NOTES for Joh 18:37-38

During Jesus' trial, something very important for understanding everything that is happening stands out: as a human being He is of no interest to anyone. Not as the Human Being, for neither the temple elite nor the Roman procurator saw the Human Being with a capital letter in Him, but precisely as a human being. The most ordinary one. The one with a lowercase letter. The one over whom all authorities of all times, both secular and religious, habitually stepped if he interfered with them in any way.

They stepped over him, often without even noticing. Of course, both the high priest and the procurator had their own causes and reasons for acting as they acted. Their own interests. Often, as it seemed to them, extremely important ones. Far more important than the individual life of an individual person. The welfare of the people, for example. Or the calm of the empire.

Of course, both are worth the life of some preacher. Especially a dubious one who does not enjoy the trust of serious and authoritative people. One who can only stir up the crowd. Meanwhile He does not even try to prove anything to them. He answers Pilate's simple questions so simply and deeply that it is hard not to understand Him. But for a lifelong skeptic His answers have no meaning. Just as, by the way, Pilate's own question about truth is quite rhetorical.

Nothing can be proved or explained here. As for the rest... the value of human life for a high-ranking official is determined by the social status of the person being evaluated. Everything is simple and prosaic. And therefore frightening for us today. If Christ had been executed by some infernal villains, we could feel relatively safe: if such villains are found among us at all, they are very few. But it turns out that He was executed by the most ordinary people with quite ordinary interests.

True, they were highly placed and invested with the right to make decisions, but otherwise they were the most ordinary people. People like us. And all that was required for the execution of the Messiah was to put certain supposedly higher interests ahead of a human being. Not even the Human Being with a capital letter, but simply a human being as the image of God. If they had seen Him at least this way, that would have been enough for the Messiah not to die on the cross. But it did not happen. It turned out otherwise. And now, and in any other era, everything could end the same way. And that is truly frightening.