Avoiding Responsibility
Sometimes you just want to wash your hands of the whole affair.
Then they took Jesus from Caiaphas to Pilate’s headquarters. It was early in the morning. They themselves did not enter the headquarters, so as to avoid ritual defilement and to be able to eat the Passover. So Pilate went out to them and said, ‘What accusation do you bring against this man?’ They answered, ‘If this man were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you.’ Pilate said to them, ‘Take him yourselves and judge him according to your law.’ The Jews replied, ‘We are not permitted to put anyone to death.’ (This was to fulfill what Jesus had said when he indicated the kind of death he was to die.) - John 18:28-32
The way John tells the story of Jesus' trial before Pilate, we get the impression that Pilate is being manipulated by Jesus' accusers. They want him dead, but they refuse to take matters into their own hands.
They say they are not permitted to put anyone to death, but that isn't true. Their law permits stoning to death, so why are they not doing that?
Clearly they want the blame for Jesus' death to be on the state and not on them, and Pilate seems to have figured that out. Of course he will capitulate and do as they wish, rationalizing perhaps that the whole matter of Jesus' followers wanting him to be king will die along with him.
It doesn't, though, and that is the amazing thing about this whole matter. There is no way to put an end to what Jesus started.
Sometimes we think we can bring about a swift end to a problem only to have it grow larger after we try to resolve it.
I wonder what would have happened if the high priests and scribes had just stoned Jesus to death. Would the followers have dissipated? Would the matter have simply ended?
By trying to avoid responsibility, they made the matter worse for themselves. And that may be the lesson in today's reading.
When we try to get others to do what we don't want to do ourselves, we have to live with the consequences when it all goes south.
More to come...