BILLTESKA

The great American preacher, Jonathan Edwards, once compared our relationship to God as that of a loathsome spider held in a man’s hands:

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.

While I think the Reverend Mr. Edwards mistaken about the Divine Disposition towards us, His children, and altogether misguided in his attempt to frighten his congregation regarding it, his analogy is thus far useful: how would you go about communicating with a spider or an insect? It is not endowed with the means of dialogue. The gap in being is just too great. But the gap between the person and the spider he is holding over the fire is nothing compared to the distance between God and us. If it were not for God’s love, we would know nothing of God at all. As it is, we can speak of God only in analogies to our own experience: God is like a mother and father ~ like the father of the Prodigal Son; God the Beloved, God the Friend; God the King.

When One Ancient of Days sent one Like Unto a Son of Man to us, He had to use analogies ~ parables ~ even with people whose hearts were open and ready to hear the Good News. But even Almighty God could not communicate with someone who didn’t want the News. In today’s Gospel, the Word of God ~ Communication Incarnate ~ stands face to face with such a man. There is nothing He can do to pierce Pilate’s indifferent consciousness. After a brief attempt, the Word falls silent. Throughout the Gospel, he is anything but silent, but after the exchange we hear today, with Pilate He is silent.

Jesus gives Pilate the opportunity to find out. Maybe this Roman has some genuine interest ~ curiosity at least ~ so He asks Pilate if the question was authentic, or just bureaucratic investigation:

Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?

Well, obviously others HAD told Pilate about Jesus; the question was intended to learn whether or not Pilate had any real interest. His answer is brusque and arrogant:

Do I look like a Jew to you? Am I interested in your barbaric superstitions? Your own people have turned you in. Now, what have you done?

Pilate can think only in terms of his own role as a Roman magistrate, He has a certain concept of what a King is, and Jesus’ only answer is that the analogy while appropriate, falls far short of the reality: His kind of Kingship is beyond anything Pilate could imagine. Up to this point, Jesus is giving Pilate the opportunity to step out of his role as Roman governor, to shake off his illusions about his little, worldly identity and his own power. But Pilate won’t. He misses the great chance, and treats the whole encounter as a police matter

So you ARE a King, then?

That is what YOU say; that’s YOUR word for it; that’s what YOU call me. I was born for this, to bear witness to the truth.

Today’s pericope stops there, but the narrative continues with Pilate’s rhetorical question: What is truth? By which he meant there is no such thing as truth, only power. Pilate was a good postmodern skeptic. After that remark, Jesus stood mute before him, there was nothing even the Word of God Incarnate could do for him ~ no teaching, no healing, no miraculous enlightenment. Except to correct him when he claimed power over Jesus: You have no power at all except what is given to you from above. In other words, You are a deluded hack, as worldly rulers usually are: hacks who are no more significant than a cloud of gnats ~ or Edwards’s spider ~ whose pomp is evanescent and ridiculous, whose power, when used for unjust purposes, consumes itself: devours itself and collapses. (American power is no exception, as current events so painfully reveal.)

Throughout the ages, Pilate never learns. He’s not a particularly bad man. His wife has worried him about her disturbing dreams, and he may even want to release Jesus, but the situation won’t permit it. It’s too unstable, If he can cool it by a minor injustice, the end justifies the means. He is just doing his job. He typifies Hannah Arendt’s characterization of Eichmann: the banality of evil. There is nothing big or superhuman about Pilate. Nothing even worthy of comment from the One he is about to condemn. But in doing his dirty little, bureaucratic job, Pilate becomes the instrument of the Victory of God over every tyranny, including his own. He orders the Tomb to be sealed, but the wax that bears the image of Cæsar will shatter on Easter morning. Pilate’s unjust sentence condemns not the Godman but his own power. He has, in fact no power save from a Source he does not recognize. He has power to crucify Jesus, but every blow of the executioners’ hammer secures Christ’s Kingdom and dooms Cæsar’s. Pilate scoffs at the very idea of truth, but unwittingly becomes its witness, proclaiming to the world for all time, in the notice written by his own hand: