Questions

John 18:33-38

April 13, 2025 (Palm Sunday) • Mount Pleasant UMC

One of the main ways we learn is by asking questions, and that seems to start very early on in life. What is that? Why does that happen? Where are we going? Are we there yet? Why? Why? Why? Someone once said that parenthood is basically answering the question “Why” every day until you die—a little morbid but also a little true.

As a pastor, I’m very familiar with questions. I get asked questions of one sort or another just about every day. A few weeks ago, I went to the last Bible Explorers class for the year to answer questions. What’s your favorite color? What’s your favorite thing to eat? What’s your password? Sometimes I will go to a youth small group and answer questions (which we then call “Stump the Pastor”). I get emailed questions, Facebooked questions, easy questions and impossible questions. And a lot of time people don’t like the answers I give, which I’m kind of used to. Even some of the sermons I preach are actually answers to questions I’ve been asked. Questions are everywhere.

Questions made up a lot of Jesus’ life, too. In the Gospel accounts, Jesus asks more questions than he answers. By one count, he only answers 3 of the 183 questions he is asked (maybe I should be more like Jesus in this regard!), and he asks 307 questions himself (Powell, Mulder & Chang, Future-Focused Church, pg. 102). More often than not, if someone asked Jesus a question, he would respond with another question. So it somehow seems fitting as we near the end of his story that we find a whole episode filled with questions—questions that all revolve around one larger question: who is Jesus?

This Lent, we have been standing by “The Old Rugged Cross,” looking at many different Scriptures and meanings that come from the most unjust action in the history of the world. The Gospels all tell us that the Jewish religious leaders had, for some time, wanted to do away with Jesus, but they were prohibited from carrying out any kind of death sentence. The Romans allowed them a lot of freedom but drew the line there. If they were going to be able to kill Jesus, the order would have to come from Rome, and so they had to have a credible case to bring before the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. And when they think they finally do, they don’t waste any time in taking Jesus to the governor and asking Rome to put Jesus to death. When they show up with him at the palace, Pilate has a question for them: “What charges are you bringing against this man?” (18:29). They don’t answer; they just tell Pilate he’s a criminal, obviously, or they wouldn’t have handed him over. Pilate sees he’s going to get no help from the religious leaders, and so he goes inside. He is going to have to ask the prisoner some questions himself.

The Jewish leaders know what they are doing by bringing Jesus early in the morning. Ronan officials generally got their work done early and by midday they were off to participate in “organized leisure,” mainly at the Roman baths, the saunas of the day (Card, John: The Gospel of Wisdom, pg. 190). Besides already having plans for the day, Pilate really doesn’t want anything to do with this case; he’s already made the Jews mad a couple of different times which then also got him in trouble with the emperor. That’s at least part of why he tries so hard to get out of judging this case. So he goes inside, has Jesus brought inside, and he begins to ask a series of questions—four, to be precise, in the passage we read this morning. By looking at these questions this morning, we can see yet another dimension to the old rugged cross.

Question one. Pilate goes right to the heart of the matter: “Are you the king of the Jews?” (18:33) That’s a loaded question and a dangerous ask. One problem was that there was already a “king of the Jews,” appointed by Rome. The Herod family had held power for some time now, though to say they had “power” is vastly overstating the case. Rome had the power. Herod was a puppet, a figurehead of sorts who wasn’t even Jewish. His family line was all mixed up, but Rome apparently liked him and kept him around. So if Jesus were to directly claim the title “king of the Jews” that would be considered a direct threat to the powers that be—to Herod and to Rome. Besides, the idea was laughable. How could this poor man who comes from the wrong part the country, who only had a small band of followers who, at this point, have all deserted him—how could this sorry excuse for a man be a king? I sort of imagine Pilate asking the question with a smirk. Pilate knows Jesus isn’t the king, so either he’s trying to annoy the religious leaders (which is something Pilate also enjoyed) or he’s a madman (Wright, John for Everyone—Part Two, pg. 114). Are you the king of the Jews?

As I mentioned earlier, Jesus tends to answer questions with another question, which is exactly what he does here with Pilate. He doesn’t answer the question…yet. “Is that your own idea, or did others talk to you about me?” (18:34). In other words, Pilate, make up your own mind. Don’t assume that what the religious leaders tell you about me is true. Who put this idea in your head, Pilate? And that leads to the second question.

