Barabbas
vs. Jesus
Bloomsbury Central
Baptist Church 15/3/15 11.00
Mark 15:6-15 Now at the festival he used to
release a prisoner for them, anyone for whom they asked. 7 Now a man called Barabbas was in
prison with the rebels who had committed murder during the insurrection. 8 So the crowd came and began to
ask Pilate to do for them according to his custom. 9 Then he answered them, "Do
you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?" 10 For he realized that it was out
of jealousy that the chief priests had handed him over. 11 But the chief priests stirred
up the crowd to have him release Barabbas for them instead. 12 Pilate spoke to them again,
"Then what do you wish me to do with the man you call the King of the
Jews?" 13 They shouted
back, "Crucify him!" 14
Pilate asked them, "Why, what evil has he done?" But they shouted all
the more, "Crucify him!" 15
So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas for them; and after
flogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucified..
You can listen to this sermon here
You can listen to this sermon here
When
Rowan Williams stepped down as Archbishop of Canterbury in 2012,
he said that his successor would need
to minister
“with a Bible in one hand and a
newspaper in the other”[1]
Something
which Justin Welby appears to have taken to heart,
if his recent interventions in matters
political are anything to go by.
Of
course, when Rowan Williams said this,
he knew that he was quoting Karl
Barth,
probably the greatest theologian of
the twentieth century,
who
famously said that preachers should
take a Bible and take a newspaper, and
read both,
and should then interpret the
newspaper from the Bible.[2]
But
what is rather less well known
is that Karl Barth was himself quoting
a preacher from an earlier generation.
Namely,
Revd William Brock,
the founder minister of Bloomsbury
Central Baptist Church,
who
said, in the middle of the nineteenth century, that
“the Bible and The Times newspaper are
the best materials for the preacher”[3]
And
if you were to ask me for a thread that has run through
the preaching ministry of Bloomsbury
over the last 166 years,
it
has been a continued fearlessness
to address the issues of the day from
the pulpit,
always
seeking to bring the light of Christ to bear
on the darkness of the world to which
we are called.
And
so, on the one hand, we read headlines dominated
by stories of religiously motivated
violence,
and fears of terrorists,
insurrectionists, and extremists.
And
in the other hand, we read the biblical story
of a dangerous insurgent and a
politically radical preacher.
Some
things, it seems, never change…
In
our story from Mark’s passion narrative,
we find the ever-potent combination
of political, economic and religious
ideologies;
and
as is so often the case,
they lead to mob violence,
scapegoating
and the death of the innocent.
Some
things, it seems, never change.
Let’s
take a few minutes now
to look at the circumstances of this
passage,
as we try to get to grips with what is
going on in it.
At
a surface level, we have the trial of two political revolutionaries.
There is Jesus, up on charges of
usurping the Roman state
by claiming to be the
rightful King of the Jews
and none other than the son
of God.
And there is Barabbas, whose name itself
means “Son of the Father”
up on a charge of political
insurrection and group murder.
Two
revolutionaries, both claiming to be sons of God,
both accused of claiming political and
religious power for themselves.
Both
set in opposition to the Roman and Jewish authorities.
The
Jewish people are looking to their religious leaders
for guidance as to what to do,
and
the Jewish authorities have in turn turned to Rome,
in the form of the local procurator
Pilate,
to resolve the issue of these troublesome
revolutionaries.
Pilate,
in turn, throws it all back at the door of the ordinary people again,
presenting them with a choice:
Will
it be Jesus or Barabbas who gets off?
Which son of the Father will die, and
which will live?
Which political revolutionary will survive
to fight another day?
Who will they
choose?
Jesus or
Barabbas?
This
choice between Jesus and Barabbas
dramatises a wider choice facing the
people of Jerusalem…
They
each represent fundamentally different kinds of revolutionary practice:
one might call them: violence versus
non-violence.
And
the question before the crowds,
is which path will they choose?
Will
they choose Barabbas, the way of the violent revolutionary?
Or will they choose Jesus, the
“dissident of meekness”
(as Martyn Joseph calls him)?
Of
course, as we all know, because Mark tells us, the crowd choose violence.
The murderer goes free,
and the innocent one goes to his
death.
Some
things, it seems, never change.
Pilate
is as mystified by this choice as anyone
– he thinks he’s been brought in to
see justice done,
but instead he finds himself being
asked to legitimate the illegitimate.
