Sunday 03 • 15 • 20

Good morning, CTK. I want to invite you to join me as we read again from God's word. As we've done in the past, we are reading together out loud, and I invite you to do so in your homes or wherever you find yourself this morning. We're going to read from John chapter 19, verses one through 16, the first part of that verse. So if you'll join me as we look to God's word together.

Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him and the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe. They came up to him saying, "Hail, king of the Jews," and struck him with their hands. Pilate went out again and said to them, "See, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in him." So Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, "Behold the man." When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, "Crucify him!" Pilate said to them, "Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him." The Jews answered him, "We have a law. According to that law, he ought to die because he made himself the Son of God." When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid. He entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, "Where are you from?" But Jesus gave him no answer. So Pilate said to him, "You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have the authority to release you and authority to crucify you?" Jesus answered him, "You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore, he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin." From then on, Pilate sought to release him, but the Jews cried out, "If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar." So when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment seat at the place called the Stone Pavement and in Aramaic, Gabbatha. Now it was the day of preparation of the Passover. It was about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, "Behold your king." They cried out, "Away with him, away with him, crucify him!" Pilate said to them, "Shall I crucify your king?" The chief priests answered, "We have no king but Caesar." So he delivered him over to be crucified. — John 19:1-16

Abraham Lincoln didn't see it coming. If he had, he would have made sure that his bodyguard did not wander over to the tavern next door for drinks, and that mistake on April 15, 1865, created the opportunity for John Wilkes Booth to creep up behind Abraham Lincoln and deliver the mortal shot that killed the president.

Martin Luther King Jr. sort of saw it coming. After bomb threats delayed his flight to Memphis, he said in his speech there, "Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead, but it doesn't matter with me now because I've been to the mountaintop, and I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place, but I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will." If he had seen it coming, he wouldn't have stepped out onto the balcony of the hotel on that early evening of April 4, 1968.

But as we have been studying together the gospel accounts of these last twenty-four hours of Jesus's life, we see that Jesus is completely different. Not only did he see it coming, he actually pointed it out to other people who didn't see it coming. This is what he said in Matthew 20:

"See, we're going up to Jerusalem and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day." — Matthew 20

With utter precision, Jesus predicted exactly what would happen to him—the exact events. This was not assassination. He was not a martyr. Jesus gave his life. We've been walking through these steps toward the cross with Jesus these last twenty-four hours, and today we're going to single out one person in the passion narrative: Pontius Pilate.

Now, I did have someone a couple years ago ask me if Pontius Pilate was in any way related to yoga, which, no—just in case you're wondering, Pilates has nothing to do with this man. Pontius Pilate was the fifth governor of the Roman province of Judea and he served under Tiberius Caesar from about 26 AD to about 36 AD.

It's interesting—of all the people mentioned in both the creeds that we use in churches throughout the world, the Apostles' Creed and Nicene Creed, there are only two humans that are named by given name in those creeds. One is Mary, his mother, and the other is Pontius Pilate. And the Gospels give an enormous amount of text to the conversations between Jesus and Pilate in these last few hours of Jesus' life.

So we're going to look today, and I want to look at this story through Pilate's eyes.

We're going to look at Jesus' last moments through Pilate's eyes. We'll look at Pilate's mocking and then Pilate's passivity, Jesus' invitation, and Pilate's fate. Let's look together.

Now we're picking up. This is the third part of these conversations between Pilate and Jesus. Two weeks ago, we looked in John 18, where Pilate starts his interrogation of Jesus with this question: are you the king of the Jews? Now, I think that modern readers tend to take that question at face value, but it's a mistake to do so because that question is not a real question. That question's a joke. Pilate is mocking Jesus.

I mean, it's obvious to everyone gathered that this man is not a king. Anybody interrogating Jesus at this point just to get information out of him would ask, "Do you claim to be king of the Jews?" Not, "Are you King of the Jews?" When Pilate says that, he's really poking fun at Jesus. He's treating Jesus as if He's a lunatic, as if He's someone who's delusional. I mean, at this point, Jesus looks nothing like a king. He's a peasant. He's been beaten up. He is not what kings look like.

And after this thing—this scene—"King of the Jews," from John 18 onward, is sort of woven throughout all that happens as a running joke, as a running mock. In Mark's gospel, after Pilate makes the exchange, Jesus for Barabbas, Pilate asks, "What do you want me to do with your king?" You can hear that question with sarcasm in his voice. You see here in John 19:14, "Behold your king." Right? That comes with a mocking tone. Pilate is mocking Jesus. He's also mocking the Jewish people. It's like these people could have a king.

Philo, who we know as a contemporary of Jesus, was a religious historian living in Egypt. He describes that Pilate's mentor in Rome was a man named Sejanus, who was well known as an anti-Semite. Anti-Semitism was very popular in the Roman world at this time. And so when Pilate mocks Jesus, he's also actually mocking the Jews because this is exactly the kind of joke that they would have for a king.

And here in John 19, the soldiers pick up Pilate's joke and just keep going with it. The mocking is escalated by the soldiers as they take a crown of thorns and press it into his head. They take a robe and put it on His back. And this beating described here isn't yet the scourging with the cat of nine tails that is to come. But Jesus is badly beaten up and looks rough after this. And so what do the soldiers say as they beat him? "Hail, King of the Jews." See, it's a joke.

The first person to put any break on the mocking throughout the whole of the crucifixion narrative is the thief—the penitent thief—who we're going to look at next week. But Pilate has one last joke, and it's on the cross itself as he puts a sign over the top that says, "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews." He puts it in Latin, Greek, and Aramaic. The joke permeates the entire interrogation.

Mocking in Scripture

Now I want to think with you briefly about mocking. Mocking is sort of a subset of joking. It's a smaller category of joking. And in fact, we see mocking in the Bible. And what's surprising when we find mocking—look up mocking in the Bible—you see instances where someone mocks another person. What's surprising is that you find is that God mocks.

In Psalm chapter 2, God mocks the nations. He says:

Why did the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed saying, "Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us." He who sits in heaven laughs. The world holds them in derision. — Psalm 2

He's mocking them for their arrogant pride. See, the target of mocking is to expose, to tear down someone who is arrogant, who is falsely proud. It's laughing at pride. It's bringing a person down a notch by showing them what they're really like.

We see this also in Isaiah. Twice in Isaiah, you see God laughing at stupidity. God mocking stupidity. Here, God mocks the fool who takes a piece of wood and with half the wood forms a statue of it, carves a statue out of it to worship and with the other half of it makes firewood and burns something on that to eat and to sacrifice to the god. See, God—this is what's interesting—in scripture, God is the only one really who has the right to mock. God is the one who sees the false pride, the false strength, the real stupidity.

But Pilate here and the soldiers mock Jesus because they think he's delusional. Because his kingship looks stupid. I think mocking is something very common in our culture today. This is locker room behavior. This is sports team behavior. This is sibling behavior.

You know, we all know stories about how fast a joke can escalate from something lighthearted into something really dark, or how a group behavior can go from something very innocent to something really dangerous very quickly. There's even a faux kind of intimacy built into mocking. When we together mock someone, we feel sort of in and that other person feels out. And that's what's happening here.

Matthew tells us that this is not a couple of soldiers mocking Jesus. The whole cohort had gathered together, 480 soldiers. They have nothing going on that morning, and they decide to have the joke to turn it into entertainment. But as we know from reading this passage, they're not mocking just a peasant from Nazareth. They're mocking God, just like Pilate did, just like the priest did.

Who Are the God Mockers Today?

Here's a question for us from this passage. Who are the God mockers today? You might think of someone like Lady Gaga. She has an album called Born This Way. And the song's titled "Judas," where she identifies with the betrayer of Jesus. Or you might have seen the hunky Jesus contest in San Francisco. Has anybody seen this? This is the contest where a group gets together a cross and a crown of thorns and men with beards and they have a fashion show for who makes the best Jesus.

