I Have Written

John 19:17-22

February 25, 2024 • Mount Pleasant UMC

He got the job because he knew someone. His mentor, a man who hated the Jews, thought Pilate would be a good match for the job of prefect in the province of Judea. A prefect was basically a military commander of a group of 500-1,000 soldiers, but with that came responsibility for keeping the peace in this unruly area. Like his mentor, Pilate had no love for the Jewish people. Almost immediately after he arrived in Judea, he set up images of the emperor in Jerusalem to remind them of Roman authority, but it just made the Jewish leaders angry. When they went to ask Pilate to remove them, he sent soldiers into the crowd and when the soldiers drew their swords, the Jewish leaders bared their necks and said, “We would rather die than break our laws.” Pilate backed down and removed the images of the emperor. But soon after he took money from the religious treasury to build an aqueduct. The people’s protest that time resulted in several deaths. There were other incidents, and in the end, the emperor himself had to get involved to stop Pilate’s agitation of the Jews. But that’s, apparently, what Pilate was like. Writers of the day described him as “greedy, inflexible, cruel” and said he often “resorted to robbery and oppression” (Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, pgs. 615-616). So, yeah, he was a nice guy. And he probably would not have been remembered all that much except for a single day during his rule—a day when he came into contact with a rabbi from Nazareth named Jesus. Because of that day, hundreds of millions of people speak his name every week when they recite the Apostle’s Creed. They recall that Jesus “suffered under Pontius Pilate” (cf. Kalas, Seven Words to the Cross, pg. 18). That is Pilate’s claim to fame.

This morning we are continuing our Lenten journey, looking at some of the ways people responded to the cross. As Jesus hung between heaven and earth, the space around the cross wasn’t quiet. There were other conversations going on and proclamations being made by various individuals. Last week we listened to the crowd as they mocked Jesus, questioning if he really was who he said he was. This week, we look at the cross from a different angle, as we hear a man who didn’t believe anything about Jesus declare who he really was and is. How does Pilate, the Roman ruler, respond to the cross?

Pilate was in Jerusalem for the Passover festival. He was there with his soldiers to keep the peace, because Passover not only meant Jerusalem was two or three times larger than normal due to all the people coming to celebrate, it was also a time when people were likely to do things that caused problems. Independence was one of the themes of Passover, and the Romans didn’t want anyone getting any ideas like revolution or rebellion. This year, though, the Jewish leaders had things other than that on their mind, and one thing in particular. They had been up all night trying to piece together a case against Jesus of Nazareth, and when they come to Pilate it is probably just after daybreak. That’s when Roman officials preferred to take meetings, with the rest of the day centered around “organized leisure.” So the Jewish leaders know if they want an audience with Pilate they need to be there literally first thing in the morning (cf. Card, John: The Gospel of Wisdom, pg. 190; Keener, Bible Background Commentary, pg. 307). When they do arrive at Pilate’s residence, they don’t go inside. If they did go inside this Gentile’s residence, they would be considered unclean and could not celebrate the Passover later in the day (cf. John 18:28). So there’s this amusing picture of Pilate running back and forth between the Jewish leaders, who are outside, and Jesus, who is inside, as he tries to figure out what in the world is going on. He’s trying to tread lightly; he knows he has no fans among the Jewish leaders and he knows it’s Passover. Pilate is sitting on a powder keg that could blow at any time. And as one author describes it, Pilate “will do anything to keep from igniting it, including handing over an innocent man to be crucified” (Card 190).

Pilate begins with what is probably a standard question for him: “What charges are you bringing against this man?” (18:29). But what the Jewish leaders give him in return is really a non-answer: “If he were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you” (18:30). So they’re not going to answer, and Pilate is going to have to find out for himself from the accused what’s going on. He goes back inside the palace and begins to question Jesus, an exchange which could probably be a series of sermons all by itself. But I want to highlight one particular piece of the conversation because it plays into what Pilate will do later, the way he will speak back to the cross. When Pilate asks Jesus what he has done, Jesus says, “My kingdom is from another place.” Pilate hears that word “kingdom” and jumps on it. “You are a king, then,” he says back to Jesus. And when Jesus responds we realize he has set Pilate up. Jesus says, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” And Pilate grumpily asks, “What is truth?” before he walks away.

After that conversation, Pilate tries to free Jesus. At some point during the morning, his wife sends him a message, telling him to not have anything to do with Jesus. She tells her husband, “I have suffered a great deal today in a dream because of him” (Matthew 27:19). Pilate himself sees nothing worthy of death in Jesus, but again he can’t risk a riot. He tells the people over and over again that he finds no basis for a charge against Jesus. He even washes his hands in front of them, saying he is innocent of Jesus’ blood. He has Jesus beaten, thinking that will satisfy the religious leaders. Nothing works. Nothing is enough. And finally, about noon, Pilate gives in (cf. 19:14-16). He has spent all morning trying to free Jesus and trying to avoid an uprising at the same time. He realizes he can’t do both, so he decides that in order to prevent unrest, he will have Jesus crucified. One man’s death is surely worth the peace of a nation, right?

