The Barabbas Alternative

Mark 15:1-15

April 7, 2023 (Good Friday) • Mount Pleasant UMC

The first time a crowd tried to kill Jesus took place in his hometown. Well, actually, just outside of his hometown. We read the story in Luke’s Gospel, shortly after Jesus’ ministry begins. He’s been baptized, he faces the devil in the wilderness, and then he returns home to Nazareth. “Everyone praised him,” Luke says of Jesus’ early ministry (4:15). I’ve been in ministry long enough to know that when everyone praises you, watch out. “Danger, Will Robinson!” It doesn’t take much to turn the crowd against you, and that’s exactly what happens when Jesus, the local boy who’s become a little famous, is asked to speak at his home synagogue. They hand him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, and he reads a passage about good news being preached to the poor, about freedom for prisoners and the oppressed being set free. Then he tells them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” And how do they react? “All spoke well of him,” we’re told. We’re so proud of him! Look how he’s grown up! You know the kinds of things they probably said, because you’ve said them about someone from your hometown who did well (Luke 4:16-22).

A minute or so later, the service has turned violent and the people are pushing Jesus toward the hill that stood above the town. Why the change? It’s because in the first few moments, the people think Jesus is promising them good things. But as his sermon progresses, he basically tells them he has come for a much broader audience than just those in his hometown, even broader than his own people. It’s when he mentions a foreigner—Naaman the Syrian—that they turn their growing anger loose on him. They grab him and take him to the top of the hill, on the other side of which is a cliff that they intend to throw him off of.

Many, many times we say Jesus came to die, as if that was his only purpose. But if that’s the case, why did he resist death here in Nazareth? It would have been tremendously symbolic to let them push him off the cliff. Every year on the Day of Atonement, the day when all the people of Israel confessed and made amends for the sins of the past year, the high priest would symbolically place all those sins on the head of a goat. This animal became the scapegoat and he would be sent out into the wilderness to die. All of their sins were therefore taken away by the scapegoat. However, over time, a problem emerged. The goats, apparently not understanding the rules, started wandering back into town. Imagine that you’ve sent your sins away and they come back! Well, we probably can imagine that, but the symbolism was too much for the priests. To remedy the situation, they began taking the goat out of the city to a high cliff and tossing him off. Imagine if Jesus had allowed the crowd to do the same. He would have become the scapegoat; the imagery couldn’t have been any clearer. If that had happened, “our hymns would speak of kneeling at the foot of the cliff. We’d have images of dead goats tattooed on our arms. And once a year, our congregations would gather outside to watch our pastors toss stuffed billy goats off the church roof” (cf. Porterfield, Fight Like Jesus, pgs. 142-147).

But that’s not what happened. It was not Jesus’ time yet because he hadn’t done everything the Father sent him to do. It wasn’t just about his death; he had a way of life to impart to us, a way to life once our sin was dealt with. So, Luke says, he “walked right through the crowd and went on his way” (4:30) because he is not just the “life.” He is also the “way” and the “truth” (John 14:6; cf. Porterfield 148). He is how we find peace with God in every aspect of our lives.

The second time a crowd tried to kill Jesus was about three years later. After a lifetime of teaching, preaching and discipling, Jesus came to Jerusalem one last time. He taught, confronted, shared a final meal with his friends, and was arrested. The religious leaders decided to charge him with treason rather than blasphemy because Rome wouldn’t care about blasphemy. But “inciting riots, opposing taxes and claiming to be a king” would get their attention (cf. Card, Mark: The Gospel of Passion, pg. 176-177; Wright, Mark for Everyone, pg. 208). Treason is also a charge the Roman governor would have to deal with rather than ignore. And so Jesus finds himself in front of Pontius Pilate. Pilate was not a nice man. He had been appointed to his position as governor by an anti-semitic traitor to Rome, and he himself was well known for his own brutality toward and hatred of the Jews. One author describes Pilate as “a dealer in compromise and expediency rather than a maintainer of justice” (ZPEB, Vol. 4, pg. 792). Ancient sources point to his “habit of insulting people, his cruelty, and his continual murders of people untried and uncondemned…” (qtd. in ZPEB 791). Like I said—not a nice man. And the religious leaders normally had no use for him…except today. Today, Pilate could be useful if he would get rid of Jesus for them.

So there’s the trial which isn’t really much of a trial. Even Pilate knows Jesus is innocent, and so he spends some time trying to convince the people that Jesus should be let go. Unsuccessful in reasoning with them, he sees an opportunity when they ask him to follow his own custom of releasing one prisoner at the time of the festival (15:8). It’s kind of strange that they would ask this right in the middle of Jesus’ trial, but Pilate sees an opportunity. He will give them a choice, one he thinks should be easy for them. They can choose to have released Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews, or Barabbas, a murderer and an insurrectionist.

