The Fifth Station: Jesus is judged by Pilate

We know quite a lot about Pilate because he was a Roman governor and the Romans were obsessive record makers.

     Pilate was a product of his age. In today’s world, we’d call him a career diplomat and a few generations ago we’d give him a colonial title. We don’t know anything about his early years, so he came from humble beginnings. This further suggests he was an able administrator and maybe also had good and/or lucky connections. And he was ruthless.

     After his troubled career in Palestine, he must have felt relief when the Emperor promoted him to a better posting, this time in Germanica — Bavaria in today’s Germany. He was governor in Germanica when yet another insurrection occurred and this time he botched it. The army court marshalled him, executed him, threw his mangled body into an unmarked grave, and that was that. His unforgivable sin was the incompetence of making the Romans look fallible.

     Ironically, the only reason anyone but a high-brow historian knows anything about this wholly unremarkable man is his misfortune in being the judge called to oversee the trial of Jesus. Pilate’s words at the trial have passed into history: ‘What is truth?’ or ‘I wash my hands of him!’ He probably learned these phrases when training to be a Roman governor.

Pilate would also have been taught to cling on to power because he represented the Empire and the Empire had to come first. In this light, Jesus’ ‘crime’ centres round the complex we call power. Jesus’ power differed from Pilate’s and risked becoming bigger than Pilate’s. That’s why we sense Pilate’s fear of Jesus: the streets swarmed with crowds shouting for him and the Chief Priests and other collaborators counselled of the risks he represented.

     Pilate wielded power but it was not his own but that of Caesar living in him and enforced at spear-point. He risked losing it … and knew it.

     All of us have power. Some of that power come from who we are: we have innate, God-given gifts such as intelligence, abilities, health, charisma. Sociologists call these forms of influence, ‘person power’. By contrast, much of our power comes from our job, our roles and positions in home or society. This power differs from person power and is better termed ‘position power’ because they are given to us.

     Both person-power and position power can be used for good or abused. Think of how you use keys: do you let people in or keep them out? Our response to power — use, abuse, fear or embrace — depends on so many things. Every time we exercise influence, we need to ask where that our power comes from. Is it from God and for God before we think of using it for self?