Some Background for Pontius Pilate
The Rev. Mark Sherwindt, Pastor
Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church
Lent 3: March 18-19, 2006
“My name is Pontius Pilate.” Those are the words that introduce the main character in our Lenten drama for this the Third Sunday of Lent. He is the man whom the Romans appointed as Governor of the Province of Judea in Palestine. He's the one who wielded the sword of earthly power. He's the one who was supposed to keep the peace, not so in terms of establishing justice but in terms of maintaining order, eliminating the chaos. The use of the sword for the good of the world, where the sword is the symbol of earthly power and the world requires a little bit of savvy and a whole lot of experience with the stuff that goes on in the smoke-filled back rooms of old-fashioned, politics: this is the world of Pontius Pilate. Yes, he was a lower-level bureaucrat as an appointed provincial governor, but a player, nonetheless, a player in a world that lives or dies with the answer to the age-old question, What have you done for me lately?
Many folks go into politics with good intentions - to make a difference, to serve the people, to make things better. But as they say, better is in the eye of the beholder, or is it the beholden. Reinhold Niebuhr put it this way, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In another book entitled The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, he advised that if Christians wanted to be realistic about changing the world for good, then we must learn to be as gentle as the lamb but also as wise as the serpent. Jesus and Pilate form an interesting contract in this regard. Jesus saw himself as One sent from above called to be the way and the truth. When Pilate came face to face with Jesus, he said it all when he asked, “What is truth?”
His wasn't a philosophical question, but a political one. He wasn't on a quest for conceptual clarity; rather, he was looking for a pragmatic measure of how to get things done. Pilate had been sent to Israel to keep a lid on a powder keg. How do you keep that volatile part of the world from breaking down into chaos, and undermining all hopes for creating stability, building trade, expanding commerce, and amassing wealth? Back then, the Middle East was the route that connected Rome to Cairo, Marc Antony to Cleopatra. Today, it brings oil to the world. And it is still the case that the challenge to bring order from chaos remains paramount. For this task, brute force, the power of an effective strongman, is basically all you need, as long as justice and freedom aren't on the menu.
Today, they call themselves holy warriors, but back then in Jesus' day the Zealots wanted the same thing, a mixture of political freedom and religious purity. Simon the Zealot, Judas of Kerioth, James and John, a.k.a., the Sons of Thunder: Jesus' band of Twelve were no strangers to the zeal for freedom and faithfulness that fueled loose resistance and fed the violence that made the world Pilate was sent to manage an unholy mess. So, when Jesus entered the Temple and was heard to say, “Zeal from my Father's house consumes me,” what was Pilate to think? What were Jesus' followers to think? What are we to think? Was this the zeal of the Zealots? Would Jesus bring God's peace or just more chaos? What was Jesus up to? Did Pilate really know? Do we really know? Jesus knew what the Zealots wanted, and he doesn't appear to have endorsed their agenda.
The Gospel of John doesn't have a temptation narrative, but the other Gospels do; and Matthew, Mark, and Luke knew that Jesus had been tempted to accept the world's terms for success, to choose the world's ways for ruling. For instance, turning stones into bread is a way of using the economic model of a chicken in every pot to spread his message and increase his popularity. Jumping from the pinnacle of the Temple appeals to the classic Middle Eastern model of using the symbols of religion to inspire allegiance and much worse. Wielding the sword of kingly power was, of course, another conventional approach to ruling the world. Jesus battled these temptations - alone in the wilderness, among the multitudes in the countryside, with the crowds in Jerusalem. He struggled with these traditional options, but chose another way, God's way, the way of the cross, where servant hood and sacrifice, and the model of suffering love revealed his way to peace with God, within, with one another.