We might think of this as people taking the word's name in vain or people making crude jokes about God or people making fun of Christians. But can we step back from this for a moment and ask a broader question? What if mocking is more subtle than that? What if mocking is actually way more insidious than that?

The Subtle Mocking of God

Their mocking of Jesus is about his kingship. It's about how he doesn't look like what a king is supposed to be. He doesn't do what a king is supposed to do. I think the spirit of Pilate, the spirit of mocking God is actually very alive and well even in the church, even among people who claim to love him and know him the best.

What does mocking Jesus look like today among us? I went back in church history, found a sermon by a now long dead pastor who suggests that real mocking of God is far more subtle. It's far more insidious, and there are lots of ways that we do the same. We cut Jesus down to size. We act as if he's stupid. If he doesn't see, he doesn't know. We mock his kingship over our lives.

Here's a few things that he mentions. We mock God when we gather for worship without a spirit of obedience and love and service. When we actually have this outward veneer that we are all good with him and yet inside, there's nothing in us that longs to obey him or worship him or serve him.

God might ask of us, why have you come before me as mockers, drawing near with your lips when your heart is far from me?

He goes on, confessing sin without repentance is also mocking God. When you confess sin, you profess to be sorry for sin. I suppose that every person in the act of confession says that they're sorry for sin. So if there's such a thing as mocking God, it is this: confessing without any heart toward repentance. When we confess without forsaking our sins, we're mocking God. When we confess sins without desiring to change in any way, we're mocking God. When we confess sins without any desire to make restitution to those we've wronged, we're mocking God.

Last one from his list: all mere formality in prayer or mere custom, matters of form, stereotyped ways of doing things in public worship, the want of sincerity, the lack of state of mind that seeks honesty with God—this is mocking God. All just going through the motions just to do them.

See, the sermon goes on with many more examples. But do you see who else is in the pit with Pilate and the soldiers and Lady Gaga? Us. All of us. When we take God for less than who he is, when we cut his kingship down a notch, when we fail to treat him for all he is worth, we also are mocking God.

Let me add a couple of my own. What about cynicism in prayer? When we're cynical about God's care over us, his goodness to us, even his control over the world—I think that comes out in this ugly cocktail of prayerlessness, apathy in prayer, and it's mocking the King. What about cynicism about God's love or his saving grace or his mercy? When we're cynical about God's defeat of our sin, we're cynical about what God can do in the lives of other people, cynical about his salvation—it's mocking God.

I mean, can you find yourself in this crowd? Can you find yourself in the scene? I know I'm there. I think you are too. We sing a song in our church called "How Deep the Father's Love for Us." And in that song, there's this verse that always nails me to the wall. We sing together:

Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers.

And that is exactly right. That's us Christians. That's those who like the soldiers, like Pilate, treat Jesus's kingship as something much less than it really is. It's a joke. It's a joke.

What else do we see in Pilate? We see second, Pilate's passivity. This is verses nine through 16. You know, passivity is a general problem in human nature, and particularly in our culture. Passivity is when you don't direct appropriate energy to something that is appropriately important. It doesn't mean you go along in every area of your life, but it's passivity, particularly when it's with regard to things that really matter.

Stereotypically, we talk about this with the guy who is a type A driven person about work, who is all pedal to the floor, but when they come home, it's all on autopilot. Let the marriage and kids just sort of turn out as they will. In twenty years, when the marriage falls apart and they can't figure out why. And here's why: If you'd shown the same attention to your family, to your neighbors, to your children, to your Lord, that you have to your work, well, things would look very differently. See, it's not that you're passive about everything. It's just you're passive about some of the most important things.

Sometimes you're passive because it takes less courage to not make a decision than to have to make one either way. And see, this is where Pilate is. Pilate didn't believe simply because he didn't give the question of Jesus enough weight. When Jesus presents him with the truth in verse 18 in chapter 18, Pilate says:

What is truth?