And
as politicians the world over have discovered,
sometimes what the people cry for is
not the right thing at all.
So
the people cry “crucify” at an innocent man,
and Pilate searches for a reason to
justify granting them their wish.
After
all, it doesn’t do
for a politician to make himself
unpopular with his people!
So
he asks them “Why, what evil has he done?”
What law has he broken?
What has this Jesus done
to deserve the execution
you are asking for?
And
in posing this question,
Pilate is raising the same issue
sparked by Jesus at the beginning of
the Gospel
when he had his initial
confrontation with the Pharisees
over the healing on the
Sabbath
of the man with a
withered hand (3:4).
This
was really the incident that had started all the trouble,
the event that had set the course to a
conflict in a Roman courtyard.
Jesus
had asked the Pharisees,
who were complaining that he had
broken the law
by healing on the Sabbath,
“Is it lawful to do good or to do harm
on the Sabbath,
to save life or to kill?”
And
in raising the question in this way,
Jesus had struck right at the heart of
the Jewish legal system
–
by his choosing to heal on the Sabbath, and
in the synagogue,
Jesus had broken the laws of the
Pharisees,
but
he had done it in such a way as to show their laws
for the unjust and oppressive regime that
they were.
He
had pitted his own mission, of compassion and justice for the poor,
against the dominant social order,
and
in so doing
had called the entire ideological
edifice of the Jewish law to account.
So,
back to Pilate’s question from today’s reading:
“What evil has he done?”
The
answer is clear:
The evil Jesus had done, was that he
had taken a stand
against
institutionalised power.
And
as those who have engaged in non-violent resistance
against institutionalised evil ever
since have discovered
– this is crime enough to deserve
torture and death.
Some
things, it seems, never change.
The
response of the authorities to Jesus’ challenge had been predictable
– they contrived to destroy him.
Straight
after the confrontation in the Synagogue on the Sabbath,
we are told
“The Pharisees went out
and immediately conspired
with the Herodians against him,
how to destroy him” (3:6).
And
it is this plot which forms the backdrop to the entire gospel,
finally nearing its violent conclusion
in the passage we’re looking at today
– with the Pharisees at last
succeeding in their aim
of getting Jesus to trial
before the governing authorities.
But
here, curiously, it seems that Jesus isn’t the only one on trial.
The way Mark tells the story,
it looks as if the Jewish
system of religious authority
is itself on trial.
Pilate,
you see, realises that there is no legal basis to crucify Jesus.
He realises that what he has on his
hands
is no cut-and-dried legal
case,
where evidence can be
weighted
and the guilty
party established.
Pilate,
it seems, can find no legal basis to crucify Jesus;
and so he asks, ironically, “tell me,
what evil has he done?”
And
this question, put to the Jewish authorities as much as to the crowd,
has the effect of making it clear that
they are to be held accountable
for their request for an execution.
One
key difference between the initial confrontation
that Jesus had with the Pharisees in
the Synagogue
on the Sabbath near the
beginning of the gospel,
and
the confrontation we are looking at here, near its ending,
is whilst that the earlier one took
place in Jewish space
– with the synagogue
representing the Jewish law,
and Jesus challenging that
authority on its own terms;
the confrontation before Pilate takes
place in Roman space
–
in the courtyard known as the praetorium (15:16).
As
the gospel has progressed, the balance of power has shifted,
and those who were offended by Jesus’
actions
in the Jewish synagogue
are now being asked to account for
their reaction
in the Roman courtyard.
Religious
conflict has taken political shape.
And
the sense comes through this
that it is not just Jesus on trial
here…
rather, that the whole religious system
is under judgement.
The
authority structure against which Jesus took a stand
at the beginning of the
gospel,
suddenly finds itself faced with the
full ramifications of its evil.
The
religious leaders’ desire for power
leads to them bringing an innocent man
for execution.
Corrupt
power cannot cope with those
who would seek to show that corruption
for what it really is.
Some
things, it seems, never change.
In
a scene reminiscent of the Roman gladiatorial combat,
the crowd are appealed to by the Roman
Pilate,
and they are asked to give the
thumbs-up or the thumbs-down
to the two condemned men.
Barabbas,
of course, gets the thumbs up.
A big cheer for the path of violence,
please!
And
the first victim is … Jesus.
The path of peace receives the
thumbs-down.
