NOTES for Mar 15:1-15

The trial before Pilate is one of the most terrible moments in the Gospel narrative. The fate of Jesus of Nazareth no longer depends at all on His teaching or on the attitude of the Jewish authorities toward Him. What He did and what He said no longer matters. Here the Lord encounters an impersonal machine created by people, built from the balance of their momentary interests and career calculations. Even the question of Pilate's responsibility looks pale and not very meaningful... And, of course, the incompatibility between God and this impersonal machine is striking.

The behavior of all the participants in the proceedings, except the Lord Jesus Himself, gives us a very vivid example of what lack of freedom is. Even Pilate, who pretends that everything depends on his decision, is not free. His actions are determined by circumstances. Right in front of him stands the Son of God, and he functions instead of living. In a certain sense this is a very instructive moment, because most of us take part, one way or another, in the grim work of this social machine.

Standing before Pilate, Jesus does not defend Himself. This is not surprising, since what the members of the Sanhedrin rejected would be even harder for Pilate to grasp.

Though he finds no guilt in Christ, Pilate nevertheless grants amnesty not to Him, but to Barabbas, whom the people demand. Strictly speaking, Pilate has no concern for the wishes of conquered provincials, but political circumstances required him to curry favor with them. To this day even many Christians repeat the pagan proverb, "The voice of the people is the voice of God," forgetting or not knowing the people's own wisdom: "The voice of the people crucified Christ." On that day the openly pagan Pilate and the Jewish crowd that supposedly knew Scripture united in rejecting the true God in the name of unstable immediate interests.

Scripture does not tell us the later fate of the freed Barabbas. Yet he became the first of sinners whom Christ saved by dying in his place. Barabbas accepted salvation not for eternal life, but for temporary earthly life, and we do not know whether he used his chance for full salvation. But after Barabbas, this chance has now been given to each of us by the sacrifice of Jesus. How we use it is for us to decide.

High politics does not notice the little person; it has always been this way, and this has long been known. In the fallen world the Messiah's path could only be the path of a little person. This is understandable: He Himself said that His Kingdom is "not of this world." And if so, then for the fallen world He is nobody, and His Kingdom is nothing. So they deal with Him accordingly: not as some great nobody, but as the most ordinary nobody. In the way any little person in that time and place would have been treated.

And in any other time and place as well: different in form, perhaps, but the same in essence. Jesus' arrest, the sentence of the Sanhedrin, the confirmation of the sentence by Pilate as Rome's representative, the shameful execution itself; all this was ordinary and typical. In those days in Judea, something like this could have happened to anyone under similar circumstances. Pilate has nothing personal against Jesus; in some sense he even finds Him sympathetic. But for a high-ranking official there are, of course, things more important than personal sympathies and antipathies.

He understands that Jesus is guilty of nothing. But what difference does that make when the interests involved are, if not Rome's, then at least those of Pontius Pilate's own career? Quarrel with the temple elite, go against the crowd stirred up by them? For what? In the name of justice? Pilate, apparently, was a skeptic and cynic, like most of Roman high society in those days. Judging from everything, he did not believe in higher justice, just as he did not believe in truth; both were relative for him.

If it had been safe, he could have displayed showy nobility and principle; perhaps he even knew how to be kind and generous, so long as neither burdened him much or threatened him in any way. Here, however, there was a threat: the high priest and his circle could have had their own connections in Rome, and who knows how they would view a procurator there who indulged dangerous preachers. It was better to be cautious, and who cares about the fate of some wandering teacher? So the path to the cross passes through the hatred of some and the indifference of others.

In reflecting on today's Gospel reading, let us focus on Peter's denial. Let us try to experience this event with Peter. Let us not hurry to say that we never even thought of denying Christ, because we love Him more than anything in the world. By speaking this way, we show that we do not know what love is. If someone wants to understand the words from the First Epistle of John (1 John 4:8), that God is love, he should first of all think about what Peter felt and experienced in the moments of denial and during the three days that followed. Why is this so?

What is most frightening to us when we love? The most frightening thing is that the beloved person will die. And when he dies, literally as soon as his life goes out, we begin to understand how much we did not do for him that we could have done, but now it is no longer possible to do it, because he is no more. We cannot come to him, embrace him, and beg forgiveness for all the bad that happened and for all the good that did not happen.

What did Peter experience, not yet knowing about the Resurrection? A fierce pain of repentance and the impossibility of asking forgiveness. And if we think about it, his denial is not much better than Judas' betrayal. But Judas cannot endure the feeling of guilt, while Peter endures it. What is the difference? Perhaps by understanding the difference, we will understand what love is.