Insanity
Years ago, I had a housemate named Ryan who
was always trying to scratch some itch. He would spend money he didn’t have on
new sports cars. He was regularly dating a new girl, sometimes before he’d
ended things with his previous girlfriend. He would change jobs frequently,
always looking for a better salary.
I remember conversations we had over dinner. It was like listening to a broken record stuck on a song called, “Poor Me.” Which is to say, Ryan was endlessly dissatisfied. But he never saw the pattern in his behavior. You know the saying, “Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result”? Tragically, Ryan embodied this insanity. He was thirsty, but he kept choosing to drink salt water. He kept trying to scratch that itch in the same old way with the same old result: it just itched even more.
Now, I have a hunch that if we’re honest, we can all see a bit of Ryan in ourselves. Because I think it’s human to keep doing the same thing and to expect a different result. Maybe we can see it in the ways we relate to a boss, or a teacher, or our children (or grandchildren). Maybe we can see it in the ways we spend our money. Maybe we can see it in the ways we consume our news.
Definitely we can see it in our scripture today, where humanity insists on doing things the way it’s always done things.
A King
That Refuses to Fight
1 Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. 2 And the soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they dressed him in a purple robe. 3 They kept coming up to him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and striking him on the face. 4 Pilate went out again and said to them, “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no case against him.” 5 So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Here is the man!”
I’ve often wondered how the crowd who just days earlier had welcomed Jesus to Jerusalem with shouts of joy could turn on him so quickly. How does the tide of popular sentiment turn so fast?
As I read our scripture today, I imagine Jesus presented to the crowd as an absolute joke of a king, with a bloodied royal robe and a mocking crown of thorns, with his face not glowing with pride but twisted in pain. I imagine that the shame meant to be heaped on him is in fact heaped instead onto the crowd. This is not the king whom they desired or expected. This “king” does not act like a king. As we saw last week, this king refuses to fight. This king is weak.
Last year, the soccer team I support, Liverpool, won the Premier League (what is effectively the national championship). The fans were ecstatic. For a full day, the players and the manager rode atop a bus through the city, celebrating with everyone. Supporters chanted the manager’s name with gusto. This year, the team are in fifth place, and the fans are restless. Many of the same supporters who last year chanted the manager’s name are now calling for his head. How quickly the tide can turn when we don’t get what we want or expect.
What the people of Judea want, is a king who will fight, a king who will ultimately liberate them from Rome. This Jesus, already mocked and beaten by the Roman guard, is a shameful pretender of the king the people want.
A God
That Refuses to Get His Way
6 When the chief priests and the police saw him, they shouted, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him; I find no case against him.” 7 The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has claimed to be the Son of God.”
8 Now when Pilate heard this, he was more afraid than ever. 9 He entered his headquarters again and asked Jesus, “Where are you from?” But Jesus gave him no answer. 10 Pilate therefore said to him, “Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?” 11 Jesus answered him, “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above; therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.”
Just as Pilate is probably beginning to feel some reassurance that this Jesus fellow isn’t going to be giving Rome any trouble—he doesn’t seem to be an insurrectionist and in fact popular sentiment seems to have turned against him—the religious leaders finally give voice to their real accusation against Jesus, and it’s a supremely troubling one for Pilate. This man Jesus claims to be “the son of God.” Now, it’s one thing to mock and perhaps even execute a seemingly sincere and innocent man. Pilate is willing to do that if it keeps the peace. But it’s another thing entirely to meddle in the affairs of the gods, who could really wreak havoc. The revelation that Jesus may be divine spooks Pilate. “Where are you from?” he demands of Jesus, apparently asking him to confirm his divine origins.
But just as before Jesus does not act like a king, so too here he does not act like a god. He seems unconcerned with his fate, unconcerned with the prospect of losing, unconcerned with getting his own way. The gods of ancient Rome were a bit like our superheroes today. They might occasionally struggle to get their way, but ultimately their superpowers ensured they prevailed. But Jesus is not flexing his divine muscle. If he has any “superpower,” he’s not using it. He is ready to die.
When Pilate mentions the possibility of sharing his power to avert the impending crucifixion, Jesus might well hear an echo of Satan’s temptation in the wilderness, namely to claim the power that is rightfully his and prove himself to be son of God. But again he refuses. And so just as he was mocked as a king, so too he will be mocked as a god. We have stark evidence of this in an ancient piece of graffiti from around the year 200 in Rome (yes, street artists have been drawing on overpasses and tunnels for thousands of years!). This particular piece of graffiti depicts Jesus on the cross with the head of a donkey and a taunting inscription that reads: “Alexamenos worship his god.” The obvious subtext is: what kind of “god” allows himself to get killed?
A Judge
That Refuses to Condemn
12 From then on Pilate tried to release him, but the Jews cried out, “If you release this man, you are no friend of the emperor. Everyone who claims to be a king sets himself against the emperor.”