Truth is everything. It's what you build your life on. It's not a commodity. It's not a luxury. It's not an extra. It's life's most important question. And even when Jesus's innocence is fully exposed for everybody, and Pilate even declares, "I find this man guilty of nothing," he defers. He washes his hands of the matter saying, "It's too costly for me to render a decision right now."

See, gravity means weight, levity means weightless, like our word to levitate. Throughout this whole scene, all of chapter eighteen and nineteen, we see Jesus with this seriousness and this gravity about him. And what do we see in Pilate? This levity. He's trying to brush it off, trying to laugh it away.

And even in Matthew 27, we read Pilate's wife had a dream that night and sent him an urgent message saying:

Have nothing to do with this man. He is an innocent man.

See the gravity that Jesus brings to this situation requires some kind of verdict one way or the other. It requires some kind of decision. And Pilate just won't make a decision. He won't decide. He won't join in the crucifixion, nor will he stand up and defend Jesus. He just defers. He postpones. He's passive.

Do you want to know who Pilate is today? It's the person who refuses to decide whether or not Jesus is Lord. You're like, "Yeah, I'm not against Jesus. I mean, I believe in him. I guess I'm a Christian." But is he lord of your life? Can he tell you what to do? Is he in charge? See, you're like, "No, that's something I'll decide on later." You'll come to church occasionally, be a good person, but become a full on disciple of Jesus? No, that's for later.

Make no mistake, Pilate is you. Pilate represents you. Jesus said:

He who is not for me is against me

Which means if you haven't decided, if your life hasn't decided, doesn't reflect that you are for him, then you are in the category of against him.

Here's another kind of Pilate today, a group of people who describe themselves as apatheists. You know what a theist is? A theist is a God believer. An atheist is someone who says, "I don't believe in God." An agnostic is someone who says, "I don't have enough information to make a decision." But an apatheist is someone who just shrugs. Who cares? Why does it matter?

Every once in a while, something will rattle you, like a funeral or a huge virus that disrupts our world, a moment of conviction, a sense of despair or pointlessness of life. Once in a while, you might get a sense that there's something out there more than just me. Or you might see Jesus's power demonstrated in the life of someone you know. You may have some moment of gravity like Pilate does here. We find him here. He's very afraid all of a sudden. But you sweep it away with levity. It's not a big deal. Pilate quickly snapped himself out of it and covered up his fear with urgent political decisions.

So it is not unbelief that sends people like Pilate to hell, but passivity.

There's another kind of passivity that we see at work in our world today. There are those who had faith in the past, who were active in their walk with Christ and fellowship with God's people, but have just sort of drifted away. Just let it go, drifting wherever the current goes. I mean, you realize how serious that is?

Most people don't believe because they don't give the question of Jesus its proper weight. Its proper gravity.

Now all this comes to a head in this encounter with Pilate, but this is all throughout the book of John. In John seven, we read this:

Jesus says, "If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I'm speaking on my own authority." — John 7:17

See, if you're willing to follow truth wherever it leads, you'll see whether Jesus is the truth. Pilate couldn't know truth because he wasn't resolved to follow the truth no matter what it cost him. It would have been too much for him to give up. See, if Jesus is who He says He is, then taking the questions about eternal life seriously is absolutely life's most important question. Don't take Jesus too lightly. Don't do what Pilate does here.

But what we see in the midst of this is, curiously, yet again from Jesus, an invitation. Yet again, an invitation. In the midst of this, Jesus kind of turns the tables on Pilate. Pilate hears that Jesus claimed to be Son of God, and we read that he became very afraid. So Pilate comes back in from talking to the Jews, comes back into the room, and he asks them the question: "Where are you from?" This is perhaps the first non-cynical response that you get from Pilate in all the encounter. The first non-cynical question.

Now we know that Pilate actually knows where Jesus is from. It's displayed on the cross: "Jesus of Nazareth." He knows He's from Nazareth in the region of Galilee. I don't think that's what he's asking. He's not asking, "Where were you born?" He's saying, "Is this more than I bargained for? Who are you? What are you?" But Jesus is silent.

