3 Pilate asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”
Jesus replied, “That’s what you say.”
4 Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, “I find no legal basis for action against this man.”
5 But they objected strenuously, saying, “He agitates the people with his teaching throughout Judea—starting from Galilee all the way here.”
6 Hearing this, Pilate asked if the man was a Galilean. 7 When he learned that Jesus was from Herod’s district, Pilate sent him to Herod, who was also in Jerusalem at that time. 8 Herod was very glad to see Jesus, for he had heard about Jesus and had wanted to see him for quite some time. He was hoping to see Jesus perform some sign. 9 Herod questioned Jesus at length, but Jesus didn’t respond to him. 10 The chief priests and the legal experts were there, fiercely accusing Jesus. 11 Herod and his soldiers treated Jesus with contempt. Herod mocked him by dressing Jesus in elegant clothes and sent him back to Pilate. 12 Pilate and Herod became friends with each other that day. Before this, they had been enemies.
13 Then Pilate called together the chief priests, the rulers, and the people. 14 He said to them, “You brought this man before me as one who was misleading the people. I have questioned him in your presence and found nothing in this man’s conduct that provides a legal basis for the charges you have brought against him. 15 Neither did Herod, because Herod returned him to us. He’s done nothing that deserves death. 16 Therefore, I’ll have him whipped, then let him go.”[a]
18 But with one voice they shouted, “Away with this man! Release Barabbas to us.” (19 Barabbas had been thrown into prison because of a riot that had occurred in the city, and for murder.)
20 Pilate addressed them again because he wanted to release Jesus.
21 They kept shouting out, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”
22 For the third time, Pilate said to them, “Why? What wrong has he done? I’ve found no legal basis for the death penalty in his case. Therefore, I will have him whipped, then let him go.”
23 But they were adamant, shouting their demand that Jesus be crucified. Their voices won out. 24 Pilate issued his decision to grant their request. 25 He released the one they asked for, who had been thrown into prison because of a riot and murder. But he handed Jesus over to their will. (Common English Bible)
This sermon was given at a joint Maundy Thursday worship service between Macedonia Christian Church and Valley Christian Church, which have been sister congregations for nearly thirty years. When I was a candidate to become Valley's seventh minister, this relationship stood out to me as particularly special, and I am especially proud of how we utilized Scripture, commentary, monologues, and dialogues to create a three-act retelling of the Maundy Thursday story over a shared conference call. The three-act retelling, centered around the themes of communion, betrayal, and trial, was a totally experimental format we came up with and tried together, and we pulled it off!
I want to thank my siblings in Christ at Macedonia Christian Church for hosting me and Valley Christian Church for our virtual Maundy Thursday worship service this year, and I want to especially thank Rev. Kenneth Hill for collaborating with me on the order of worship, which has been a real joy of mine in my ministry these past few weeks. The special relationship between Macedonia and Valley is one that spans almost thirty years now, and as a candidate to become Valley’s minister, it stood out to me as something special. I know that in speaking with you tonight that I am standing in the footsteps of spiritual giants. It is truly a blessing to be here with you.
I want to begin by talking with all of you about this word, “trial.” Being raised by a judge and a defense and civil rights attorney, that is a very specific term for me, one that could entail all the riveting courtroom drama you imagine in a book written by John Grisham or Scott Turow, or in one of the many Law & Order shows. Or, that trial could honestly have all the action and suspense of watching paint dry. At times my parents’ work excited me, and at other times it bored me silly.
It is easier to be bored, to be apathetic, when we do not see ourselves as a direct party or stakeholder in the trial. When we feel less invested in the legal proceedings taking place, they can easily lose much of their urgency. They can become background noise, easily tuned out at any given moment.
Yet over the past several years, there have been many such trials that we have found ourselves so invested in that they rise above background noise—trials that sought justice for men like Trayvon Martin and now George Floyd, or trials that strove to lock up mass shooters and killers. So even if the victims are strangers to us, we still feel impacted by the outcome of the trial, for good or for ill.
