In Pilate's house: The politics of death, and the absurd politics of new life

Scripture: John 19:1-16

            “We have a law,” say the chief priests, “and according to that law he ought to die because he claimed to be the Son of God.”

            The juxtaposition in John’s Gospel between Jesus and the chief priests really could not be any starker than it is before Pilate. On the one hand, you have Jesus who just never seemed to care for religious or governmental authorities one way or another, and on the other hand you have chief priests who seem to care about nothing but political power. This is a first century case study in the workings of the church and the state, and it is immediately obvious that the chief priests may be more concerned with getting on the good side of the authorities than with religious purity. After all, if they didn’t have to suck up to the state they could have just dealt with Jesus internally—i.e. killed him on their own—and if they would have went that route it would have been a clear statement against heresy, but when they take him before Pilate they are playing a political game: this is about much more than dealing with a heretic. The chief priests have this opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: they can remove this pesky man who claims to be the Son of God and they can make the governor happy all at the same time. It’s a win-win.

            This is about politics. In fact, so much of what happens to Jesus is political. Jesus spends a good deal of time upending conventional notions of political power, talking about the kingdom of God over the kingdom of this world and the power of self-sacrifice and turning the other cheek, but at every turn those traditional systems of power are reinforced by the chief priests and governmental authorities who fear anybody who may chip away at the political weight they have worked hard to secure. It is in this political framework that we can make sense of what is happening before Pilate. The chief priests, electing not to put Jesus to death themselves, take him before Pilate—the local Roman authority—and get him to do the dirty work for them. The priests have the added benefit thereafter of saying, “We didn’t put him to death. It was the governor!”—lest the commandments ever come into question. But don’t get the idea this is about religious norms; it’s just as much about getting on the governor’s good side.

            See, if the priests would have ignored the government and done away with Jesus on their own they would have risked confrontation with the Roman authorities, and Rome had decidedly more power than any high priest. If anybody was to be put to death it was best to go through Roman channels. Of course, that doesn’t mean that Pilate is particularly invested in what is happening. In fact, John goes out of his way to portray Pilate as ambivalent about the charges against Jesus, but let’s not pretend that that ambivalence isn’t also a political game. Pilate knows what the chief priests want, and if he were to release Jesus they would be forced into the awkward situation of having to choose between the commitments of their faith and their political standing in the empire. It’s only when they remind Pilate that anybody who claims to be king is no friend of the emperor that Pilate relents and hands him over, though again it seems rather likely that Pilate will use this again in his future dealings with the Jewish leaders. Everything about the crucifixion involves jockeying for political sway.

            This might seem like an antiquated story that only has to do with us today because it involved Jesus, except that this interplay between church and state is still very much alive. Sometimes, it gets just as messy as the Pilate scene; often times, the tension between church and state is palpable—and for very good reasons. Every time we seek a little bit of influence in this world we are always risking leaving our faith behind, because a life that follows Christ is political in a very different way than a life dedicated to societal change. To follow Christ is to take on a politics of self-sacrifice, humility and meekness; it is to take up our crosses and follow to Golgotha. That’s a pretty miserable politics, because it is a politics of submission. Nobody champions a government that is self-sacrificial. Even if you think government should be incredibly small, we all want a government that protects us and serves our interests.

            Secular politics is self-serving by definition, because even the most fair and good public leader sets out for the betterment of his or her people. The politics of Jesus are so very different, and so very foreign, that it’s no wonder they clash again and again. Most of the squabbles over church and state that make the news are things that are mostly not at the heart of the matter: things like saying the pledge of allegiance, praying in public schools, and having religious statues in government buildings. These are the kinds of things that can be easily reported because they are questions of constitutional law. What is much harder to express is the philosophical differences we have between being a disciple of Christ and a citizen of Rome—or of the United States. Jesus explains this as being “in this world but not of it,” or as the kingdom of God versus the kingdom of man.

            Those kingdoms collide in Pilate’s chamber and the road that leads from there to the cross. Politics is about power. Governments—at least at their very best—are about protecting and enriching life. But no amount of politics can actually give life. All politics is based on scarcity; on the notion of protecting what we have, and, when that falls short, taking from others.

            There’s a better way to live than that—a starkness between the way that Pilate and the chief priests behave, and the way that Jesus shows us. We are political creatures, and most of the time we are acting on the politics of this world, forever trying to carve a bigger slice of the pie for ourselves and our families. But that politics will always be about scarcity, creating in us emotions of fear and anxiety, always asking us “Do we have enough?” “What will tomorrow bring?” The politics of this world are pragmatic and practical, but they are also terminal—they are ticking to an end along with our lives. Whatever power and influence the chief priests gained from this stunt before Pilate will be temporary. They will have to consolidate their power again and again until eventually their influence will fail, outside empires will come in, and the temple will be destroyed. But we can stop pretending that this was a story about preserving religious standards anyway. At the heart of all this-worldly politics is this little word: “me.” This wasn’t about preserving religious standards; it was about people scared about losing power, and it was finally about a lack of trust in God.

            God’s politics are different. Rather than accepting the role of “king,” Jesus refers to himself as the “Son of Man.” His title was not political but relational. And so it is with all our titles in Christ’s church. In baptism we call ourselves children of God—not princes or princesses, but sons and daughters. We aren’t anti-political; rather, we are about a politics of picking up our cross. That is incredibly unattractive to a politics of power and might. It will be always be that way—at least until that last moment at the end of our lives when we stare death in the face and realize it wasn’t enough; nobody could achieve enough; the future still looks uncertain and the money and influence have to be consolidated again and again; all things are subject to forces outside of our control—natural and human. We cannot assure—no matter our political sway—that the lives of our children and grandchildren will be safe or secure, because they too face the specter of mortality and the same scarcity mentality that we handed down to them. Politics grinds to a halt with death, passing on its anxieties to the next generation, with no hope of resolution.

            And it is only at that moment of death that God’s politics are revealed in all their glory, because it is then that we can say that love is revealed—in the returning of our bodies to the ground, in the freeing of our self from the political turmoil of life on earth, and in the grief borne on by those who loved and cared for us in life. But even greater than that is the promise that what we left behind is nothing compared to what lies ahead; not only can you not take it with you, but all the crap you leave behind is actually a detriment to new life in Christ. At that moment of death, the Christian has never been more alive, because death is the completion of our baptism, and the shedding of all politics of fear and anxiety. This is why the cross matters so much. It is the promise of pain and despair, which is to say it is the promise of death—which our politics fears—but ultimately it is the only promise of life that matters. Death, where is your victory? It is swallowed up in the cross.