John 19:13-16 (NIV)
When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judge’s seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement (which in Aramaic is Gabbatha). It was the day of Preparation of Passover Week, about the sixth hour.
“Here is your king,” Pilate said to the Jews.
But they shouted, “Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!”
“Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate asked.
“We have no king but Caesar,” the chief priests answered.
Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified. So the soldiers took charge of Jesus.
What should have been a fifteen-minute hearing and judgment was now dragging into a several-hour affair, and Pilate was seemingly no closer to a satisfying resolution than he had been at the start. He had underestimated the hatred that the Jewish leaders had for this man, Jesus, and he still couldn’t figure out where all that animosity was coming from.
Pilate had tried legal statements, he had tried to incite pity for Jesus, and he had even feigned complete indifference. But the crowd, incited by the chief priests, seemed to be out for the blood of Jesus, and nothing short of that seemed to be able to satisfy them.
Finally, Pilate brought Jesus outside, and sat on the judge’s seat on the mosaic floor of the patio. The accusations against Jesus had begun with the charge that He had claimed to be the Messiah, the rightful king of the Jews. That should have aroused unity among the Jewish leaders, but mysteriously the Jewish leaders had charged Jesus with insurrection against the emperor, a man whom they openly despised.
Pilate pointed at Jesus, so bruised, and battered, and covered with blood that He was nearly unrecognizable, and said, “Here is your king!” At this point, by allowing the possibility that Jesus really was the Messiah, he hoped to divide the crowd, breaking down the strange unity that had been mustered against Jesus. But the crowd refused to be swayed, and the chants of “Away with Him!” and “Crucify Him!” rose and swelled like waves.
Pilate shouted into the crowd, “Should I crucify your king?” giving this tactic one final try. But the stunning answer came back from the chief priests at the front of the crowd: “We have no king but Caesar!”
Pilate was speechless. He knew that, without any doubt, those men hated the emperor, despised the fact that he had taken away their autonomy in their own land, that they were under the thumb of Rome to the point that they had to come to Pilate and seek authority to execute someone who they saw as having committed a capital crime. And Pilate also knew that, if an opportunity presented itself to overthrow Roman authority and take back self-rule, these leaders would jump on it in a heartbeat.
But now these same men were calling for the death of someone who probably had a better chance of uniting the people against Rome than anyone up to that time. And not only calling for His death, but death by crucifixion, the most agonizing form of execution ever devised. And, to top it all off, they were pledging allegiance to the Emperor! It made absolutely no sense to Pilate. What had Jesus done that could possibly cause this level of, not merely rejection, but red-hot anger?
He gave up. There seemed to be no resolution to this uprising other than to give the crowd what they wanted. So, he washed his hands of the whole affair (literally: Matthew 27:24-26), gave the order to have Jesus crucified, and handed Him over to the soldiers to carry out the execution.
Father, it is stunning to see these chief priests, the ones tasked with standing in Your presence on behalf of the people, so blinded by hate and resentment that they were in one motion rejecting Your Messiah and rejecting You as their king! And they were so focused on their primary agenda of getting rid of Jesus that they couldn’t even see what they were doing in the process! Lord, help me to stay clear-eyed always, and to never allow myself to get so emotionally tied up by anything in this world that I turn away from You or Your will for my life. Amen.
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