2 Samuel 23: 1-7
Psalm 132: 1-12
Revelation 1: 4b - 8
John 18: 33-37

Pilate on Trial

Another show I try to catch each week is one or more of the Law and Order series. In each episode, a crime takes place. A suspect is duly apprehended. In conjunction with the police, the district attorney builds a case based on the evidence. Then the defence and prosecution go head to head in the courtroom to either, prove guilt or raise reasonable doubt. If often seems like it’s not rally about the truth at all. At least on television!

Our gospel lesson for today presents a case from the courtroom of Pilate, Governor of Judea. In today’s lesson, we have only one of several ‘steps’ in this trial. From the beginning, there have been problems with the case. At the outset, Pilate is not even sure he has jurisdiction. We are told that the religious leaders who brought him to Pilate are handing Jesus over to Pilate’s court because they don’t have the authority to sentence someone to death. As the trial progresses, not being concerned in the least with religious issues, Pilate tries to trick Jesus into incriminating himself, politically. Not really wanting to crucify Jesus, Pilate tries to get him off the hook by offering to release him. When this does not work, Pilate had him beaten and mocked. As the trial progresses Pilate becomes more and more certain that there is no crime here, but he is powerless in front of those crying for blood. Clearly this judge is at the mercy of the vigilante mob, whipped up by some of the religious leaders, who simply want someone else to do their dirty work for them. All the while Jesus is silent, or nearly silent. In the end we know what the verdict and the sentence were.

Yet I cannot escape the feeling that it IS Pilate who is really on trial; as he himself said, “Do you now know that I have power to release you and power to crucify you?” Yet Pilate is afraid to exercise this power. While the gospels are certainly too quick to lay all of the blame for Jesus’ death at the feet of “the Jews”, surely Pilate is the one truly guilty. Pilate is guilty because he had the power to release Jesus, no matter what the crowd wanted. Pilate was the one who represented a system who had a great deal to fear from another ‘king’. Pilate knew that his power rested in the fine balance between the Roman Emperor and the Jewish leaders who had agreed to some kind of truce in exchange for keeping the peace. He wasn’t going to exchange that for truth and integrity. In a more well known version of this trail from Matthew’s gospel, there is that very poignant scene where Pilate washes his hands of the matter. Yet, I can’t help but get the feeling that Pilate is a little like Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, who was seen sleepwalking in the halls of the palace lamenting that her hands would never be clean. The blood on her hands belonged to Scotland’s King Duncan, the wife of Macduff, a nobleman, and all of their children. While she had not personally murdered any of them, her role in the planning of the first murder put the blood on her hands as well.

Back to the gospel story. Part of what this story says to me is that to have the power to do good and to let someone take it away from you and allow evil to occur is also to be guilty of that evil.

This trial sets our commonly accepted values about winners and losers and about power, on their heads. Jesus is the one in charge and Pilate is the one found guilty, even though it did not appear to be that way.

So what does this all have to do with the reign of Christ, and our lives in 2003? I was listening to the radio the middle of last week and the topic under discussion was the food bank in a certain area of Moncton. A client of the food bank was complaining about various aspects of the operation. One of those complaints was not being able to choose what she received. Another complaint was about quality and packaging; some food was unidentified, either in terms of content, or, in a complete lack of cooking instructions. The woman was hurt, frustrated and angry. She didn’t want to be going to a food bank in the first place. She didn’t want to have to ‘take whatever they gave you and be grateful’. She wanted choices and dignity. She wanted what the rest of the community take for granted. If it was a courtroom the food bank would have been convicted.

But we need to hear the otehr side. I cant say anything about that specific food-bank but I have volunteered to work at a food bank handing out food. I knew how far the food that was given our would go in my own household, let alone one in which there were growing children . I knew also that sometimes we didn’t give a full order because we simply didn’t have all of the items on ‘the list’. We couldn’t give it out if we didn’t have it. I know that most food banks can’t usually tailor the food box to the needs of the clients, let alone their personal preferences. If they didn’t like beans they can go back on the shelf, but the client probably just got more soup in return. We couldn’t cope with the kinds of healthy diets recommended by most health care personnel because we had few fresh vegetables and nutritious cereal. The choice was, more or less, eat this or go away with much less. I have also been on the board of a food bank. At each meeting we discussed eligibility for receiving food. We dealt with any complaints we’d received about who was getting food who shouldn’t be. We tried to figure out if a certain person really was telling the truth on their application. Sometimes we took people off the list of ‘approved clients’. We justified this because of our fear that community people would stop giving if they knew we did nothing about suspected abuse.

