 Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?” 35 Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?” 36 Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” 37 Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” 38 Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”
Pilate chuckled at his little joke. Everyone has their own opinion, their own perspective, their own ideas, their own truth. The Jewish leaders had theirs and he had his. No need to argue about who had the truth, it really all came down to who had the power. And today, that was him.
But this man was clearly no threat. “My kingdom is not of this world” he said. A spiritual kingdom, then, not a threat to Rome. Not a threat to him. This is clearly a religious matter.
And so he sought to release him.
After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, “I find no guilt in him. 39 But you have a custom that I should release one man for you at the Passover. So do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?” 40 They cried out again, “Not this man, but Barabbas!” Now Barabbas was a robber.
The mob is all stirred up again. That was the last thing Pilate needed. They wanted Barabbas? That guy was a scumbag, and the Jesus guy seems nice enough. So, Pilate decided, he would try for a lesser sentence. A little mockery and a little flogging. Please the crowd and let the soldiers blow off some steam.
Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him. 2 And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe. 3 They came up to him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and struck him with their hands. 4 Pilate went out again and said to them, “See, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in him.” 5 So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold the man!” 6 When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, “Crucify him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.”
This problem was growing thorns and Pilate wanted no part of it. He didn’t particularly want to crucify an obviously innocent man. Let the Jews carry out their own vendetta.
7 The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has made himself the Son of God.” 8 When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid.
Afraid of the Jews and the underlying political tension and rebellion? Afraid of the Jews stirring up the mob again against this man? But above all, the Romans had learned never to offend the local gods. The people got rough and you never knew how powerful the local gods were.
Pilate was even more afraid. This job wasn’t supposed to call for courage.
9 He entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, “Where are you from?” But Jesus gave him no answer. 10 So Pilate said to him, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” 11 Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.”
This man was innocent. And what’s more, he seemed to be saying Pilate was free of guilt for what had been don’t to him. He had just had this man whipped bloody, then dressed in his mocking purple robe of royalty. Blood still trickled down from his crown of thorns. And his only words… are words of forgiveness. It is his god in authority. It is the Jews who handed him over.
12 From then on Pilate sought to release him, but the Jews cried out, “If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.”
The trump card. If they could make this about loyalty to Caesar, that is all that Rome would hear.
13 So when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called The Stone Pavement, and in Aramaic Gabbatha. 14 Now it was the day of Preparation of the Passover. It was about the sixth hour.
High noon.
He said to the Jews, “Behold your King!”
Perhaps a final effort at releasing this innocent man.
15 They cried out, “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.”
What could he do? Just do my job. I tried to release him, four times at least. My job is to keep the peace and pay the taxes.
What could he do? Just do his job.
The mob calls for it. Common sense calls for us. He had exhausted every possible avenue for justice, now the future was written.
16 So he delivered him over to them to be crucified.
Common Sense - Common Sin
Common Sense - Common Sin
This is the story of Pilate. A Roman bureaucrat who is just doing his job. Another day on the job.
And he seems to have tried to free Jesus. He wasn’t courageous, maybe a little cowardly even, but he did try. No one can say he didn’t try.
It’s understandable. Common. A man making the best out of a very difficult, very tense situation.
So we can understand.
Except… we don’t. Because any action taken on your part that results in the government-sanctioned murder of an innocent man is obviously wrong. And whatever you mean by sin, that has to be sin.
And any action you take that kills God himself. Let’s put that down as wrong too. So we have this bizarre dichotomy. I can put myself in Pilate’s shoes and understand his actions. At least four times he tried. Was he to put down a mob riot, probably having to kill others in the crowd, in order to defend a man he had just meant, a harmless crackpot preacher from Galilee?
But at the same time, this is the man responsible for the execution of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. One of the greatest villains of history.
This is the depth of our sin. The brokenness of the world. Sin breaks everything.
Common sense may argue that Pilate had done everything he could. But that doesn’t mean that Pilate is innocent of sin. It means that our common sense is broken. Our internal moral intuition is as broken as the rest of us, fragmented pieces of the law God breathed into our spirit at creation. Our minds are darkened, our hearts confused. We don’t recognize sin when we see it, and especially not when we are living it.
We think of sin as discrete actions we commit, but sin reaches far deeper. It is more pervasive. It is the corruption of the way that we think and the way that we feel about our actions. I can think what Pilate did was reasonable, and I can feel that he was justified in his actions… and yet my “thinker” and my “feeler” are darkened and corrupted by sin.
This extends than to our every social institution. Many continue to call the Roman Empire the greatest time. The American experiment is great, but it’s only been a couple centuries and change. The Roman empire lasted five centuries. And if you count the eastern half, the Byzantine Empire, it lasted 1500 years. The most successful government of all time.
But even as sin darkens the minds and hearts of individuals, so it darkens the halls of governments… and governors. Such that this “noble empire” is built on the back of slavery and violence. And the grinding wheels of that government sentenced an innocent man, the Son of God, to die.
This sin is everywhere in this story. It is in the mob who earlier that week had praised Jesus as King… now mock him as the same and call for his death. It is in the religious leaders who above all, should have recognized Yahweh in their midst, arguing instead for his death. It is in the soldiers who have no compunction about flogging and mocking a man they know next to nothing about, just an opportunity for cruelty.
It is in Pilate in his cowardice. His ultimate failure to be faithful to his God-given authority, to use it to defend the innocent.
Born to Die
Born to Die
And so Jesus is sentenced to die. But Jesus isn’t surprised. Jesus was born to die. Jesus was born to die.
From the moment of incarnation, Jesus was surrounded by a world corrupted by sin. He saw that corruption in his family, in his brothers, in his mother, in his neighbors. He saw that corruption in his disciples, in the religious leaders and in the government.
It is a not surprising that this whirlwind of sin sentences him to death… because he was born to die for that sin. All of it was broken. Everyone was guilty. And someone had to pay. Jesus is sentenced to death by Pilate and that was sin.
But he was sent by God for our sin.
And then there was you
And then there was you
I understand and sympathize with Pilate… but it is because I am as sinful and broken as he was. My thinker is broken by sin. My feeler is damaged and faulty. And yours is too. It always has been.
When we approach the cross, we really don’t appreciate how necessary it was. We think of our list of sins… but it isn’t a list. It has permeated everything about us and everything about our world. The wages of sin is death, and that has long since spiraled throughout every aspect of our world, so that we usually can’t point to any particular instance of sin and link it to another instance of suffering. But we know we live in a broken and dying world.
Jesus walked to the cross to deal the Pilate’s sinful cowardice. And the religious leaders’ arrogance. And the mob’s stupidity. And the Roman government’s abuse of power. And the cruelty of whoever invented the cross as a method of execution. And the need for something like execution. And death itself.
Jesus is crucified for all of it. That is what he takes to the cross with him. All of our sin. All of our death. All of our suffering.
That you might be free. That as you are transformed by the renewing of your mind, that your “thinker” may think thoughts free of sin. More and more as you are transformed.
That as your heart is remade that you might love as he loves, more and more as you are transformed. This is the cross. He was crucified, and as a follower of Jesus, everything about you that was sin and darkness is crucified with him, in him.
Jesus, lead me to the cross.
