John 18:33-38a: A Reflection

Read John 18:33-38a

Decisions concerning life and death were in Pontius Pilate’s job description. As Governor of the Province of Judea for Rome, he was always making serious choices. At the same time, I would like to suggest that in our text this morning, Pilate stands for us all. For example, he was troubled in difficult situations just as we are when he tried to resist certain pressures, listen to his spouse, have courage, recognize goodness, and then make a choice. He did well for nearly 11 years. The Samaritan Uprising in the year 36 was his undoing. He made a wrong choice. The result? He was exiled to Gaul (Vienne-on-Rhone) in shame and disgrace, committing suicide there in 38AD. The wrong choice can have devastating consequences.

Generally, Pilate was good at keeping the peace in Judea. Yet, keeping the peace is not always the same as doing what is right. Sometimes we choose not to apologize. Sometimes we choose not to forgive. Sometimes, we choose not to stand up for ourselves. Peace can come at a cost too high. Sometimes peace, as the world defines it, is the wrong choice. Sometimes it is better to do the courageous thing. Frankly, Jesus could have had peace with Jewish authorities and with the Romans. All he had to do was surrender the mission God had given him. Jesus had an important decision to make as well. 

Did Pilate lose sight of what was important? Do we?

It was just another workday for Pilate when Jesus showed up. One can imagine Pilate dropping whatever he was doing, and then going to see this criminal brought to his court. It is just another day of the week to keep the peace and to keep his post. He had just another Jewish life to judge. Ask questions, listen, weigh the evidence, then decide. Live or die.

The governor may have noted the irony of this situation. Before him stood a captured, bound man accused of claiming kingship. He was a powerless, unarmed Jewish peasant, really. Pilate asks, “Are you a king?” In John 6:15, the people tried to make him a king. Pilate surely did not take the question that seriously. To Pilate, Jesus was not a king. He had no army. He had no city. He had no funding. No robes. No weapons. He had nothing. He was nothing. (How often do we look for answers to the tough questions of life in the wrong places: power, wealth, popularity, and pleasure?) Pilate is forced to choose between a king in Rome, and the king who stands before him now. He chooses his master. We must choose ours. 

Jesus responds to Pilate’s question with an unexpected question of his own. (How often are we faced with unexpected questions in our lives when facing terrible or tricky choices?)

“Governor,” says Jesus, “why ask your question? Do you think I am a king, or were you told I am a king?” Jesus indicates that Pilate is relying on rumor and has no evidence. Yet, Pilate seems to play the situation with humor and skill. He is playing a game. With slight irritation, he replies, “How should I know? Am I one of your people? Your people, your leaders, brought you here to me.”

Then, getting to the serious point, he asks, “What have you done?” The expectation of the most powerful man in Judea, the representative of Emperor Tiberius, is that Jesus will answer directly. Jesus does not. Instead he replies that he is a king, but from another world. For John, the kingship of Jesus is a theological category that redefines the understanding of power of the world. For Pilate, this lets him off the hook. He does not care about another world. He says he has come to bear witness to the truth. All he has is words. Such a kingdom will be small and insignificant. The world will hardly notice. This amusing man is harmless. Jesus is no threat. Pilate keeps the peace. There is no justification for killing him. It is an easy choice.

We as readers of this gospel have read how important truth is to John. John 1:14, where the Word is “full of grace and truth.” In 8:31-32, to dwell in his word is to know truth and be liberated by it. The kingship of Jesus does not enslave people, but liberates them. Most of you remember that another time (14:6), Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

Truth is important at a trial. The irony here is externally, Jesus is on trial. As I Timothy 6:13 puts it, “Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession.” From another perspective, everyone around Jesus is on trial. Obviously, Pilate, who represents us, is on trial. The Jewish leadership is on trial. The crowds are on trial. We as readers of this gospel are on trial.

You will listen to his voice if you want to know the truth. You hear his voice, but you are you really a listener? In 10:1-18, Jesus is able to lead the sheep because they hear and know his voice, but “they do not know the voice of strangers” (v. 5). When Mary Magdalene is at the tomb of Jesus, she does not recognize the risen Lord until she hears his voice speaking her name. Pilate has power. The truth, Jesus, has a voice.

Truth was not so easy to see.

One cannot expect to encounter truth as a phenomenon that is immediately and directly illuminating, pleasing, acceptable, and welcome to the individual. Truth does not come easily and smoothly. It comes to us as alien, threatening, and uncomfortable as it draws near to us. It needs to pierce through the obscurity of human experience and change us by making us open to it. Things gained in an easy and self-evident way might be kindly and good, even true in its sphere, but it would not be the truth of God. The truth of God unmasks us as liars.

Some of the most precious truths in our lives, we will never know if we do not open our lives and commit ourselves to them. You will never know love, unless you open your life to the risk that love involves. You will never know truth until you commit yourself to an honest search for it. You will never know God unless you practice the presence of God. You will never know faith unless you live faith.

For Pilate, godly truth stood in front of him. He was so distracted by playing the game of keeping his post and keeping the peace that he missed it. To use sports analogies, he loses his footing, he drops the ball, he strikes out — because in making the wrong choice about Jesus, he loses power and he ultimately loses his life.