John, like the other Gospels, doesn’t give a lot of details about the actual crucifixion. His original readers had no doubt seen at least one crucifixion, probably many, and so all he has to write is, “There they crucified him,” and everyone who originally read this Gospel knows what happened (cf. Card 197). They don’t need the details and, really, you didn’t speak about such things in polite society anyway. Crucifixion was a particularly brutal death, usually reserved for the worst criminals, or for “conquered enemies and political opponents” (McKnight, John, pg. 303). So Jesus is crucified between two who are elsewhere described as “rebels” (cf. Mark 15:27), making the point that he is killed an enemy of Roman peace. He’s considered a criminal, even if Pilate couldn’t find any crime to punish him for.

It seems likely that Pilate was at the site of the crucifixion (cf. Kalas 21). After all, he would want to make sure that his orders were carried out, or maybe he wanted to see how this innocent man who had been so bold in his palace would die. Whatever the reason, it seems he was there at Calvary because after Jesus is crucified, the religious leaders bring yet another objection to Pilate.

It was customary for condemned men to carry a sign that contained the charges against them through the streets on their way to the execution site (cf. Whitacre, John [IVPNTC], pg. 458). It’s another form of humiliation, making sure that everyone knew why this man would soon be dead. That sign would then be attached to the cross and left there until the condemned had died. So Pilate had a sign made for Jesus, written in the three languages commonly spoken in the area and printed in large enough letters that people could read it from the ground (19:20). Here’s what it said, according to John: “Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews” (19:19). The reference to Nazareth is a reminder of Jesus’ humble beginning, and that he’s from Galilee in the north, but the title of “king” refers to a grander status (cf. Whitacre 458). It is, as we sort of talked about last week, accurate in a sense. And it does describe the crime for which the religious leaders wanted to put Jesus to death. But did Pilate really believe what was on the sign? If he believes anything about the statement at all, it’s that he thinks that this is just the kind of king these crazy Jews deserve (cf. Wright, John for Everyone—Part Two, pg. 126). More likely, this is just another way to keep agitating the religious leaders. Apparently they were too busy when Jesus was walking to Calvary to notice it, but once it is attached to the cross, they see it, they read it, and they are angry all over again (which is probably what Pilate wanted to happen). They find Pilate and complain: “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that this man claimed to be the king of the Jews” (19:21). And that’s when Pilate gives us this week’s word to the cross. Pilate says, “What I have written, I have written” (19:22). In other words, there’s nothing you can do about it now. Too bad, so sad.

Here is this man, this ruler, who asked a poignant question: “What is truth?” And then he walked away. He didn’t wait to hear the answer. Yet, like several people in John’s account of the crucifixion, he proclaims truth and doesn’t even know it. His sign says Jesus is the king, but we know that his kingdom is broader than just the Jewish nation. Jesus is the king of the world. He is ruler over all that there is. And that’s a strange concept to us, kind of hard for us to give more than lip service to, especially living where we live. We don’t live under a monarchy, and actually very few people in the world live today under the kind of absolute monarchy that is envisioned by this title. Even Pilate wouldn’t have understood “king” as an absolute ruler; for him, the emperor was one who was in charge. Rome came to the point eventually where they actually worshipped the emperor because of his power. In that setting, a king, like Herod, was ruler over a particular province or area but always under the authority of the emperor. It would have been more accurate in their setting to call Jesus the emperor, something Pilate would never do, by the way. But it’s true that when Jesus is called king, he is so much more than a Herod or even a Caesar. In the beginning of his Gospel, John described Jesus as “the Word” who was present and active in creation (cf. John 1:1-3). Jesus is the creator, and therefore he is the ruler over it all. Calling Jesus “king” means Jesus gets the final say on everything over which he is the ruler. Pilate wouldn’t have meant all of that, but he still spoke the truth, even if he didn’t know it.

And yet the real issue here is not whether or not Jesus is king over the world. He is. The deeper issue for Pilate should be this: is Jesus the king of Pilate? Jesus had made the stakes pretty clear when he was questioned by Pilate: “Everyone on the side of truth listens to me” (19:37). You can’t have it both ways, Pilate. You can’t pretend to be interested in truth and yet ignore Jesus. He is truth incarnate. As he says elsewhere in the Gospel of John, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (14:6, emphasis mine). Pilate had responded in what I hear as a sarcastic tone: “What is truth?” And at that moment, “truth was standing so close that he could touch Him” (Kalas 23). Here he is, Pilate. Jesus is the king. He is the truth. And he is all of those things whether Pilate wants to acknowledge it or not. He is all of those things whether we want to acknowledge it or not.

