'And straightway in the morning the chief priests held a consultation
with the elders and scribes and the whole council, and bound Jesus,
and carried Him away, and delivered Him to Pilate. 2. And Pilate asked
Him, Art Thou the King of the Jews? And He answering said unto him,
Thou sayest it. 3. And the chief priests accused Him of many things:
but He answered nothing. 4. And Pilate asked Him again, saying,
Answerest Thou nothing? behold how many things they witness against
Thee. 6. But Jesus yet answered nothing; so that Pilate marvelled. 6.
Now at that feast he released unto them one prisoner, whomsoever they
desired. 7. And there was one named Barabbas, which lay bound with
them that had made insurrection with him, who had committed murder in
the insurrection. 8. And the multitude crying aloud began to desire
him to do as he had ever done unto them. 9. But Pilate answered them,
saying, Will ye that I release unto you the King of the Jews? 10. For
he knew that the chief priests had delivered Him for envy. 11. But the
chief priests moved the people, that he should rather release Barabbas
unto them. 12. And Pilate answered and said again unto them, What will
ye then that I shall do unto Him whom ye call the King of the Jews?
13. And they cried out again, Crucify Him. 14. Then Pilate said unto
them, Why, what evil hath He done? And they cried out the more
exceedingly, Crucify Him. 15. And so Pilate, willing to content the
people, released Barabbas unto them, and delivered Jesus, when he had
scourged Him, to be crucified. 16. And the soldiers led Him away into
the hall, called Praetorium; and they call together the whole band.
17. And they clothed Him with purple, and platted a crown of thorns,
and put it about His head, 18. And began to salute Him, Hail, King of
the Jews! 19. And they smote Him on the head with a reed, and did spit
upon Him, and bowing their knees worshipped Him. 20. And when they had
mocked Him they took off the purple from Him, and put His own clothes
on Him, and led Him out to crucify Him.'--Mark xv. 1-20.
The so-called trial of Jesus by the rulers turned entirely on his
claim to be Messias; His examination by Pilate turns entirely on His
claim to be king. The two claims are indeed one, but the political
aspect is distinguishable from the higher one; and it was the Jewish
rulers' trick to push it exclusively into prominence before Pilate, in
the hope that he might see in the claim an incipient insurrection, and
might mercilessly stamp it out. It was a new part for them to play to
hand over leaders of revolt to the Roman authorities, and a governor
with any common sense must have suspected that there was something hid
below such unusual loyalty. What a moment of degradation and of
treason against Israel's sacredest hopes that was when its rulers
dragged Jesus to Pilate on such a charge! Mark follows the same method
of condensation and discarding of all but the essentials, as in the
other parts of his narrative. He brings out three points--the hearing
before Pilate, the popular vote for Barabbas, and the soldiers'
mockery.
I. The true King at the bar of the apparent ruler (verses 1-6). The
contrast between appearance and reality was never more strongly drawn
than when Jesus stood as a prisoner before Pilate. The One is
helpless, bound, alone; the other invested with all the externals of
power. But which is the stronger? and in which hand is the sceptre? On
the lowest view of the contrast, it is ideas _versus_ swords. On the
higher and truer, it is the incarnate God, mighty because voluntarily
weak, and man 'dressed in a little brief authority,' and weak because
insolently 'making his power his god.' Impotence, fancying itself
strong, assumes sovereign authority over omnipotence clothed in
weakness. The phantom ruler sits in judgment on the true King. Pilate
holding Christ's life in his hand is the crowning paradox of history,
and the mystery of self-abasing love. One exercise of the Prisoner's
will and His chains would have snapped, and the governor lain dead on
the marble 'pavement.'
The two hearings are parallel, and yet contrasted. In each there are
two stages--the self-attestation of Jesus and the accusations of
others; but the order is different. The rulers begin with the
witnesses, and, foiled there, fall back on Christ's own answer,
Pilate, with Roman directness and a touch of contempt for the
accusers, goes straight to the point, and first questions Jesus. His
question was simply as to our Lord's regal pretensions. He cared
nothing about Jewish 'superstitions' unless they threatened political
disturbance. It was nothing to him whether or no one crazy fanatic
more fancied himself 'the Messiah,' whatever that might be. Was He
going to fight?--that was all which Pilate had to look after. He is
the very type of the hard, practical Roman, with a 'practical' man's
contempt for ideas and sentiments, sceptical as to the possibility of
getting hold of 'truth,' and too careless to wait for an answer to his
question about it; loftily ignorant of and indifferent to the notions
of the troublesome people that he ruled, but alive to the necessity of
keeping them in good humour, and unscrupulous enough to strain justice
and unhesitatingly to sacrifice so small a thing as an innocent life
to content them.
