Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
The Second Sunday of Lent b March 16, 2003
Matthew 27: 15-26
Reflecting on the film, Schindler’s List, a colleague writes, “I thought that the most horrifying episode was the scene toward the beginning of the movie when they were bringing Polish Jews into the concentration camp. They lined people up, and made them stand in rows before clerical, accountant people who, with typewriters before them, registered the prisoners. It was so horrifying because it was so ordinary. They were just doing their jobs, just typing in information on government forms. Just registering people for their certain deaths in the camps. It was one thing to see evil done by the soldiers, the guards at the camp. But it was quite another thing to see evil done by ordinary, everyday people sitting before typewriters.” It just may be that ordinary evil – just another day at the office evil – is the scariest evil of all.
And that is really how it was with the brutal execution of Jesus. Nothing personal. Just another day at the office. Nothing out of the ordinary. In the words of one preacher, “The scandal of Jesus’ death was not that an innocent man died but that he was killed in the name of justice and faith, by people who believed they were doing the right thing.”
Which brings me to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor in Palestine who, like it or not, found himself caught up in the political and religious storm swirling around this peasant preacher, this Jesus of Nazareth. When the Apostle’s Creed proclaims that Jesus was “crucified under Pontius Pilate,” it is talking about a real-life encounter between Jesus and the Roman governor. What we know of Pilate is drawn mostly from Biblical sources and from the Jewish historian, Josephus. It seems that after his tour of duty in Jerusalem he fell off the Roman radar screen and we never hear of him again. Not exactly a distinguished career.
But he does play a crucial role in the Christian story. The Biblical accounts of his encounters with Jesus during that final week in Jerusalem are fascinating. He had nothing personal against Jesus – didn’t even know the man. But Rome expected him to keep the peace and that was not always easy in the religiously charged atmosphere of Jerusalem. So when this religious troublemaker was brought before him, his preference was for the religious authorities to deal with him. Pilate even sent Jesus to Herod trying to get rid of him, but Herod sent him back.
Pilate tried three more times to release Jesus, but when it became clear that the people wanted blood, he acquiesced. Better to keep the peace and not let things get out of hand. Rome would not be pleased if rioting broke out in Jerusalem during Passover. Why defend one man if it enraged everyone else? Better to give them what they wanted. He was, after all, only doing his job, just following orders. And so, reflecting on our text, British author Dorothy Sayers, wrote, “They did away with Jesus in the name of peace and quietness. They did away with him in the name of law and order, in the defense of scripture and creed…Jesus was not killed by vice and corruption. He was killed by piety and due process.”
I need to add that Biblical scholars have long been unsure about these accounts of the encounters between Pilate and Jesus. They were written late in the first century, after Rome’s violent destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 A.D. It was a time when Christians were trying to avoid Roman persecution. So it has been suggested that the Gospel writers were eager to shift blame away from Pilate and on to the Jewish authorities, maybe even paint Pilate in a sympathetic light, plagued by dreams and doubts, forced to take a drastic action by the angry crowds.
But, whatever the truth, we might ask…why spend any time with Pilate at all, clearly nothing more than an obscure Roman official; especially why spend time with him in a sermon? The concluding scene of Albert Camus’, The Plague, comes to mind. At the end of the terrible, devastating plague in Algiers, the city slowly begins to recover. It looks as if the plague is finally, mercifully over and the world is at last getting back to normal. But, in the last moment of the book, a rat scurries into the gutter. As one colleague has said, “I’ve always thought it was the author’s way of saying that this brush with evil is over. But always, just below the surface of things, evil awaits. The plague can begin again at any time.”
Why spend time talking about Pilate? A Roman governor, a bureaucrat, just doing his job, just following orders, going along to get along. But when the day’s work is done, an innocent man is left hanging on a cross. Pilate serves as a stark reminder that just below the surface of things, no matter how calm, how ordinary things may seem, evil awaits its time, even in our own hearts.
