This post is available to watch on You Tube: https://youtu.be/ZACQg1B0obg
Luke 23:1-25 You can read the passage here if you like: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2023%3A1-25&version=NLT
It’s kind of interesting, don’t you think, that the ENTIRE council took Jesus to Pilate. This isn’t a prisoner transfer, it’s a mob scene. And, as mobs often do, they start making false accusations because they know that their real complaint isn’t particularly going to bother the Roman authorities. So they accuse him of trying to usurp Roman authority and encourage tax evasion. They twist his words to make it sound like he is trying to be made a king.
Pilate is the governor of the region. He is familiar with Jewish traditions and beliefs but doesn’t subscribe to them. He’s a politician. It’s in his best interest to keep people happy and well behaved. Pilate asks Jesus if the accusations are true. Jesus gives another one of those answers like he did before the Sanhedrin.
“Are you the king of the Jews?”
“That’s what you’re telling me.”
Clearly Pilate didn’t perceive Jesus’ reply as a threat, because he tells his accusers he can’t find anything to charge him with. Presumably Pilate had heard enough about Jesus that he didn’t know what to think of him. He certainly wasn’t interested in executing such a popular guy when it didn’t appear that he had done anything more than ruffle some religious feathers.
So Jesus’ accusers decide that maybe being louder will help their cause. They start yelling, “No, he’s causing trouble everywhere he goes. He started in Galilee…”
Pilate cuts them off, “Galilee? Oh! Galileans are Herod’s people. And it just so happens that the king of Galilee is in town. Take him to King Herod. This should really be his decision since Jesus is one of his.”
You can see Pilate congratulating himself for dodging that bullet. He never really liked Herod. He was happy to let him deal with this potential hornet’s nest.
Herod, however, is kind of excited to finally see Jesus face to face. He’s heard about him too, and it sounds like he does cool tricks. Herod is hoping for a show. He starts interrogating Jesus while the accusers shriek their angry lies. Jesus chooses not to answer Herod at all. The time for party tricks was over. King Herod had held John the Baptist in prison for quite some time, occasionally bringing him out to have discussions when he was bored. Jesus knew his time had come to die. He was not interested in becoming Herod’s next months-long diversion. Herod couldn’t bait Jesus into intellectual debate so he instead entertained himself by having his soldiers dress Jesus up like a king and mock him. The little I have read about Herod was that he was a jealous, suspicious, self-important, hateful man, so his treatment of Jesus tracks with the reputation. Herod quickly grows bored and sends him back to Pilate.
Pilate would still like to avoid executing a crowd favourite during a public holiday that massively inflated the population of the city. That could get messy. He considered himself a reasonable, benevolent sort of guy. In fact, he made a habit of releasing a political prisoner on special holidays, just to be nice. It occurred to him that releasing Jesus would both maintain his little tradition and enable him to avoid being a part of what he recognized was not a fair trial. He tries to appease them by having Jesus beaten (horrifically by the way, he was whipped so brutally that his back would have been slashed open till the skin was all but gone) and then released. But that isn’t enough for them. They shout that they want him to release some guy named Barabbus who had, in fact, started a rebellion and murdered people. To Pilate’s credit he really tries to avoid executing Jesus, but, as I mentioned, he’s a politician. Job one was keeping his people happy so, while clearly stating that he doesn’t find Jesus guilty of any crime, he agrees to let him be killed anyways.
This little prisoner exchange in which he frees Barabbus even though we know he is guilty, and gives the innocent Jesus the punishment that Barabbus’ deserved is a powerful representation of exactly what Jesus was doing that day. Perfect, innocent Jesus took the punishment that was rightfully owed to Barabus, just like he took the punishment that was rightfully owed to every person who ever lived. I have heard preachers say something like, Imagine how it would have felt to be Barabbus, sentenced to death because you deserved it, but then Jesus, who never hurt anyone, took your punishment. And it is a crazy thought, putting yourself in Barabbus’ shoes. But you don’t really have to imagine. The fact is, you can pull on your own shoes, because what Jesus did there that day was in your place, and mine. It’s not just a vivid metaphor, it’s a fact.