What could such a man see in Jesus but a harmless visionary? He had
evidently made up his mind that there was no mischief in Him, or he
would not have questioned Him as to His kingship. It was a new thing
for the rulers to hand over dangerous patriots, and Pilate had
experience enough to suspect that such unusual loyalty concealed
something else, and that if Jesus had really been an insurrectionary
leader, He would never have fallen into Pilate's power. Accordingly,
he gives no serious attention to the case, and his question has a
certain half-amused, half-pitying ring about it. 'Thou a king? '--poor
helpless peasant! A strange specimen of royalty this! How constantly
the same blindness is repeated, and the strong things of this world
despise the weak, and material power smiles pityingly at the helpless
impotence of the principles of Christ's gospel, which yet will one day
shatter it to fragments, like a potter's vessel! The phantom ruler
judges the real King to be a powerless shadow, while himself is the
shadow and the other the substance. There are plenty of Pilates to-day
who judge and misjudge the King of Israel.
The silence of Jesus in regard to the eager accusations corresponds to
His silence before the false witnesses. The same reason dictated both.
His silence is His most eloquent answer. It calmly passes by all these
charges by envenomed tongues as needing no reply, and as utterly
irrelevant. Answered, they would have lived in the Gospels;
unanswered, they are buried. Christ can afford to let many of His foes
alone. Contradictions and confutations keep slanders and heresies
above water, which the law of gravitation would dispose of if they
were left alone.
Pilate's wonder might and should have led him further. It should have
prompted to further inquiry, and that might have issued in clearer
knowledge. It was the little glimmer of light at the far-off end of
his cavern, which, travelled towards, might have brought him into free
air and broad day. One great part of his crime was neglecting the
faint monitions of which he was conscious. His light may have been
dim, but it would have brightened; and he quenched it. He stands as a
tremendous example of possibilities missed, and of the tragedy of a
soul that has looked on Jesus, and has not yielded to the impressions
made on him by the sight.
II. The people's favourite (verses 7-15), 'Barabbas' means 'son of the
father,' His very name is a kind of caricature of the 'Son of the
Blessed,' and his character and actions present in gross form the sort
of Messias whom the nation really wanted. He had headed some one of
the many small riots against Rome which were perpetually sputtering up
and being trampled out by an armed heel. There had been bloodshed, in
which he had himself taken part ('a murderer,' Acts iii. 14). And this
coarse, red-handed desperado is the people's favourite, because he
embodied their notions and aspirations, and had been bold enough to do
what every man of them would have done if he had dared. He thought and
felt, as they did, that freedom was to be won by the sword. The
popular hero is as a mirror which reflects the popular mind. He echoes
the popular voice, a little improved or exaggerated. Jesus had taught
what the people did not care to hear, and given blessings which even
the recipients soon forgot, and lived a life whose 'beauty of
holiness' oppressed and rebuked the common life of men. What chance
had truth and kindness and purity against the sort of bravery that
slashes with a sword, and is not elevated above the mob by
inconvenient reach of thought or beauty of character? Even now, after
nineteen centuries of Christ's influence have modified the popular
ideals, what chance have they? Are the popular 'heroes' of Christian
nations saints, teachers, lovers of men, in whom their Christ-likeness
is the thing venerated? The old saying that the voice of the people is
the voice of God receives an instructive commentary in the vote for
Barabbas and against Jesus. That was what a plebiscite for the
discovery of the people's favourite came to. What a reliable method of
finding the best man universal suffrage, manipulated by wirepullers
like these priests, is! and how wise the people are who let it guide
their judgments, or still wiser, who fret their lives out in angling
for its approval! Better be condemned with Jesus than adopted with
Barabbas.
That fatal choice revealed the character of the choosers, both in
their hostility and admiration; for excellence hated shows what we
ought to be and are not, and grossness or vice admired shows what we
would fain be if we dared. It was the tragic sign that Israel had not
learned the rudiments of the lesson which 'at sundry times and in
divers manners' God had been teaching them. In it the nation renounced
its Messianic hopes, and with its own mouth pronounced its own
sentence. It convicted them of insensibility to the highest truth, of
blindness to the most effulgent light, of ingratitude for the richest
gifts. It is the supreme instance of short-lived, unintelligent
emotion, inasmuch as many who on Friday joined in the roar, 'Crucify
Him!' had on Sunday shouted 'Hosanna!' till they were hoarse.