Question two. “Am I a Jew?” (18:35). Here, I think you have to hear a measure of contempt in Pilate’s voice. There was no love lost between the Jews and Pilate, or the Jews and many in Rome in general. Pilate was appointed to his position by a friend who hated the Jews. So Pilate had come in with a chip on his shoulder against these people. He had stolen money from the temple treasury to build an aqueduct and installed Roman standards with pagan images on them in his capital. Both of those had caused riots and put him out of favor with the emperor. Pilate at this point was walking a thin line. He didn’t want to lose his job and so he couldn’t afford to make the Jews mad. They would tattle on him directly to Rome. However, he definitely didn’t want to be identified with them either. Am I a Jew? Am I one of your people? “Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me,” he reminds Jesus (18:35). Don’t get cocky with me. And that leads to the third question.

Question three. “What is it you have done?” (18:35). What are the charges against you? He didn’t get a straight answer to this question from the religious leaders, so he’s still kind of unclear as to why Jesus is here. Why is Jesus wasting Pilate’s time? And though Jesus again doesn’t answer the question, this does lead to the longest interaction between Jesus and Pilate recorded by John. Obviously, the charge against him—at least the charge the religious leaders hope Rome will act on—is that he is claiming to be a king. That’s the political charge. And so Jesus directly addresses that (while still not really answering the question). The translation we read this morning has Jesus saying, “My kingdom is not of this world” (18:36), but that sounds like he’s saying his kingdom comes from some other-worldly place, like something in a science fiction movie. And we often think like that, that “heaven” is somewhere else, out there, in the clouds. The problem with that is we end up, as the saying goes, “so heavenly minded that we’re no earthly good.” We start believing that God’s kingdom has little or nothing to do with this world, and that’s simply not true. The prayer Jesus taught us says, “Thy kingdom come…on earth…” (cf. Matthew 6:10). What Jesus actually says here is, “My kingdom is not from this world.” It comes from somewhere else, but it is arriving here. That’s why his first sermon was this: “The kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 4:17). “His kingdom doesn’t come from this world but it is for this world” (Wright 114-115).

Here’s the problem: Pilate is hung up on what he thinks of as a king. A ruler with a throne and political power, a ruler whose will is exercised across his kingdom without question. He wants to pin Jesus down to that: “You are a king, then!” he says. Which is actually his way of saying, “You are crazy, then!” Because this man standing in front of him is anything but a king. Even the procession in which he rode into town a few days ago, on what we call Palm Sunday, was anything but royal. He rode in on a donkey, for heaven’s sake, and the rabble were waving palm branches. It was a pathetic parade, nothing like the ones Rome had when they won a battle. “You think you’re a king, Jesus of Nazareth? You can’t possibly be a king.” And that’s why Jesus never answers him directly. “Jesus doesn’t give a simple yes to Pilate’s question because Jesus is not the kind of king that Pilate is familiar with” (Zahnd, The Wood Between the Worlds, pg. 77). And he’s not the kind of king the disciples are familiar with, either, which is part of the reason why they fled. His kingdom makes no sense…to Pilate, to the disciples, or even to us. We still try to put Jesus on an earthly throne—not literally, of course, but by grabbing all the political power and influence we can get, by confusing the Christian Gospel with the American Dream, by believing the biggest, strongest, loudest and wealthiest must be the best. And into that confusion steps this poor preacher from Nazareth, telling us, “My kingdom is not from this world…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” (18:37). And that leads to Pilate’s final question.

Question four. “What is truth?” (18:38). There it is. This is the heart of all the other questions. This is the real thing Pilate is trying to figure out. This is what, in his heart of hearts, Pilate really wants to know. What is truth? Or, maybe more to the point, where does truth come from? Biblical scholar N. T. Wright points out, “Truth isn’t something that you get out of a test tube, or a mathematical formula. We don’t have truth in our pockets. Philosophers and judges don’t own it” (115). Pilate’s question is not so much a question as it is a sarcastic response to Jesus talking about truth. As far as Pilate knows, truth is brought at the end of a sword. Truth is about power, especially the power to kill. Truth is all about ruling the world through lethal power; as one person has written, it’s a “winner-take-all blood sport.” That’s what Rome believed. That’s how Rome lives. “This is the only truth Pilate knows: the world is ruled by those who have the greatest capacity to kill.” And it still is. “We are a world that kills the innocent for the sake of power” (Zahnd 78-79). Pilate lives in this world, and he walks out of the room after asking this question not because he’s wistful or reflective. I think Pilate doesn’t want the real answer to the question. I think he’s afraid of where this conversation is going.

Because everything Pilate believes about truth is a lie.

