Pilate Spars with Jesus
How did Jesus relate to a political pragmatist?
The New Testament offers many fascinating political characters. None is so exact an analogue of today’s cynicism as Pontius Pilate. When we consider Pilate’s problems, his position, and his governing methods, he almost puts contemporary political operatives in direct conversation with Jesus.
Pilate is not the boss of a political machine. He is the boss’s goon in Jerusalem. His only function is to execute Caesar’s will in Judea without costing Caesar too much. There is a playbook for this. First, govern a province through local institutions, not with direct Roman power. Second, do not force local religions to yield to Roman gods and goddesses. Just add the local ones to Rome’s growing collection and make sure the locals pray to Caesar. (Or in the case of the Jews, pray for Caesar.) Third, reserve military shock and awe for rebels who deny Caesar’s right to rule. Don’t waste it on jaywalkers.
If Pilate succeeds in applying this playbook when Jesus appears before him, Pilate will avoid a conflict with the Jews over religion and Roman soldiers will not be needed. If Pilate fails, he could incite local rage that will cost Caesar blood and treasure to quell.
Pilate does his job with a cold pragmatism that might seem to empower him as Caesar’s operative.
John portrays the governor in an extended scene (John 18.28-19.22). We watch Pilate size Jesus up, spar with him, and ultimately become unnerved by him—and by the higher allegiance Jesus demands.
The scene opens with Pilate (18.28-32) applying the first rule about governing through local institutions. When the chief priests from the Sanhedrin bring Jesus to him, Pilate is not going to initiate any action if he doesn’t have to. The chief priests do not specify an accusation against Jesus. So Pilate says, “Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.”
But the chief priests know the playbook too, and they aren’t going to help Pilate follow the first rule. They reply that they can’t legally execute Jesus, implying portentously that Jesus wants to overthrow Caesar. The chief priests aren’t going to say that in so many words. They would risk the wrath of the crowds in Jerusalem if they explicitly accuse a popular teacher of insurrection against the Romans. They want Pilate to state the accusation.
One can imagine Pilate doing a violent eye-roll when the Jewish leaders call for Jesus’s execution. The chief priests are trying to entangle Pilate in their internal quarrels, baiting him not only to break the playbook’s first rule but the second one too—don’t get involved in a local religious conflict. Pilate knows that he can only execute so many rebels before the crucifixions become recruiting posters. Jesus is not a good candidate.
The chief priest’s implication, however, is serious enough that Pilate must question Jesus.
Pilate tries to focus the interrogation on who has the right to rule.
Is Jesus a threat to Caesar? If so, how big a threat? Jesus turns out to be no more cooperative than the chief priests (18.33-38). Pilate asks him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” (Big threat.) Just as the chief priests won’t say certain words to Pilate, the word king is one that Jesus will not apply to himself. If Jesus says that he is king of the Jews, then he is claiming that Caesar has no right to rule. Jesus is an insurrectionist, for which Rome and the chief priests will condemn him to death. So Jesus counters by asking whether Pilate reached this conclusion himself or was told this by others.
Jesus won’t allow his death to be about earthly political power.
Pilate wants a plain answer and he barks at Jesus’s effrontery: “Am I a Jew?” The governor might as well be a contemporary judge or manager, with all her sense of superiority to religious fanaticism. What interest would I have in your little issues? “Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?” You did something to offend your people and I don’t want to be involved. Do you want my help or not?
Jesus’s next answer both relieves and disturbs Pilate.
On the one hand, Jesus relieves the pressure on Pilate to get involved in the chief priests’ complaint. “My kingdom is not of this world.” The issue with the chief priests involves religion, where Roman policy only intrudes as a last resort. The chief priests are calling Jesus a king because he threatens their authority, not Caesar’s.
Jesus supports his claim with an argument that Pilate would accept: “If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” If I’m an insurrectionist, Jesus argues, where’s the insurrection? Jesus has consistently distinguished between his kingdom and the worldly politics of Israel. For example, when he heard that the people wanted to make him king after the feeding of the five thousand, he withdrew from the crowd (6.15). When the Jewish leaders asked him directly if he was the Messiah, whom they defined as a political savior, Jesus only answered that he and the Father are one (10.22-30).
On the other hand, Jesus makes a personal claim on Pilate that threatens the Roman playbook itself. Though Jesus’s kingdom is in another world, the nature of the kingdom is not clear. Pilate says, “So you are a king,” still probing any competition with Caesar. Jesus insists that the word king is Pilate’s, describing his actual mission as much larger than what Pilate means. Jesus came into the world “to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.”
This is the threat that Pilate should pay close attention to.
Jesus makes claims on Pilate’s allegiance far higher than Caesar’s—higher than Pilate has ever contemplated. Jesus makes these claims, as it were, man to man. He is not engaging Pilate on a legal or even political level. He is engaging Pilate personally about the truth.
In response, Pilate asks one of the most ambiguous questions in the Bible (18.38). “What is truth?” And then he walks out.
We have to follow the definite article. Jesus spoke of “the truth,” a specific reality that he can describe from direct experience. The truth does not come from this world, but from outside of it. Pilate’s next question would naturally be, “What is the truth?” But Pilate asks about “truth,” stripping away the specificity of Jesus’s reference and asking what truth is in the abstract.
Pilate evades the claim that is most relevant to his inquiry. Exactly as a contemporary politico would. The implication that Pilate owes a higher allegiance than he owes Caesar is one that Pilate would not even acknowledge, much less discuss. The Roman playbook doesn’t allow higher allegiances.
I have been asking what Christians owe today’s media machines, which demand that we submit our consciences to the boss’s ideology. Can we give this level of obedience, equating the boss with the truth?
Jesus has already shown the path. He would allow neither the chief priests nor Pilate to define his death. On trial for his life, Jesus would flip the script on Pilate, treating the governor personally as an insurrectionist against the truth. No spin. No compromise. No pragmatism.
If Jesus’s death on the cross defines my life as a Christian, then my conscience must follow the same path Jesus took. There is no political playbook that justifies my serving a boss and his goons as if they defined the truth. There is no doctrinal or devotional justification for imagining that any machine can advance Jesus’s will. In relation to every political agenda, I am a free agent. In relation to Christ, I am bought and paid for.
Next post: Jesus on Pilate’s authority.