My mind returns to the Holocaust. Daniel Goldhagen’s, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, is a chilling account of the way ordinary Germans participated in the “final solution.” It took everyone working in concert to keep quiet in the face of mass murder – to work the trains and round up the Jews and ask no questions. The final solution was not the work of just a few crazy leaders. To believe that is to give ourselves false comfort – “Oh it could never happen here!” It took everyone working together, ordinary people doing ordinary sin – just typing at their typewriters – to accomplish so vast an evil.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer paid the ultimate price for his opposition to the Nazis and we rightly celebrate his witness. He was hung in Tegel prison for his opposition to Hitler. But perhaps even more we ought to celebrate a poem he wrote in 1944 in his prison cell, Night Thoughts in Tegel. In the poem this saint of the church confesses his own complicity in the sin of Nazism:
We saw the lie raise its head
And we did not honor the truth.
We saw the brethren in direst need
And feared only our own death.
Do you recall this familiar Smothers Brothers dialog? Dick asks, “What’s the matter, Tom? You seem despondent.” “I am. I’m worried about the state of American society.” “Well, what is it that bothers you? Are you worried about poverty in our nation?” “No, that doesn’t worry me.” “I see. Well, are you worried about the danger of nuclear war?” “No, that doesn’t worry me.” “Are you worried about drug and alcohol abuse among our youth?” “No, that doesn’t worry me.”
“Well, then, if you are not worried about poverty or war or drug abuse, what are you worried about?” Tom responds, “I’m worried about our apathy!”
If the encounter between Jesus and Pilate tells us nothing else, it tells us that sometimes it isn’t enough just to follow orders, just to do your job. For Jesus, apathy was never an option. I can’t think of a time when he simply washed his hands and walked away. He cared too passionately to do that. He would not participate in business as usual, in the value systems that were conspiring to kill him, and this made him a threat to both church and state. He upset the status quo, got in the way of people who were just trying to do their jobs, didn’t know what it meant to get along by going along, refused to play their game. And finally Pilate and the religious leaders knew that there was only one thing to be done with this guy. But, curiously, in their efforts to get rid of him, they only made him stronger.
Apathy is not an option. Indifference is not an option. Just following orders is not an option. Business as usual is not an option. Not as long as the innocent are still condemned to suffer; not as long as goodness continues to get nailed to some cross or another; not as long as the plague can begin again any time. In the words of one of my mentors in ministry, Culver Nelson, “Nothing is more humanly important than that we should care…. care about what’s happening in the world, or in the city, or our school district, or our church, or our homes. It is very easy when problems are so complex, when there are so many of them, and when the media constantly tells us about them, to lose heart, to want to let go, like Pilate, to wash our hands of such things. But we humans are not at our best when we try to avoid responsibility.”
This past week was the week our church helped serve meals for the homeless at the armory in Santa Rosa. Is this just a band-aid approach to hunger and homelessness in our county? Perhaps. Always we need to ask the more systemic questions – why is there hunger in a land of plenty; why do people lack decent medical and mental health care in a land of plenty; what is preventing us from finding decent housing for all our people?
But back to last week. On Wednesday night, I took one of our church youth, Kristin McKoin, with me to the armory. On our way home, she told me she would work every night at the armory if she could. We talked a little about the people we saw there and the issues they face - alcohol and drug abuse, mental health problems, joblessness, so many things. But then she said, “You know, they really are people, just like you and me.” Beneath all the labels we might try to attach to them, finally just people, like you and me. I was moved by her passion, her compassion. Here is someone who will never just wash her hands and walk away. And if she is an example of the kind of young people our church youth program is helping to shape and nurture, then all I can say is “Amen!”
The story is told of a bird who used to lie on its back with its wings outspread. Other curious birds would pause in flight to say, “Silly bird, I suppose you think that in that position you are holding up the whole sky!” And the first bird would always reply, “One does what one can!”
And perhaps, finally, that is all Christ asks of any of us. He does not insist we be heroes; but he does insist we be human. No, we cannot do everything, but we can do something, and we must not sit dutifully behind our typewriters in the face of any insidious, slow-moving, ordinary, everyday evil. Keeping silent when we should speak up, keeping our heads down when we should sand up and be counted. Never forget…Jesus was crucified by people who believed they were doing the right thing.
An old question comes to mind and I’ll conclude with it. If you were arrested and brought before some modern day Pilate and were accused of being a Christian… would there be enough evidence to convict you?