Now what is wrong with this picture? It’s not the food bank per se, it’s the fact that food banks are needed at all. In one of the wealthiest and most resource rich countries in the world we have hungry children. We have working people who can’t pay their rent, their power, their heat AND their food. It’s about the attitude that the poor should be grateful for what little charity they receive! Its about giving much less than we would accept ourselves, (such as food well past its ‘best before’ date or food of questionable quality) as if the poor don’t deserve the same respect and dignity.

Its about education to be able to manage better, but its also about dignity, about recognizing the image of God in each person. It’s about now having the kind of power over other people’s lives so that their humanity is diminished. It would be wonderful if all the food banks were closed because of a lack of need, but while the need is still there, we as a society must look at treating the food bank clients with the utmost respect and dignity. We need to avoid the divisions of ‘us and them’ and look at the health of our communities as a whole.

On Friday night I went to a play at Mount Allison’s Windsor Theatre in Sackville, called “The Laramie Project”. This play grew out of a response to the October 1998 murder of a gay university of Wyoming Student. 21 year old Matthew Shephard was beaten with fists and the butt of a gun and left for dead, tied to a fence in a deserted area outside of the town of Laramie Wyoming. He wasn’t discovered until about 12 hours later, by a young cyclist and taken to hospital. He died without regaining consciousness 5 days later. A New York theatre group spent 2 years interviewing various townspeople about the incident. Although they described themselves as a loving and caring, live-and-let live town, it because clear that common attitudes toward homosexuality contributed to the crime. While only 2 young men bore the personal guilt, the whole town, had to bear some of the blame for creating an environment which fostered hate and which made the lives of some people worth less than the lives of others.

The first young man to be tried was told that his sentence could have been lessened had he reported, even after the fact, so that Shephard could have been discovered and taken to hospital much sooner.

Fostering a community in which all people can be safe has nothing to do with whether or not we agree with or can condone various aspects of the behaviour of those who are seen as different. Its about human rights and about living the gospel call to love neighbour as self. Our call to love is a call to act for the good of the other and a call to stop any action, including name calling, which would hurt another or invite an injustice upon them, despite what we may personally think about their lifestyle or opinions.

We can all probably cite instances in our own lives or that of our families and communities where silence and inaction have caused someone else greater suffering. As Christians we are called to stand with those who are pushed to the margins of society and to rely on the example of Jesus of Nazareth who seemed to ‘hang out’ with those widely regarded as outcastes and sinners.

Edmund Burke, 18th century British statesman, orator and political thinker once said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men (people) to do nothing”.

When we look around us at the evil in the world we need to ask hard questions about what we have done to stop it? We need to ask if we have lived as if Christ reigned in the world and in our lives. We need to ask, “What is preventing the reign of Christ in our own lives?” What do we fear: loss of prestige, friends, taking a stand alone?

As the Christian year draws to a close we are called to take a look back at the year that has passed and look forward to the year that is to come. We are called to answer the questions, “What did I expect at Advent?” and, “Does the Christ I welcomed at Christmas and whose resurrection I proclaimed at Easter, go with me into my life? Does this Christ change how I look a the world around me? Does this Christ give me the strength to take unpopular stands and to show the love of God to everyone I meet?

The question is: do we stand with Pilate and take the easy way out or do we walk the way of the cross showing God’s love and care in unpopular ways and to those who are on the margins of society. Does Christ reign in our lives or not?

It’s a tough question but the good news us that if we answer, “Yes”, we are promised strength and presence and love from the same God who was with Jesus as he wlked sometimes lonely journey of faith.

What answer do we make, not just with our voices, but with our lives?

Amen.