There is a famous moment in that most irreverent but nevertheless thought provoking film The Life of Brian, where the question is asked, What have the Romans ever done for us?’ Eventually the character played by John Cleese is forced to say, All right. Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?’ The Roman Empire stretched from Scotland to the Black Sea and from the Euphrates to the Sahara. In all it covered at its most extensive over 1,600,000 square miles. Its vast territories were linked by a complex system of often unerringly straight roads set with staging posts every 36miles (a day’s journey on horseback). Along such roads the Romans carried their culture from one end of the known world to the other. Christianity was born into a world in which the web of communication was more suited to mission than ever before.
Not everyone, however, accepted what the Romans had to offer. Judea was probably one of the most troublesome areas in the whole of the Empire. It was in Judea that the Romans first encountered terrorism. Around the time that Jesus was born pilgrims for the Pentecost feast in Jerusalem started a rebellion which spread to Galilee led by one Judas son of Ezekias. Another Judas led a second revolt in Galilee (always an unstable area) in 6AD. Pilate’s governorship got off to a bad start in 26AD when he was forced by a peaceful demonstration to remove from Jerusalem the Roman banners which bore the head of Caesar. In 41 AD Caligula planned to have his statue erected in the Temple and tens of thousands of Jews went to the Syrian legate protesting that they would rather die than let such a thing happen. And so it went on until finally in AD 70 a full blown Jewish war led to the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple from which only the so-called Wailing Wall survives.
From all this it can be seen that politics and religion could never be separated in Jesus’ homeland. The crucial issue for most Jews was about whether or not they could still observe God’s law, under Roman rule. Many Jews seem to have put up with the Roman administration provided it was sensitive to Jewish religious practice and its institutions. Internal factions within Judaism made it almost impossible for them to govern themselves independently in this period. On the other hand, charismatic leaders often attracted a considerable following with tragic consequences. It is in this complex historical setting that Jesus enters Jerusalem in the final week of his life. Shortly beforehand the garrison would have been considerably enlarged by the arrival of extra forces from Caesarea on the coast. And in control was Pontius Pilate.
One of the curiosities of Christian tradition is that it has attempted almost to beatify Pilate. The early Christians did have a good reason for presenting him in a not unfavourable light. They wanted to show that Pilate was well disposed towards Jesus at least to the extent of recognising that he was not a threat to Rome, that he was a just man’ and that he had been handed over because the Jewish authorities for religious reasons of their own wanted to get rid of him. Behind such a portrait we might detect the Church’s desire to convince the Roman authorities that they were not a threat to Rome. Unlike the Jews, Christians did not intend rebellion and though their founder had received the death of a rebel the man responsible for it had believed Jesus to be innocent. Of coursed that is a tricky argument to make for it is in danger of presenting a Roman Governor being manipulated by those he was supposed to be ruling. And anyone who knew anything about Pilate would also have been puzzled – for Pilate was very far from being a saint or a philosopher or even remotely interested in innocence. In fact crucifixion was the response you could easily expect of Pilate .
The cross was a powerful symbol throughout the Empire. It was a humiliating sign of degradation. It powerfully proclaimed that Rome was in charge and insisted coldly and brutally on Roman authority. To rebel was useless, Rome was ruthless. By most accounts Pilate was an incompetent and undistinguished official. Unlike most Roman officials, he was not in any way sensitive to local religious sensibilities and was particularly adept at inciting the Jews to revolt. In the ten years of his presence in Judea between AD 26 and 36 there were six major incidents that we know of. His suppression of a popular prophetic movement in Samaria was so brutal that the Roman legate in Syria had him sent back to Rome. Pilate was a bully and like many bullies he was also at heart a coward. When confronted he could not back down, but neither could he face the possibility that his actions might be reported critically in Rome. As the priests say to him in John’s gospel, If you let this man go, you are not Caesar’s friend.’
It is possible to see even in the gospels that Pilate could be both provocative and vacillating. The famous hand washing incident is a cynical gesture a pretence at avoiding responsibility for something that lay completely in his power. He enjoyed doing the opposite of what people wanted him to do and on this occasion the priests had boxed him into a corner he couldn’t get out of without an extravagant but meaningless gesture. Pilate may have been intrigued by a so- called rebel leader, who didn’t behave as he had come to expect. Nevertheless, as the representative of an occupying power who cared less for local religions than was usually the policy of his imperial masters he played the usual power games to hang onto to his own position. Beneath the ameliorative portrayal of Pilate we can still see the man who was eventually sacked for cruelty and incompetence.
So why has history tended to overlook Pilate’s true character? There are perhaps two obvious reasons ancient and modern. Douglas Hurd recently gave just such a sympathetic portrayal of Pilate for Radio 4’s Lent talks. Between the lines you could hear a modern sympathy with a politician faced with the complexity of an alien world in which he is having to make instant decisions, without the luxury of knowing or being able to analyse all the facts. His decisions may affect the lives of millions of people and it is hard to live with that kind of responsibility. There you are trying to make people’s lives better, to provide them with democracy and a good modern education and all the benefits of capitalism, and in the name of religious superstition and bigotry they resist all your best efforts. Pilate, the pragmatic post-modernist, suspicious of all claims to truth, is only trying to do his best and keep his job.
It is in John’s gospel that Pilate and Jesus confront one another in a scene which owes much to John’s reflections on the truth of who Jesus is. Here it is Pilate who is on trial not Jesus; and the question with which Pilate is confronted is a question of true authority. Pilate represents the authority of power, competitive strength, technological superiority, and brute force. Jesus claims an authority outside such terms his kingship is not of this world not derived from this kind of world order. Jesus’ power is not of the kind that can be defended by violence, strategy or manipulation. If he were the kind of king the world is used to, his followers would have fought to prevent his capture. But with Jesus’ kind of authority defensive violence is unthinkable. A truth that needs human violence to defend it becomes just another relative truth in the ideological market place. If Jesus is defended by a tactic that produces winner and losers something is lost. The authority of the truth that Jesus represents is not a truth that can be easily stated but is embodied in Jesus whole way of life and compels attention. And what secures that attention can include skill and energy, for-thought and passion but not the violence of self-assertion. If Jesus followers resort to violence or to the devious manoeuvring of a political campaign something becomes untrue because the defence of my own self-image becomes mixed up with the truth I am defending. (extracts from Rowan Williams Christ on Trial)
And because this is so Pilate and all that he stands for cannot recognise the authority of Jesus he cannot see it as authority, because he cannot see what it is he is competing with – as he could see it all too easily with the high priests. And that is because Jesus does not at this moment see himself in competition with Pilate. Pilate has to fight for his position Jesus is always and everywhere simply where he is meant to be whether it be at a meal with his friends, or in a boat during a storm, or on trial before Pilate – that is where the truth in Jesus puts him. And it is that which makes him so threatening to any other kind of authority or power. And that is why it is so hard to be a disciple of Jesus because we can never put up barriers around where we find ourselves in order to make our position secure and comfortable. If we do so we will always find that Jesus has moved on.
I said just now that there were two reasons why the character of Pilate has been whitewashed. We have looked at the more modern reason the more ancient reason for exonerating Pilate is much more painful reason for us to confront. And that is because in the past the blame was shifted more and more to the Jews so next we must consider the part played by Jesus’ own people in his crucifixion.