Because we seem to naturally resist having a king. We don’t want to have someone rule over us. I mean, think about the first words a baby learns. Usually one of the earliest words is, “No!” Right? From the very beginning we resist being told what we should do, or what is best for us. We will figure it out for ourselves, thank you very much. Even moreso when that king seems to be absent, or at least unseen. Why should we take orders from someone who seems to be hidden from us? That leads us then to treating faith like a smorgasbord. Rather than worshipping Jesus as a king, we see him as a chef who prepares whatever we’ve requested. We treat this faith as if we can pick and choose the parts we like and leave the rest aside. I’ll take a little bit of love and compassion (not too much, just a small portion, don’t want to get crazy about caring for others). And uh, no thanks, I’m going to pass on the holiness and the service to others. Oh, I would like a side order of material blessings (actually, a little more of that, please) but I don’t want any of that thing where you have to love others who are different than you are. I like what you say about going to heaven but I’m not so sure I care for those things you said about living life according to your plans and mandates. We decide what we want to believe, what makes us comfortable, and then we expect Jesus to get in line, to go along with what we have decided.

In many ways, that’s the world Pilate knows. That’s the world in which he thrives. The Roman gods and goddesses were there to be manipulated by humans. Of course, that’s not the way the Roman religion would have put it, but it is the way it worked. If you wanted good crops, for instance, you would go to the local temple, perform the ritual, appease the particular god of your area, and if you did the ritual correctly, you would get what you asked for. And no one expected you to believe in all the gods; just the ones you liked or the ones who gave you an advantage or the ones who were tied to your local area. I don’t know whether or not Pilate was a particularly religious man, but he would have understood how the system worked. There was no talk of making Zeus “king of your life.” There was no discussion of Athena being the truth. What Jesus brings to Pilate made no sense to him, and in many ways, it makes no sense to the world around us today. Pick and choose. Get what you want. That’s what it’s all about.

But that’s not the way it works with Jesus. We don’t get to set the standards and we don’t get to design life in the kingdom. If Jesus is our king, our ruler, he is the one who gets to say how life is lived. He is the one who gets to determine the standards by which we thrive. I know that’s not popular. I know that’s not necessarily pleasant. It’s not what the world wants you to believe. It’s not what we’re told on TV. But it’s real, and it’s true.

And here’s the other thing: he will only be the king of the ones who invite him in. He is an absolute monarch but he is not a tyrant. He invites us to come into his kingdom but he will not force anyone to enter. I guess it shouldn’t be so surprising that Pilate was willing to proclaim Jesus as king of the Jews—whatever he thought of that title—but not willing to make Jesus the king of Pilate. Think of the ways he tried to get rid of Jesus, to talk the religious leaders out of their reckless course of action. He tried to pass him off to Herod since Jesus was from Galilee where Herod ruled, but Herod sent him back (cf. Luke 23:6-12). He tried to get Jesus freed using a custom of the time, but he ended up having to release a rebel prisoner named Barabbas because that’s who the people wanted (cf. John 18:38-40). Then he had Jesus beaten and displayed in front of them, proclaiming, “Here is your king!” (cf. John 19:13-16). And ultimately he washed his hands, physically and symbolically, of the whole affair (cf. Matthew 27:24-25). Pilate really wanted nothing to do with Jesus, and he certainly didn’t want Jesus to be king of his already well-ordered life. I don’t want you to end up like Pilate, but I can’t force you to allow Jesus to be king in your life. I can stand up here and proclaim him all day long, but ultimately the choice to enter the kingdom or not is yours. Jesus is the king; that is the truth. Whether or not he is your king, you will have to decide.

Pilate continued to rule for a short time after he met Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. But he also continued to provoke the Jewish leadership and to do terrible things to the Jewish people. Eventually they complained enough directly to the emperor that Pilate was recalled to Rome, presumably to face disciplinary action. However, before he could arrive back in Rome, the emperor Tiberius died. After that, no one is quite sure what happened to Pilate. Some say he committed suicide, some say he retired as a government official, and still others claim he eventually converted and became a follower of Jesus. Who knows? Maybe he really did listen to the words he had written.

We will never know this side of eternity. But the bigger question is this: will we listen to the words he has written? Pilate is long gone, but you and I are here, and we have to deal with the questions Pilate should have been more intentional about asking: is Jesus the king of your life? If not, why not? Do you want him to be? And are you willing to allow him to rule over every part of your life? Serious questions, indeed. What will your word to the cross be? Because he is “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the World.” Let’s pray.