Look, we've heard all attempts to clarify these matters. We are often told that Jesus was not so much concerned with ruling the world as he was with offering a spiritual plan for the salvation of our souls. His Kingdom, as he told Pilate, was not of this world. It was other-worldly, spiritual, more about private things like prayer than the public affairs like politics. My own suspicion is that these “clarifications” are more like rationalizations than explanations. But I really don't want to go there and rehash ground that's already been covered, and covered over. My primary interest in providing this background is to put us in a position to understand the Pontius Pilate we will meet in this week's drama. One of the biggest challenges we face in this regard is to face the fact that we are Pontius Pilate. Through the latter half of the 20th century, and now with the beginning of the 21st century, the name of the world's most powerful nation has changed, from Rome to America. It is American influence that extends well beyond our borders to touch the four corners of the globe. It is we who wonder what the extremist zeal of religious belief has to do with freedom or peace or justice. We just want order! We want the chaos to stop! We want for moderation to prevail, a little tolerance of the many differences that might otherwise destroy us if we can't get the violence under control! It's not about truth.
Hey, that's what Pilate would say. In fact, that's what Pilate did say; and Jesus said that it's not about violence. The sword won't secure the peace we desire. It's not about commerce and wealth. “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” It's not about using religion to inspire bloodshed, nor to rubber stamp the aims of the nations, not ever our own - but that's a discussion for another day. The key issue worth pursuing here is that of making sure that we understand Pilate's struggles to influence the world in the small sphere he was called to manage. Reinhold Niebuhr said that power corrupts. John McCain has argued that money corrupts - money corrupts those who are trying to do good in politics. Gordon Gecko told us that money motivates, that greed is good. Yes, I know that Gordon Gecko is just a character in a movie, a character played by Michael Douglas in the film Wall Street. The truth is that John McCain and Pontius Pilate are no more real to us that Gordon Gecko. They are all characters in larger drama that shows us how difficult it is to try to change the world for good without being corrupted by its ways.
In our own way, in this part of the world where we exercise influence and undertake actions, we can at least agree that washing our hands of innocent blood is not the route we want to travel in life. But there's more to Pilate's story than that. We need to make sure that we not lose touch with our core conviction that God's call matters in the lives that we live, in how we respond to the challenges we face, in avoiding the common pitfalls that cause many to stumble, in becoming a part of the problem we thought we were trying to solve, in becoming less like Jesus and more like the Gordon Gecko's of Wall Street, the Ken Lay's of the boardroom, folks who have lined their pockets without knowing a thing, or folks in Washington who seem to have plugged into pockets of cash without knowing a thing, or folks in leadership who have learned not to recall what the truth is, or was, or might be. Truth? What is truth? Hey, that was Pilate's line in the story of salvation.
I'm sure Pilate felt that the compromises he made served the greater good, along with his own. I know that Reinhold Niebuhr asked some tough questions in this regard, and really wondered, out loud and in print, whether Christians could be serious about making the world better, while remaining faithful as Christians. Are we willing and able to we make the compromises that are necessary to be effective in changing the world? The point of this message is not to get you to be more sympathetic or less judgmental toward Pilate. Look, I know that few among us have been appointed to be the governor of Judea, or the ambassador to Iraq, or hold a position of great power anywhere. In this sense, this message may seem easy for me to deliver and irrelevant for the lives you lead. But there are many areas in our daily lives where we'd have to admit that our faith commitments don't seem well suited for success, where we've felt the need to cut some corners with our personal standards, or to shave some of the edges off our concern with the truth.
You know, it wasn't until Constantine converted to Christianity two hundred and fifty years after Pilate lived and died that Roman rulers had to struggle with the connection between following Christ and leading in the world. But for us, from the day we were baptized, from the moment we affirmed the faith in which we were baptized, we have embraced the challenge of measuring our days and our deeds, our decisions and actions by what it means to follow Christ. Jesus told Pilate that his kingdom was not of this world, but he remained in the world. He didn't withdraw to another planet or to an island isolated from everything that matters. Simply put, I think that the Apostle Paul got it right in his letters to the Romans when he advised, Do not be conformed to the ways of the world. Rather, let us be transformed by the power of God's Spirit alive among us, by the renewal of our minds and hearts, to see the issues and make the choice that help us to follow faithfully … in Jesus' Name. Let's stand, and sing the prayer that comes to mind with the challenges we face, God of Grace and God of Glory, #415 in the Green Book.