Jesus on Trial
19th April, 2019 // in The Coffeehouse Cleric // by Alex Rowe
The following is a short reflection on Jesus’ trial before Pontius Pilate, who served as Roman Prefect of Judaea in 26–37 CE, as it is recorded in the Gospels. It was given at this year’s Maundy Thursday service at St. Aldates Church, Oxford.
On this Maundy Thursday, many churches around the world remember Jesus sharing the Last Supper with his disciples before his death. At the Last Supper, Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, showing us that he is the kind of Messiah and the kind of King who came not to be served but to serve. Some of us recreated this act at yesterday’s service.
But at our third station this evening, we recall another, more sinister, washing; how Pilate “took water and washed his hands” in front of a bloodthirsty crowd, insisting to them, “I am innocent of this man’s blood.” But he wasn’t. He wasn't innocent when he yielded to popular cry and gave up faultless Jesus while releasing Barabbas the criminal. He wasn’t innocent when the cohort of soldiers at his command flogged and mocked Jesus. He wasn’t innocent, regardless of how much he pleaded otherwise, when it was by his ultimate jurisdiction that Jesus was crucified.
It should jolt us when we recite in our creed that Jesus “suffered under Pontius Pilate.” As wrote Karl Barth, a twentieth-century theologian: “When in the midst of the Confession of the Christian Church, at the moment when we are on the point of stepping into the area of God’s deepest mystery, such things come into view, one might well ejaculate with Goethe, ‘A foul business! Fie! A political trick!’ But there it is, ‘under Pontius Pilate . . .’; and so we must ask ourselves what this means” (Dogmatics: An Outline).
What does Jesus before Pilate mean? It could mean much: we could reflect, for example, on how the Faith, then and now, cannot be detached from machinations of political power and the rulings of the State. But let us see in this story, for now, a sobering reminder of the this-worldliness of the Gospel. God acts in this world, in the world we live, so let us not try to escape to another. The Gospel is not abstract. God acts in Christ, carpenter and incarnate, through nails and gnarled wood, pierced flesh, hot blood and water.
Jesus was at the mercy of Pilate, and through Pilate was in the hands of a State that both misunderstood him and wanted rid of him. He was condemned to an execution he never deserved. He was helpless, and all was apparently hopeless. And yet, here God acts. Here and not some place else, God is at work. Though the injustice is blatant, even Pilate is mysteriously part of plan.
If you don’t recognise the names Valerius Gratus or Marcellus, that’s because they were Roman Prefects of Judaea who did not have a chance encounter with Jesus of Nazareth, and whose names have not therefore survived in Christian recollection. In the normal course of things, Pilate, like his other fellow governors, would have been all but forgotten; an obscure name in the pages of the philosopher Philo or the historian Josephus.
Pilate’s memory has endured the centuries not for his service under Emperor Tiberius, but because of his fleeting meeting with a greater King, Jesus, who said to Pilate, “my kingdom is not of this world” (Jn 18.36) and whose lifting up on the cross—which we’ll reflect upon more as this service goes on—was not merely the routine killing of a messianic agitator, but, ironically, the exaltation of the beloved Son of God.
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