Pilate’s Court:
Mark 15:1-15
St. John’s
I like the game of basketball. I like the speed of the game. I like the skill of it. I like the excitement. But I think the thing I like most about it is that it has rules. You have to play within the limits of time and the lines on the court. You can’t foul without incurring a penalty. If you get tired or hurt or commit too many fouls you have to leave the game. Some one has to substitute for you. It is all fair. It is designed so that the best team can win. Most of the time it can be said, “The game was won fair and square.”
But you and I know that life is not like basketball. Life is not always fair and square. The best man doesn’t always win. There are times when the wrong man goes to jail. The wrong man takes the fall. The wrong man gets the blame. That goes against my sense of justice. I hate it when that happens. It stinks to high heaven.
One of the things that we have to do as we visit the places of the passion is we have to look at the depravity of the human heart. We have to look at people who are devious and scheming. We have to see life at its darkest. When it’s not a basketball game and the right sub is being sent in but rather we see life at its ugliest as the criminal goes free and the innocent subs for him. We do this not so we can feel righteous and angry and judgmental against those who could do this but so that we can appreciate what is being done here and so we can see our own place in what is happening. Let us look then tonight at Pilate’s court and see first of all Jesus substituting for Barabbas. And secondly Jesus substituting for us.
When the politician or the criminal goes free and some underling takes the hit and does the time it is usually for one of two reasons. One is that the big guy is insulated from the crime so that the little guy can take the punishment and the big guy can go on doing his underhanded activities. The other reason is that the big guy is angry at what the little guy has done and he wants to make an example of him. He wants to let the little guy know, “You don’t fool around with me. If you cross me I will hurt you. I will set you up so that you will never cross me again.”
It is this motive that we see in action as Jesus stands before Pilate. Jesus had crossed the religious leaders. He wasn’t playing by their rules. He pointed out their hypocrisies. He showed the people how the leaders weren’t telling them the truth. He showed the leaders that they put loads on their peoples’ back that they wouldn’t carry themselves. The leaders had tried to discredit Jesus. They tried to trick Him, embarrass Him, but nothing they did worked. So now it was down and dirty. Now it was false charges and putting pressure on Pilate to give the order to crucify Jesus. Pilate was well aware of their malice toward Jesus. He saw this was a message to teach Jesus a lesson. He thought if he put them in an embarrassing position they would have to let Jesus go. So he said, “It is your custom that I let some one go every year on this feast to show my good will. I have here the worst criminal in the jail. I am asking you to choose between him and Jesus. What is it going to be? Jesus or Barabbas?”
Not even Pilate as accustomed as he was to political intrigue was prepared to hear the people say, “We want Barabbas. We don’t want Jesus. Crucify Him!” They wanted Barabbas. Barabbas was an insurrectionist who had committed murder. He was one of those men who hated the Romans so much that he not only plotted to overthrow their rule over him he was willing to kill Romans to make it happen. His hatred knew no bounds or restrictions.
Look at Barabbas for a moment with me if you will. Remember when you were a child and your mother punished you for not listening to her. As you sat in your room did you mutter to yourself, “I hate my mother? I hate her telling me what to do. I hate her catching me in my wrong.” I remember having those feelings and saying those words. Sounds like insurrection, doesn’t it?
Do you remember growing up and going to school and hating the rules and the professors and the demands placed upon you? Did you ever break the rules? Did you ever say a few choice things about your teachers behind their backs? Did you conclude that you knew so much more than they did and why couldn’t you make the rules? More insurrection.
And as our lives go on as adults some one is always telling us what to do. Some one is always sparking some rage within us because they don’t know what they are doing. We should be giving the orders, not them. Why does it seem as if all the incompetents are in charge and all the wicked, crooked people run the show?
You may think that Barabbas was a wild eyed, raving maniac who bears no resemblance to you or me. I say the difference between most of us and Barabbas is that he acted out his rebellion whereas we keep a lot of our dark thoughts to ourselves. The closest we may come to revealing our rebellious hearts is when we use our tongue as a sword to cut some one to pieces or we lose our temper and our true feelings come out. When Jesus said, “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer,” He made it clear that the difference between thinking and acting is no difference at all.