Yet Jesus’s trials fall into none of these categories. There is no justice or accountability to be sought against Jesus here, for Jesus has done nothing wrong or immoral. We do not personally know any of those closest to Jesus during His public ministry; they have been dead for nearly two thousand years. Yet, His trials, first before the Sanhedrin, then before Herod in a scene Luke’s Gospel documents, and finally before Pontius Pilate, are compelling to us as more than mere narrative or storytelling.
Honestly, we probably should not be connected to the trials on the basis of their drama, for there was not much drama to be had—the outcome was never in doubt. The Romans would not tolerate a claim to kingship that would rival either the Caesars or their client kings, and Jesus’s divinity threatens both. His trials, then, are not nail-biters or courtroom thrillers—the trial before Pilate is a first-seed-against-the-sixteenth-seed blowout where the outcome is foregone. Indeed, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus is almost silent before Pilate because He knew the system is set up to execute Him. Only in John is there any high-minded back-and-forth between Jesus and Caesar’s viceroy.
So if Jesus’s trials do not include any edge-of-the-seat anticipation or theatrics by the accused, what connects them so to us? What really, truly binds us to them? Only through these trials can Jesus ransom us from sin on the cross. It kickstarts our own ransom, but it also binds us to Christ.
Because we, too, undergo trials, some mundane, but also some dramatic ones with our lives on the line, and that opens us up to Christ’s experiences before Herod and Pilate, just as Christ’s humanity opens God up to us with the tearing of the temple curtain at the moment of Christ’s death.
We endure all manner of trials in our lives—trials of health, trials of financial insecurity, trials of interpersonal relationships, trials of vocation and work, and sometimes, like Christ, trials of an often unfair and unjust legal system. Sometimes, as I said, those trials are relatively mild, sometimes they are life-altering in their severity. In the suffering that we endure, in whatever those trials may be for us, may we recognize Christ’s own suffering alongside us. The crucifixion and resurrection restore us into right relationship with our creator, but they do not immunize us to times of trial. If the one true Son of God cannot be immune to times of trial, whether before the Roman governor or before Satan in the wilderness, then we should not expect to be immune to times of trial either.
God does not make us invincible to times of trial, but we do pray to God in the Lord’s Prayer to deliver us from evil once it has found us. Satan is omniscient and persistent, and such evil has a way of finding us one way or another. So despite all our best efforts, times of trial are a matter of when, not if. The question then becomes not “God, how can you make me invincible to all trials?” but “God, how can you strengthen me to endure my trials?” That question is at the heart of how God opened up to humanity in the Scriptures, and how humanity responded by opening up to God.
God strengthened Noah with the knowledge that after forty days and nights of floods came the rainbow and olive branch. God strengthened Moses and Joshua with the knowledge that after the wilderness came the promised land. God strengthened Habakkuk with the knowledge that after the Babylonians comes the Lord present in the temple. God strengthened God’s Son with the knowledge that after the trial, after the torture and crucifixion, would come resurrection.
God strengthens us with our knowledge of God’s desire for us to experience mercy, healing, reassurance, and restoration after our trials. That healing and restoration may not come immediately, today, or tomorrow, or after three days like Jesus. That healing and restoration may take years, decades, or the next lifetime because we are unjust to one another and have made unjust ways against one another. But God still wishes it for us because that is what God intended to await us after we have been tried by the many and assorted sins and sundry evils we have fashioned.
God ordered such a restoration for Christ, and the world was never the same after that.
That restoration awaits us as well, but we are not there yet.
Today, on Maundy Thursday, we leave the story here, at the trial before Pilate
and a sentence of damnatio ad crux—death by the cross.
The stage is now set for Christ’s walk to Calvary and subsequent crucifixion. Amen.
Rev. Dr. Eric Atcheson
Birmingham, Alabama
April 1, 2021