Timisoara, Romania stands on the shores of the Bega River. It is a town that had been founded in medieval times, and became a drab university town when the Soviet Union took over the country. In the midst of that city stood the Hungarian Reformed Church, whose pastor and denominational officials were well-known as communist collaborators. But when the long-time pastor died while conducting a funeral, a young man named Laszlo Tokes took over as “probationary” pastor. “Now we can start a new phase,” he told the congregation because rather than the communist cause, Tokes believed in God’s kingdom cause. He began preaching the Gospel and the church grew. His Bishop suspended him from ministry but Tokes kept preaching the truth and so the officials stepped up their harassment. He was denied a ration book. He was barred from seeing family and friends. His phone was shut off and the military would stand in front of the church on Sunday morning with machine guns and handcuffs. Eventually, when these tactics did not work, Tokes himself was attacked and beaten. Then he was told he would be evicted from his home and church, but when the appointed day came, but church members and others surrounded his home to stop the officials from arresting Pastor Tokes. The standoff lasted for two days before the police began shooting. Hundreds of victims were killed, and many others were wounded, but from that moment it only took ten days before the dictator was gone and Romania was free (Colson & Vaughn, Being the Body, pgs. 393-403). These people believed, literally, that the truth could set them free. They knew that everything their oppressors believed about truth was a lie. The faces may change, but the truth does not. And everything Pilate believes about truth is a lie.

Here’s what Pilate knows: he has to do something with Jesus. This whole thing has already taken longer than it should have. He is understandably impatient and irritated (Card 191) when he goes out to those who brought Jesus in and tells them Jesus is innocent: “I find no basis for a charge against him” (18:38). When the people, stirred up by the religious leaders, reject that truth, Pilate turns to violence, the only truth he knows. He has Jesus beaten (19:1), thinking that will satisfy the crowd’s lust for blood, but it does not. They want more. Once again, he reminds the people he finds no basis for a conviction; he tells them that a total of three times in John’s Gospel. And the crowd cries out even louder, “Crucify him!” (19:6). The first half of chapter 19 is Pilate trying to find a way to release Jesus, because he knows he has to do something with him. And he needs to do something that will not upset the Jewish leaders or the Roman emperor. Pilate is in an impossible situation but we probably shouldn’t think of him as an arch-villain. The choices he makes here are not those of an evil man; he could have had Jesus killed a lot sooner than he did. That power was within his grasp. No, Pilate is not a villain; he is a career politician (cf. Zahnd 75), trying to find a way out of this impossible situation that still makes him look good. “Shall I crucify your king?” And when the people call back, “We have no king but Caesar” (19:15), Pilate knows that he has to act on the truth he knows. John tells it this way: “Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified” (19:16).

And the irony is that, in doing so, Pilate actually proclaims the truth of the kingdom of God. Jesus had said he was born to testify to the truth, and when he hangs on the cross between heaven and earth, he does just that. There is nothing truer than the cross of Jesus Christ because on that cross is displayed the character of God, the love of God, and the lengths to which God will go to find you and me.

We understand Pilate. His actions are what we would expect of a man in his position. What we don’t understand is the way the religious leaders called for Jesus’ death, for the ways they embraced violence and hatred just because Jesus didn’t fit their idea of a Messiah, a Savior. He didn’t do things they way they thought he should. But they should have known better, these men who studied, memorized and proclaimed the Hebrew prophets. Those prophets had promised a day was coming when swords and spears would be turned into plowshares and pruning hooks (Isaiah 2:4). The prophets had longed for a day when nations would stop fighting, when people would stop hating, and when the sword would no longer be the answer to everything. The religious leaders said they believed what the prophet Zechariah had promised about the coming savior: “Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (9:9). Sound familiar? Like maybe what happened on Palm Sunday? How did those who knew the Scriptures so well miss that? Zechariah goes on, though. “He will proclaim peace to the nations” (9:10). Peace. Shalom. That state of wholeness and wellness that says all is right with God in the world. That’s what Jesus came to bring. That’s the truth he came to testify to. And he did that on the cross. He took all the world’s violence and brokenness and sin and hurt toward each other and he ended it all on the cross. Hanging between heaven and earth, Jesus changed the world. He put an end to the world we are far too comfortable with and began a new world where “the wolf will lie down with the lamb…” (Isaiah 11:6), a world where “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

The people along the parade route on that first Palm Sunday proclaimed, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” (John 12:12). But by the end of the week they were shouting, “Crucify him!” and “We have no king but Caesar!” They chose the world they knew and turned their back on the one who is the truth, who brings a new kingdom of peace and hope, joy and light. Pilate asked the question but he missed the answer. So did the religious leaders and the people of Jerusalem. So do we, most of the time. We choose the world we know over the world he brings. “We continue to mistake truth for the lie that the way the world stands is the way the world must be” (Zahnd 81). But it isn’t so. “Jesus died to do nothing less than re-found the world” (Zahnd 81), to remake the world, to bring the kingdom of God “on earth as it is in heaven.” What is truth? Pilate keeps asking. True truth is found in a man hanging on a cross. When will we learn? Let’s pray.