What we need to see then as we stand at Pilate’s court is that this is much more than a good man getting framed by petty and spiteful people. Jesus needed to substitute for Barabbas. He had to take Barabbas’ place because there was no way that Barabbas could take care of his problem.
Many of course would disagree. All you have to do is train Barabbas they would say. If his mother had started early with her son and trained him he wouldn’t have turned out this way. If she had taught him manners, showed him that nice people don’t mind taking orders, that if you do the right thing things will always turn out all right, taught him the golden rule he would have turned out to be a model citizen.
Or if only some one had put the clamps on Barabbas a little more tightly. Given him a good cuff on the head. Slapped him up the side of the head. Put him in solitary confinement a little longer, then maybe he would have behaved himself and not caused any trouble.
Jesus stood silently as the crowd called for Barabbas because He knew he had to take his place. Only Jesus loved Barabbas at that moment. The crowd and the leaders were using Barabbas for their own purposes. They didn’t love him. But Jesus could look at him and say, “I gave you life. I have seen you live your life. I have seen you lose your way. I have seen anger take over your heart, but I love you.”
Only Jesus could touch Barabbas’ heart. Hate, indifference, rejection, punishment, none of those things could get through the armor around Barabbas’ heart. But love could pierce what no sword could. Love could cause even a condemned thief to cry out, “Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
Only Jesus could pay for what Barabbas had done. Barabbas could not say that he was innocent. Even those who had never been in jail could not say that their hearts were pure. That their lips had never spoken in anger. That their hearts had never been filled with anger. No one had the coin to pay for these sins. Only Jesus could pay. By not speaking. By letting His hands be bound and allowing Himself to be led away. Jesus said I am able and I am willing.
Have you ever wondered what happened to Barabbas? Did he go out on the street and buy a knife off the first person he could find who owned one and go back to killing Romans? Did he see who Jesus was and what He was doing for him and go straight? Did he become a man who worked within the system trying to love his neighbor as His Lord loved him?
We will never know what Barabbas did but if we are like Barabbas in that we have hearts given to hate and rebellion we know we need Jesus to be our substitute. We can train ourselves and our children to behave but we know we can’t train the heart. We can say to our children, “Say thank-you to grandma for the nice gift she gave you,” and we know the words will come but we can’t make our children be thankful if they aren’t. We can humiliate and punish and hand down stiff sentences. “You are grounded for a month,” we can roar, but it won’t change a heart that thinks it has been treated unfairly or cannot see its own faults.
My mother trained me. My mother punished me. But the best thing my mother showed me is that Jesus loved me. Loved me unconditionally. Loved me when I didn’t deserve it. Loved me in my rebellion enough to pay what I owed. Loved me enough to set me free from the tyranny of my anger and rebellion so I could let go of it and put my energies and talents into love instead.
And now you see the progression. Jesus subbed for us so we can sub for others. If the message of the cross truly touches our hearts then what has been done for us calls us to spread and share what we know and what we have. I would therefore have you think tonight about some one who needs a substitute. Do you know some one who has burdens too heavy to carry? An elderly person bowed down by poor health, by the stresses and griefs of life? Alone and lonely? What better way to carry the message that Jesus has borne your burden than to help this person bear theirs. Be a sub for the burdened.
Do you know some one who can’t defend themselves? Some one who is too little, too simple to know what is going on, too beaten down to stand on their own two feet, too uneducated in how the system works? What better thing could you do than to stand up to the bully, befriend the disadvantaged, and lead the uneducated through the system?
Do you know some one who is hungry for companionship, thirsty for attention, longing for a smile and a helping hand? What clearer way could you show what Jesus has done for you than by being a sub for those who don’t have any one to advocate for them?
That’s the best thing about the cross. In basketball the sub is second string. You send in the sub when the good guy goes down. You send in the lesser because you have already used the better. But in Pilate’s court it is the other way around. The sub is the best. And that sub now looks at you and me and says, “Go with my love. Go sub for others and give the best that I have given you.” Amen.