And then Pilate says, "Don't you know I've got the authority over you?" Here's where it gets really interesting. In verse 10, Jesus both confronts and convicts Pilate at the same time. He says the religious leaders are more guilty, but in saying that, he doesn't say, "Pilate, you're off the hook." This is actually: Pilate, they're more guilty, but you're still guilty. You're still guilty. All of what you're doing—your mockery, all your passivity—is a sin. Don't you know that you're sinning? Your supposed neutrality in this whole situation is sinful.

And when Pilate said, "Don't you know that I have the authority here?" he's saying something like this: "Don't you know, Jesus, what I can do for you?" And when Jesus says, "Don't you know who has the real authority here?" Jesus is sort of replying: "Don't you know, Pilate, what I am doing for you? You can do nothing for me. I have everything I can do for you. I am dying for you."

And ultimately, this is what Jesus is saying to us. This is ultimately what His cross is saying to us. We have—He has done everything. He alone has the authority. We are guilty of sin, of mocking, of pride, of passivity over and over and over again. Jesus is giving Pilate and us an invitation: Come to me all the way. Come. Give to Jesus your mocking, your passivity. God can change even the most apathetic heart. He can melt even the most passive of people.

The Story of Adoniram Judson

Have you ever heard of this name: Adoniram Judson? I'm going to reference this book, To the Golden Shore, which is a biography of Adoniram Judson. He was one of the first missionaries from the United States and went to Burma. After a painful life of ministry, he left behind over 7,000 converts in Burma. But his life didn't start out very promising. It didn't look like what we would think of as a biography of a missionary.

Judson was raised in a Christian home. But when he went off to college at Brown University in Rhode Island, he was lured away from the Christian faith by a fellow student who became a close friend—a man named Jacob Eames. Eames was a philosopher who rejected all religion, and he ridiculed the God of the Bible. Judson's faith, which was already fragile at this point, crumbled under Eames' assaults. He kept his loss of faith hidden for many years from his parents until after graduation, when on his twentieth birthday, he announced that he was no longer a Christian.

He graduated as valedictorian of Brown University and left for New York for a very promising career writing for the theater. While in New York though, he found little fulfillment in his writing work and grew very disillusioned.

One night, traveling through a small village in Massachusetts, he spent the night at a local inn. The only available room was next door to a man who was dying. All night, the man groaned. He heard footsteps going back and forth to the room. The man cried out in desperation. Judson was so tormented by the despair in the man's cries, he couldn't sleep that night. He began to wonder to himself: "Is this man prepared for death? That's really all that matters now. Am I?"

This created a lot of tension in him. His philosophy had taught him that death was nothing—it was a door into an empty pit.

But that brought him little comfort listening that night to a man actually dying. At the same time, he could hear the voice of his friend Jacob Eames mocking him. "Really, Judson, you're this weak? Are you really a valedictorian of Brown University spooked by a little superstitious religion in the middle of the night?" Judson was ashamed of his fear, but still, those groans. Judson later wrote, "Oh, oh, those groans."

The next morning, as often happens, in the light of day when things that have given us fear during the middle of the night seem to melt away, Judson felt ashamed. He got up and dressed and went downstairs. He asked the front desk about the man who was in the room next door. The innkeeper's face was very gloomy. He said, "He's dead." Judson politely asked, "Do you know who he was?" "Oh, yes," the innkeeper said. "Young man from the college in Providence. Name was Ames. Jacob Ames."

He reflected on this moment in his journal: Lost. In death, Jacob Ames was lost. Utterly, irrevocably lost. Lost to his friends, lost to the world, lost to the future. Lost like a puff of smoke is lost in the infinity of air. If Ames' own views were true, neither his life nor his death had any meaning. But suppose Ames had been mistaken. Suppose the scriptures were literally true and God was really real. For that hell should open up in that country inn and snatch his friend Jacob Ames—he writes, "My dearest friend and guide from the next bed, this simply could not be coincidence." This was the turning point in Judson's life. He would pour out the rest of his life for the gospel, ultimately giving up everything for it.