Pilate plays a cowardly and unrighteous part in the affair, and tries
to make amends to himself for his politic surrender of a man whom he
knew to be innocent, by taunts and sarcasm. He seems to see a chance
to release Jesus, if he can persuade the mob to name Him as the
prisoner to be set free, according to custom. His first proposal to
them was apparently dictated by a genuine interest in Jesus, and a
complete conviction that Rome had nothing to fear from this 'King.'
But there are also in the question a sneer at such pauper royalty, as
it looked to him, and a kind of scornful condescension in
acknowledging the mob's right of choice. He consults their wishes for
once, but there is haughty consciousness of mastery in his way of
doing it. His appeal is to the people, as against the priests whose
motives he had penetrated. But in his very effort to save Jesus he
condemns himself; for, if he knew that they had delivered Christ for
envy, his plain duty was to set the prisoner free, as innocent of the
only crime of which he ought to take cognisance. So his attempt to
shift the responsibility off his own shoulders is a piece of cowardice
and a dereliction of duty. His second question plunges him deeper in
the mire. The people had a right to decide which was to be released,
but none to settle the fate of Jesus. To put that in their hands was
an unconditional surrender by Pilate, and the sneer in 'whom _ye_ call
the King of the Jews' is a poor attempt to hide from them and himself
that he is afraid of them. Mark puts his finger on the damning blot in
Pilate's conduct when he says that his motive for condemning Jesus was
his wish to content the people. The life of one poor Jew was a small
price to pay for popularity. So he let policy outweigh righteousness,
and, in spite of his own clear conviction, did an innocent man to
death. That would be his reading of his act, and, doubtless, it did
not trouble his conscience much or long, but he would leave the
judgment-seat tolerably satisfied with his morning's work. How little
he knew what he had done! In his ignorance lies his palliation. His
crime was great, but his guilt is to be measured by his light, and
that was small. He prostituted justice for his own ends, and he did
not follow out the dawnings of light that would have led him to know
Jesus. Therefore he did the most awful thing in the world's history.
Let us learn the lesson which he teaches!
III. The soldiers' mockery (verses 16-20). This is characteristically
different from that of the rulers, who jeered at His claim to
supernatural enlightenment, and bade Him show His Messiahship by
naming His smiters. The rough legionaries knew nothing about a
Messiah, but it seemed to them a good jest that this poor, scourged
prisoner should have called Himself a King, and so they proceed to
make coarse and clumsy merriment over it. It is like the wild beast
playing with its prey before killing it. The laughter is not only
rough, but cruel. There was no pity for the Victim 'bleeding from the
Roman rods,' and soon to die. And the absence of any personal hatred
made this mockery more hideous. Jesus was nothing to them but a
prisoner whom they were to crucify, and their mockery was sheer
brutality and savage delight in torturing. The sport is too good to be
kept by a few, so the whole band is gathered to enjoy it. How they
would troop to the place! They get hold of some robe or cloth of the
imperial colour, and of some flexible shoots of some thorny plant, and
out of these they fashion a burlesque of royal trappings. Then they
shout, as they would have done to Caesar, 'Hail, King of the Jews!'
repeating again with clumsy iteration the stale jest which seems to
them so exquisite. Then their mood changes, and naked ferocity takes
the place of ironical reverence. Plucking the mock sceptre, the reed,
from His passive hand, they strike the thorn-crowned Head with it, and
spit on Him, while they bow in mock reverence before Him, and at last,
when tired of their sport, tear off the purple, and lead him away to
the Cross.
If we think of who He was who bore all this, and of why He bore it, we
may well bow not the knee but the heart, in endless love and
thankfulness. If we think of the mockers--rude Roman soldiers, who
probably could not understand a word of what they heard on the streets
of Jerusalem--we shall do rightly to remember our Lord's own plea for
them, 'they know not what they do,' and reflect that many of us with
more knowledge do really sin more against the King than they did.
Their insult was an unconscious prophecy. They foretold the basis of
His dominion by the crown of thorns, and its character by the sceptre
of reed, and its extent by their mocking salutations; for His Kingship
is founded in suffering, wielded with gentleness, and to Him every
knee shall one day bow, and every tongue confess that the King of the
Jews is monarch of mankind.