13 When Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus outside and sat [him] on the judge’s bench at a place called The Stone Pavement, or in Hebrew Gabbatha. 14 Now it was the day of Preparation for the Passover; and it was about noon. He said to the Jews, “Here is your King!” 15 They cried out, “Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!” Pilate asked them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but the emperor.” 16 Then he handed him over to them to be crucified.
Robbie shared with me this some week some historical details that shed a lot of light on these concluding verses. As the Roman governor of Judea, Pilate was on thin ice. Previously he had dealt brutally and insensitively with the Judeans, casually employing violence to get his way. His flippant use of force, however, had backfired, inflaming the Judeans’ anger and resulting in riots and general instability in the land. Pilate had been put on notice by his higher-ups that any further chaos would mean the loss of his position. His command was basically, “Keep the peace, or else….”
The religious leaders cunningly play Pilate as they question his loyalty to Caesar. “If you release this man”—this rabble-rouser—“you are no friend of the emperor” (John 19:12). They effectively force him into a choice: Caesar or Jesus. They make their own choice clear: “We have no king but the emperor” (John 19:15).
The gospel of John dramatizes this choice—Caesar or Jesus—as the culmination of Jesus’ trial, as a scene of judgment. John says, “[Pilate] brought Jesus outside and sat on the judge’s bench at a place called the Stone Pavement” (John 19:13). But John delights in wordplay, and here he employs an ambiguous phrasing in the Greek that could also be translated, “[Pilate] made him [Jesus] to sit on the judge’s bench.” It is a small but striking detail that has the power to reverse the scene entirely, making Jesus not the judged but the judge. It would appear for all the world that Jesus is the one on trial here and the Pilate and the religious leaders are the judges, the ones calling the shots. But John subtly suggests that actually Jesus is the judge and it is everyone else—us, humanity—who are on trial. Before Jesus, our world hangs in the balance.
But if this is the case, then just as Jesus is a “king" who does not act like one, and just as Jesus is of God but does not act like a god, so also Jesus is a judge who does not act like a judge. He’s silent here. He delivers no verdict. He assigns no blame.
I’m reminded of a scene in Luke where a man in the crowd asks Jesus to render a judgment in an inheritance dispute between the man and his brother. Jesus responds, “Friend, who set me to be a judge…over you?” (Luke 12:14). But then he continues, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed…” (Luke 12:15). He does not judge in the traditional sense, but he warns nonetheless against a self-condemning way of life (that is its own form of judgment, sort of like what we would call karma). I’m reminded too of earlier in John where Jesus repeatedly says, “I came not to judge [or condemn] the world, but to save the world” (John 12:47; cf. 3:17). His words leave the impression that God’s judgment is less a matter of affixing blame and assigning punishment and more a matter of leaving us to our own judgment. It’s like Moses tells the people of Israel on the cusp of the Promised Land. The choice is yours, between life and death. So choose life (cf. Deut 30).
Popular Christian theology has understood God’s judgment as a single, final verdict on whether a person goes to heaven or hell when they die. But committed followers of Christ have long understood what we see in Jesus’ trial (and elsewhere in his life). Jesus does not act like a normal judge. He does not come to judge and condemn but to save us from the judgment and condemnation we choose for ourselves. He offers us a way out, if we would choose it, and not just for later but for now. It was with this idea in mind that Catherine of Siena, a 15th century saint and mystic, said, “It’s heaven all the way to heaven; and it’s hell all the way to hell.”
The
“Odd” Gospel
I think back to my old housemate Ryan who kept doing the same thing and expecting a different result. And I wonder if humanity’s story is not the same.
In Jesus, God presents us with a stark alternative to the way we generally live. In Jesus, we have a “king” who refuses to behave like a king, who refuses to fight. We have a God who refuses to act like the gods, who refuses to flex his divine muscle and get his way. We have a judge who refuses to condemn.
What I see in today’s scripture is that Jesus’ trial is in fact our own trial, the trial of the world, where Jesus exposes our insanity. We as a world keep choosing kings who fight; we keep worshiping gods of power; we keep judging and condemning others. In the broken and bloodied body of Jesus, God asks us, “How’s that working out for you?” Are we scratching the itch but it’s only getting worse? Are we drinking salt water to cure our thirst?
Friends, we have an odd king, an odd God, an odd judge. And I believe this oddness is the heart of the gospel, the heart of the good news. Otherwise, it’d just be more of the same for our world—more fighting, more domination, more condemnation. It’d be more scratching the itch, only for the itch to get worse. We as the church have a unique gift to share with the world. It is not our task to change the world. Even Jesus didn’t do that—not in any immediate sense of the word. It is simply our task to be different. To share this oddness with others—a king who does not fight, a God who does not get his way, a judge who does not condemn but rather saves us from our own self-condemnation.
When Jesus bore the cross, he bore the heavy refusal of the ways of this world, in order to show us a different way. Our message to the world is the same as Jesus’, who proclaimed the kingdom of God. Our message is: it does not have to be this way; it could be different.
Prayer
Who refuses to scratch the itch,
And instead trusts in the soothing balm of God’s love—
Inspire us by your sanity
To live not in condemnation of the world
But as joyful witnesses of your better way.
Amen.
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