Who Gets the Last Word

Who Gets the Last Word--March 25, 2019

"Pilate spoke to them again, 'Then what do you wish me to do with the man you call the King of the Jews?' They shouted back, 'Crucify him!' Pilate asked them, 'Why, what evil has he done?' But they shouted all the more, 'Crucify him!' So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas for them; and after flogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucified." [Mark 15:12-15]

Something terrible happened.  Something wicked and crooked and just-plain wrong happened, and there is no covering it over or hiding it behind governmental bureaucracy to make it look like nothing.  No matter how much Pilate wants to make himself look like he has done no wrong (and maybe he even convinced himself!), there is no erasing the utter injustice of the execution of Jesus.

And at the very same time, neither the immoral cruelty of the cross nor the amoral rottenness of Pilate's role in it can undo God's ability to yet bring something beautiful and good from it.

We can say both things at the same time.  In fact, we need to.

Let's start with the part that even Pilate himself doesn't want to face.  He, along with all the other political and religious leaders who figure in the scene, as well as the stirred up crowd, are complicit in the death of Jesus.  Pilate wants to think he is innocent. He can publicly say it all he wants, as he even does in Matthew's Gospel, trying to "wash his hands" of Jesus' death.  And maybe Pilate actually thought that because the idea of killing Jesus wasn't his idea, that he's not responsible.  Maybe this Roman-installed governor actually thought that he could plead his own innocence because the request for Jesus' death started with others coming to him to propose it.  Maybe Pilate even thought if he kept saying, "No complicity here!" it would come true.  Maybe he fooled himself into thinking it was.

But thinking you are exonerated of guilt just because you keep shouting it at the crowds doesn't make it so.  And the bottom line is that Pilate chooses what was politically expedient (getting rid of a troublemaking rabbi) even if he thought that Jesus of Nazareth hadn't done anything worthy of crucifixion.  Pilate, in the end, subverts justice for the sake of what will help keep him (and the Empire) in control.  That's not innocence--that's a perversion of justice.  There's no way around it: Pilate is a crooked, rotten ruler, who appears to be more interested in keeping himself in power than in actually serving justice.  So let's dispense with the charade that Pilate kept trying to toss out: even if he didn't pound the nails himself, he participated in the plot.  He was the authority whose responsibility was to uphold justice, and he willfully ignored that responsibility because it would have made him unpopular.  The buck was supposed to stop with him, but Pilate took the coward's way out by authorizing Jesus' crucifixion and then trying to shrug it off like it wasn't his fault.

So instead of letting Pilate off the hook the way he wants, let's just be absolutely clear: the fact that Pontius Pilate seems to have thought Jesus wasn't guilty of a capital crime, but still has him both flogged and then crucified actually makes him even more despicable and cowardly.  It's not so much that he is immoral--trying to convict someone he knows is innocent, but rather that he is amoral--that Pilate doesn't even care what the truth is, in the end. All that matters to him is what will keep him in control and cover his liabilities.

And the fact that every week in Christian worship, disciples of Jesus recite his name when they confess in the Creed that Jesus "was crucified under Pontius Pilate" is a reminder that the only reason this crook is remembered at all by history is for the way he caved to the pressure of others and perverted justice to kill the Son of God because he thought it would be in his personal interests to do so. Other than that, Pontius Pilate is utterly forgettable... and forgotten.

But at the very same time, the travesty that Pilate authorized becomes the turning point for human history.  The crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, whose shame Pilate tries to wash off of his hands, becomes the victory that breaks the power of Rome and every other empire since, defeats the juggernaut of death, and rescues a sinful humanity from oblivion. 

Now, to an outside observer, the death of Jesus at the hands of the Roman Empire looked like any other criminal's death.  And to be sure, the Romans crucified a lot of people.  But God intended something beautiful, something redemptive, in this act. And even though it is notoriously difficult to prove intent, the heart of the Christian faith hangs on the claim that this public and shameful death was yet intended by God bring life and restoration, even for Jesus' executioners.  Pilate cannot see that at all, because he cannot even bring himself to admit to his complicity with the other players calling out for Jesus' death.  But that refusal to see the truth is not powerful enough to negate God's power and intention to bring life through that death.

Both are true, then, and at the same time: it is true that Pilate is a crooked and corrupt leader who cannot wash away his complicity in the death of Jesus (even if he insists that a splash of water can exonerate him), AND simultaneously the living God is stronger yet that Pilate and used that act of cowardice to bring about redemption for the world--yes, even though I can't prove God's intent to you beyond a reasonable doubt.

This is how we live all our days, too, by the way.  There are terrible, rotten, crooked things that happen--sometimes by people who are aware of what they are doing, and sometimes by folks who have convinced themselves they are doing right.  The terribleness and rottenness are true and real... and we need to be able to say so.  And at the same time, we are convinced that the God who saves the world through a Roman cross is also able to take the rottenness and death that pervades our daily lives in this world and to bring resurrection and renewal.  The new creation God makes does not make what crooks and cowards do "OK," but it does mean that the Pilates of history do not get the last word.  God does.

And that is a word of good news today.

Lord God, we lift up to you the things we cannot make sense of, the injustices and crooked places of the world in which we live, calling them what they are, but also offering them up to you to transform and redeem. Here... see what you can make of us.