The crowd choose violence
This
is the same crowd, of course,
who earlier in the gospel
were described as being “like
sheep without a shepherd”
and on whom Jesus had compassion as he
taught them (6:34).
This
is the same crowd who benefited
from the miraculous multiplication of
loaves (8:6),
who
were spellbound by Jesus teaching (11:18)
and who listened to him with delight
(12:37).
Yet
here they are, baying for his blood.
They
are, it seems, still ‘sheep without a shepherd’
following the lead of those who would
lead them astray.
And
so the crowd cry ‘crucify’ at Jesus,
and are manipulated into rejecting the
Messiah
and maintaining the status quo.
The
masses succumb to the manipulations of the ruling authorities,
while the one who has challenged that
imbalance of power
is sent to his death.
And
so the system of domination continues.
The revolution of peace is suppressed,
and the prince of peace is
handed over to be killed.
The
people in the end choose violence over peace.
Some
things, it seems, never change
The
crowd which had so recently backed Jesus
in his attack on the religious
authorities,
becomes
in turn the tool of those same authorities.
Their
call for Jesus’ blood
echoes both the howls of the demons
that Jesus has confronted
earlier in his ministry
(1:24; 3:11; 5:5,7;
9:26),
and also the cries of those oppressed
by powers and ideologies
(9:24; 10:47f; 11:9).
The
cry of the crowd is both demonic and despairing.
On the one hand they are ‘possessed’
by evil,
and on the other hand they are the
pawns
of those evil people in authority.
Pilate
in the end gives the crowd their satisfaction
by releasing the lesser revolutionary,
and
handing the true dissident over for a beating.
And
this, then, is the end of Jesus’ trial.
He is simply handed over for
crucifixion
on the say-so of a
blood-hungry crowd
manipulated by those who
would seek to oppress them.
The
powers and the people
have considered the subversive claims
of Jesus,
and condemned him to death.
They
have chosen the path of violence
and rejected the path of peace.
And
so the judgement is pronounced.
And
so it is today.
When
power, religion and political ideology combine,
and when inequalities are created
which seek to keep some in
privilege
and some in powerlessness,
mob violence is only ever just around
the corner.
When
people without a shepherd are manipulated and used,
they all too easily choose Barabbas
over Jesus.
The
human tendency to scapegoat the innocent individual
and to choose violence over peace
remains
as strong today as ever it has been.
And
the tragic message of this passage remains the same also.
Which
is that when people choose violence over non-violence,
they always in the end pass judgement
on themselves.
When
Barabbas is chosen over Jesus
humanity itself dies, and evil is
victorious.
Jesus
goes to the cross once again,
and all are implicated.
And so we hear the
headlines:
Three teenage girls
from east London travel to Syria to fight with Islamic State
Pakistan resumes
executions for all capital offences.[4]
Myanmar riot police
beat student protesters with batons.[5]
Deadly bomb attacks hit
Egypt's Sinai peninsula.[6]
Nigeria's Boko Haram
pledges allegiance to Islamic State.[7]
Political parties
debate the replacement of Trident[8]
And I could go on, and
on…
Some things it seems,
never change.
Except…
When the mob cry ‘violence’,
and the innocent go to their deaths,
they follow Jesus to the grave.
And herein lies the
mystery of the cross,
which becomes, for us,
not the victory of violence,
but its end.
Who is on trial? Who is
condemned?
In the final analysis,
the path of nonviolence is vindicated,
and righteous one is justified.
Those who would embrace
violence
always find, in the end, that they have embraced the cross.
And the one nailed to the
tree,
is the one in whom the healing of the nations is to be
found.
And so we who would
embrace the cross,
must embrace it as the end of violence.
The cross points us to
the conviction
that conflict is not the solution to injustice and
inequality.
The cross points us to
another way,
in our relationships, in our devotions, and in our
politics.
The way of the cross is
the way of Christ,
and it lies before each of us.
Some things it seems do
change,
and what is changed, it turns out, is everything.
[1] http://rowanwilliams.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/2686/archbishop-my-successor-needs-a-newspaper-in-one-hand-and-a-bible-in-the-other
[2] http://nacreouskingdom.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/bible-in-one-hand-and-newspaper-in.html
[3] http://bloomsbury.org.uk/church/page/a_church_with_two_spires/
[4] http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-31812177
[5] http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-31812028
[6] http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-31811235
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