See, God can change the heart of any person. He can melt the passive and remake us.

What About Pilate?

What about Pilate? What happened to Pilate? The truth is we don't really know. But there's been a lot of writing. Early Christian writers such as Tertullian noted that Pilate later sent a report about Jesus to the emperor Tiberius. Augustine hailed Pilate as a convert. All the voices seem to come from North Africa. It seems that Pilate may have converted and tried to convert Caesar. The Ethiopian church, sometimes we call this the Abyssinian church, along with Pilate's wife, honors him as a saint at the feast day of June 25 because they believe that after this encounter, Pilate converted to Christianity, came to Africa, and after he embraced Jesus.

That does seem very likely to me, just based on this passage alone. Here's why I think that. Consider the copious amount of private conversation we have between Pilate and Jesus. I mean, how do we know this story? How do we know any of this that went on in all these private encounters in the Governor's Palace? I think that Pilate must have told somebody about this conversation with Jesus. And why? Only because his life was changed in this moment. This moment was a hinge in his life. That's what happens, I think, to Pilate. He's not mentioned again in the Gospels, but the Gospels sort of leave Pilate's life as a cliffhanger.

And while we can't say with any clarity what happened with Pilate, we can answer this question about our own selves. What about us?

Kiss the Son

In Psalm 2, the Psalm I read earlier about where God mocks the nations for their foolishness, for the way that they gather against the Lord and his son, God reveals more about this son, a son who is also king. Now this was written hundreds of years before the coming of Jesus. And yet I want you to hear the words.

The Lord says to me, speaking of the son, "You are my son. Today, I have begotten you." — Psalm 2

The New Testament writers, Paul in the book of Acts and later in the book of Hebrews, point this out as a prophecy of the coming of Jesus. This is a son who is begotten of God, who will have the nations as his inheritance, the ends of earth as his possession, who will come to judge the nations.

You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. — Psalm 2

The purpose of that Psalm is to advise mockers and the passive of what to do with God's son who is also a king. Listen to these words:

Now therefore, O kings, be wise. Be warned, O rulers of the earth. Kiss the son. Kiss the son, lest he be angry and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him. — Psalm 2

Kiss. Do you hear how different that is from passivity? From mocking? Passivity backs away. Mocking keeps an arm's length. Passivity laughs, shrugs. Mocking is to hold yourself above, to look down on another. But a kiss? A kiss is to come close. A kiss is to draw near. And to kiss the one who is the Son of God and yet also a king.

Now I doubt any of us have ever met a king, but you've seen the movies. You know how you kiss a king. You don't go kiss a king on the face. Where do you kiss a king? You kiss the hand. You might kiss the feet in humble submission and bowing down.

I want you to imagine this scene. You draw near to kiss this king. What are those hands like? What are those feet like? As you bow down, as you draw near, you kiss the hand and you notice the holes in it. You kiss the feet and you see the marks where the nails pierced. The ones that you caused. The ones that you brought. They bear the marks of his suffering for my sin and for your sin.

Draw near. Kiss the Son. Where else have we seen a kiss throughout this drama? That's right, Judas. Judas betrays the Son of God with a kiss. But the Son can also be adored and worshiped and glorified with a kiss.

And here's the invitation to you this morning: Draw near. Draw near in your hearts this morning. Draw near to the one who is king and also savior.

Let's pray together. Father, we thank you this morning again for all the steps that you made in walking to the cross. We thank you, Lord Jesus, for every encounter, every insult you took, every beating that you took for us. Thank you, Father, that though we are like those in the crowd, like we are like the soldiers, like Pilate, or that you come to the mockers, to the passive. You can change anyone. Lord, we thank you for the grace that calls us to draw near this morning. We thank you, Father, that it is your kindness that leads us to repentance. Lord, we pray, Father, for courage to come near this morning and to kiss the Son. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.