Finding ourselves in Easter - Part 3

As part of our ongoing series on finding ourselves in the story of Easter, we continue to contemplate how various participants in the story might have seen it, and how their perspective can help us more clearly see.

In part 1, we thought about the perspective of the Roman soldiers - Jesus as irrelevant
In part 2, we thought about the perspective of Mary, Jesus's mother - Jesus as something we have been entrusted with, and the terror and grief of losing Him.

In this post we consider the perspective of Pontias Pilate, the Roman governor. He had an ambivalence toward Jesus. On one hand he was interested, perhaps even curious about this unusual Jewish prophet who made such claims and did such unusual things. Jesus was unlike the other trouble makers of the time, he had an usual quality about Him that Pilate couldn’t quite put a finger on…..but at the same time this Jesus was a threat. Pilate had a little section of the Roman Empire to keep in order, and to open himself to really listening to Jesus would risk all kinds of trouble in his personal and professional life. It was just easier to get rid of him.



John 19

 Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. ² The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe ³ and went up to him again and again, saying, “Hail, king of the Jews!” And they slapped him in the face.

⁴ Once more Pilate came out and said to the Jews gathered there, “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him.” ⁵ When Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, Pilate said to them, “Here is the man!”
⁶ As soon as the chief priests and their officials saw him, they shouted, “Crucify! Crucify!”
But Pilate answered, “You take him and crucify him. As for me, I find no basis for a charge against him.”
⁷ The Jewish leaders insisted, “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God.”
⁸ When Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid, ⁹ and he went back inside the palace. “Where do you come from?” he asked Jesus, but Jesus gave him no answer. ¹⁰ “Do you refuse to speak to me?” Pilate said. “Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?”
¹¹ Jesus answered, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.”
¹² From then on, Pilate tried to set Jesus free, but the Jewish leaders kept shouting, “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.”
¹³ When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judge’s seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement (which in Aramaic is Gabbatha). ¹⁴ It was the day of Preparation of the Passover; it was about noon.
“Here is your king,” Pilate said to the Jews.
¹⁵ But they shouted, “Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!”
“Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate asked.
“We have no king but Caesar,” the chief priests answered.
¹⁶ Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified.




Maybe you’ve encountered Jesus in this way: He's dangerous - keeping him around could really disrupt a lot of things in your life. What if we took seriously the things that he Jesus said? Could we still live the same way? What would happen to the things we hold on to like power, prestige, wealth, safety, etc?

You might not see yourself as a king or a governor, but in a way we all are. We all have our little juridictions that we take resposibility for and exercise power over. Sometimes like Pilate, we struggle with Jesus because he breaks our rules about how the world should operate. For Pilate it was "anyone who claims to be a king opposes Ceasar"...an ancient equivalent of the Bush doctrine "if you're not for us, you're against us". 

Many of us operate with little rules about how things should be in our little personal kingdoms. Don't believe me? Next time you're angry at someone, see if they haven't broken a rule you hold dear. 

For some of us, we hold rules like, "if you work hard and do what's right, you deserve to be happy".
But Jesus throws monkey-wrenches into these assumption or rules about the world. He teaches all kinds of radical things like "blessed are the poor", and "love your enemies", and "the first shall be last". Things that cause all sorts of trouble for proper, middle-class, do-gooders like me. 

It's easier to be like Pilate and cast Jesus off. It's easier to let the religious extremists do whatever they want with him, rather than have Him invade our space and threaten to change us.