To call him a “murderer” is to understate the case. He was a violent criminal, a revolutionary. Today we would probably call him a terrorist. He was willing to fight and even kill for Israel’s freedom. He was willing to replace Roman violence with what he would have considered “holy violence.” Kill Romans for the sake of his own people (Porterfield 154; Wright 209). But it’s his name that is fascinating. Barabbas—you can see the nickname “abba” in his given name, a word children still use today to refer to their father, their Daddy. I heard it spoken this past January in Israel as a small child followed along behind his father. “Bar” means “son of,” so his name literally means, “Son of the father.” And it’s not his name; it’s his last name. In first century Israel, you were known by who you were the son of. So, for instance, Jesus would have been referred to as either “Jesus of Nazareth” or, more likely, “Jesus Bar-joseph.” My name back then would have been Dennis Bar-richard. It’s interesting to me that Barabbas doesn’t have a father’s name in his last name. He’s just “Son of the father.” I sort of wonder if he adopted this name when he became a revolutionary, as if he proclaimed himself as the “son of the father” who would save Israel. And then there’s what Matthew tells us about Barabbas. He tells us Barabbas’ first name is Jesus (cf. Matthew 27:16). In Matthew, Pilate asks the question this way: “Which one do you want me to release to you: Jesus Barabbas, or Jesus who is called the Messiah?” (27:17; cf. Kernaghan, Mark [IVPNTC], pg. 325).

It’s one of the most pivotal moments in history. Which one of these messiahs do you want? Will they choose the one who came making peace, who said, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and who taught that the greatest commandment is to love God and love people? Or will they choose to have a violent insurrectionist released back into their society, one who believed that the way to freedom was to kill as many Romans and pagans as he could? Here’s how one pastor summarized the options: “Jesus of Nazareth calls us to the way of peace by loving our enemies and the practice of radical forgiveness. Jesus Barabbas is willing to fight our wars and kill our enemies in the name of freedom” (qtd. in Porterfield 155). Pilate asks the crowd: “Which will you choose?” And his voice is still asking us, two thousand years later: “Which will you choose?”

Well, of course, sitting in church on a Friday evening, we say we will choose Jesus of Nazareth. We know that’s the right answer, here and now. And we really, really want to choose Jesus. We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t. But it’s so much easier to choose the Barabbas alternative. We do it without even thinking about it. We can’t have it both ways. We can’t choose Jesus of Nazareth on Sunday or even during Holy Week and then choose Jesus Barabbas the rest of the week. We can’t sing, “Lord, Have Mercy” on Sunday morning and attack anyone who disagrees with our politics on social media on Sunday afternoon. We can’t pray, “Lord, I put my trust in you” one day and then wring our hands over the next election on other days. We can’t listen to sermons about peace on the weekends and use force to get our way on the weekdays. The choice is between the peace of Jesus of Nazareth—the way of God’s kingdom—or the violence of Jesus Barabbas—the way of the world. The choice is just that stark.

Mark tells us it is “the chief priests” who stir up the crowd and tell them to ask for Barabbas. The religious officials. The one who have been trying to get rid of the way of Jesus for some time now. The ones the people trusted. If they are telling us to ask for Barabbas, they must have a good reason, right? And so, the choice is made for that day. Barabbas will go free, and have an opportunity to kill people yet again. And Jesus will be taken from the fortress, beaten to within an inch of his life, and then made to walk through the city about a third of a mile carrying a hundred-pound crossbeam. With the beating he had endured, it probably took him thirty minutes or more to make the journey (Hamilton, 24 Hours That Changed the World, pgs. 88, 96). When he arrives at Calvary, he will be stripped naked, nailed to the wooden beam and lifted up for all to see. For six hours, he will hang between heaven and earth and while the other criminals, the ones on either side of him, will curse and scream at those below, the man in the middle will instead say things like, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). And things like, “I’m thirsty” (John 19:28). And when he does cry out, it’s not directed at the people below. His shouting is aimed elsewhere: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). And then to that same God he will say, “It is finished. Into your hands I commit my spirit” (John 19:30; Luke 23:46). At that moment, the work he came to do is done. He has shown us the way to peace, the way to God.

And so the choice comes up to us. Which way will you choose? The way of the world, the way of Barabbas, or the Jesus alternative, the way of peace? “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9).