Christ the Convict--October 2, 2025

Christ the Convict--October 2, 2025

"In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will bring about at the right time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords." (1 Timothy 6:13-15)

Not only did Jesus have a hasty criminal trial in front of the Roman authorities, but the first Christians didn't try to hide that fact.  Rather than sweeping the details of the official imperial interrogation under the rug because they could hurt the reputation of the early Christian movement, they remembered it and held onto those details as an integral part of the story of Jesus.  

That really is remarkable.

Just think for a moment if you were starting a new mission-start congregation--or for that matter, even just a social club among your friends and neighbors.  Would you be keen to bring up the criminal conviction of your organization's founder, or the missionary pastor who was starting up the church?  Would you be likely to mention in your elevator speech or promotional flyers, "Our leader was convicted by the legal authorities as worthy of death for his subversive political claims" (which is basically the charge that Pilate cared about)? Even if you maintained that your leader was innocent, or if you thought the charges or the trial were unfair, my guess is that a lot of us would want to keep those unpleasant details from even seeing the light of day.  A great deal of our society's civic life is built on the premise of keeping the skeletons from "our side" locked safely in the closet, while we ruthlessly try to publicize the skeletons from "their side."  So it really is something that the first generations of Christians held onto the details about Jesus' own trial before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor.

Of course, the Gospel-writers didn't shy away from giving us all the tragic details of Jesus' arrest, questioning before the religious leaders, and subsequent trial in front of Pilate. But even more curious to me is that a passage like this one, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship as part of our epistle reading, makes a point of remembering Jesus being on trial before Pontius Pilate.  I mean, the Gospel-writers are giving us something like a biography or a history of events in Jesus' life--I suppose they would have inevitably had to mention Jesus dying a criminal's death after receiving a death sentence from the legal system.  But the first letter to Timothy is sort of a pep talk given to a new young pastor--you might think the writer would want to focus only on the positives and leave out anything that might make young Pastor Tim rethink his career choices.  But instead, here we have another reminder that "Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession,"  deliberately addressing that potential elephant in the room by bringing it up.  There's no getting away from it: the One whom we confess to be Son of God, and indeed as we say in the Creeds, "God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God," is also the one we declare in those same Creeds who "suffered under Pontius Pilate."  What a scandalous thing to say, not merely about a human leader, but to claim about God!

And maybe that's the key to all of this.  If we were talking about just a human leader of an organization, it might be embarrassing to mention a criminal trial, or convictions.  I would certainly have a harder time trusting someone with authority if a duly appointed authority found them guilty of a significant crime.  But the Christian claim--like here in 1 Timothy--is that in this Jesus we meet the very face of the living God, and therefore, the trial, conviction, suffering, and death of Christ on a Roman cross are all signs of the depths our God is willing to go for the sake of redeeming the whole world.  And that means the scurrilous story of Jesus' criminal conviction isn't something to hide, but rather a truth a stand in awe of: the living God was willing to be so fully rejected and pushed to the margins that the power centers of the day (the Empire and its appointed Roman governor) convicted and executed Jesus, in whom the fullness of God dwelt.  As Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it once, "God lets himself be pushed out of the world and onto the cross."  In a culture bent on impressing, dominating, and presenting only "wins" and "strength" in order to look tough, that is downright scandalous.  But it is also our only hope.

The One we name as "King of kings" and "Lord of lords," the "Blessed and only Sovereign," is also a convicted criminal who received a death-sentence and was willing to bear all the scorn, rejection, shame, and reproach that pushed him outside the bounds of polite society, beyond the city walls, and out to a godforsaken hill called Golgotha.  It seems there are no lengths to which this God will not go for us.

That's another important dimension of our theme this season, of being "with Jesus on the margins." It's not just that Jesus goes slumming "out there" to occasionally meet with outcasts like it's a field trip or a novelty.  The heart of God's mission to mend the world means God's own choice to be pushed out to the margins, stripped of respectability, and to surrender all glory and pomp as a convicted criminal on a cross. 

For a lot of folks whose only impressions of Christianity are that we are a social club of people preening and posturing to look good through performances of piety, that's news that needs to be told.  That's news that needs to be lived and shared.  We are people who insist on telling the story that our Lord and Savior was put on trial before the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, as one more evidence that there is no length to which God will not go for us, and no loss God will not endure to get through to us.

The next time you find yourself absent-mindedly reciting the Apostles' Creed on some Sunday morning, remember that.

Lord Jesus, we give you praise for your willingness to go to the depths of a trial, crucifixion, and death for our sakes.  Give us the courage to be willing to lose our respectability and standing for the sake of sharing your love with the people around us, too.