will at least give you the promise that even if we start with the people of the distant past, we shall finish up not very far from here.
Take them one by one. Judas. What was Judas really up to? Why did he act as he did? I suppose it is partly the instinct that says fair play even for the villain, that has made people so busy making up hypothetical motives for Judas, inventing all kinds of schemes and plans, that would to some extent justify his action. Perhaps he wanted to hurry Jesus on, to precipitate events, and make him act more rightly for the salvation of his people. Perhaps he was impatient with the methods of persuasion, and sought not merely to force the issue, but to bring up the issue of force. Perhaps he had a subtle double-crossing plan to rescue Jesus from the Jews. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps these ideas are true, but I strongly suspect that we should have to come back to the idea for which there is a particle of evidence, namely that he was too fond of money, and sought a way of making some. But he hadn’t reckoned what it would really be like. “When he saw that Jesus was condemned,” when he realized what he had done, that this was the end, this was death, this meant all the unspeakable horror of crucifixion, then he wanted to undo it all. “I ought never to have done it, for God’s sake lets put the clock back, back to the time before I took the 30 pieces of silver, and betrayed him.” Thirty pieces of silver seemed fine, but now the money is burning a hole in his pocket, is burning into his skin and he wants it out. “Take it, let’s go back to the time when I was clean. Let me get out of my place in this dreadful story.”
We recognize the story. We have seen it in fiction, and we have read of it in real life. The idealistic young Nazi who found himself implicated in gas chambers, the jolly young fellow who had a merry evening, and drove his car home drunk, and killed a child. “I never thought of this, I never meant that it should end like this.” So Judas. He has changed his mind and he wants to walk back his actions, and he can’t do it. “I have sinned, in that I have betrayed innocent blood, take your money back.” The answer came back—“what is that to us, see then to it.”
We move on; Pilate’s wife, by tradition Procula. Here is something I find harder to understand. I seldom dream; I never have visions. I am plain common earth, with a bit of common sense, perhaps, a certain grasp of logic, but not much imagination. And here is the dreamer, who wants to overthrow reality by the dream. That is a shocking thing to do. Caesar’s wife had a warning in a dream of Julius Caesar’s death and tried to keep him away from the Senate House on the Ides of March. But Caesar will not hear of it. Men will mock him, back up the Senate to another time when Caesar’s wife shall meet with better dreams? And Masefield had the same thought as Shakespeare in his dramatic poem—Good Friday.
Now listen wife, whatever befalls,Never again send word to me in Court,To interrupt a case. The Jews made sport Of what you dreamed, and what you bade me fear About this Jesus man.
Yet how many wish, and how sincerely, to exchange grim reality for the fantasy of dreams and imagination? It is one of the main causes of nervous breakdown in our modern world, people will not or cannot come to terms with life as it has been lived, and in the end fantasy comes to dominate over reality. Sometimes the dreams just come, sometimes they are induced, and people exchange the real burden of life for the escape of drugs. I am not accusing Procula of that, though you can hardly avoid thinking of it in 1979. She just wants to run away, to opt out of the coming crucifixion, and to take her husband with her. She doesn’t say—“the man is innocent, have the courage to stand up to his enemies and acquit him.” She says “Have nothing to do with him. If there is dirty work to be done let someone else do it. Let us dream our sweet religious dreams, and not be troubled by such nasty things as crucifixion.”
I don’t think it needed Procula’s dream and message (which no other Gospel records) to make Pilate want to get out of the whole affair. He could see as far through a brick wall as most folks, and one way or another, all the Gospels suggest his unwillingness to crucify Jesus. And here he puts on a pretty symbolic act, to show how he feels about it. They bring him a bowl of water and he publicly washes his hands. “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see you to it.” That is he shifts the burden of responsibility, or tries to. It seems that everyone is doing this. The Jews shift it to Judas—“you see to it, it is not our affair.” There is a small point here that is worth noting. The RV says, “the blood of this righteous man,” but the word righteous is not in the oldest manuscripts, and ought to be left out. Pilate simply says, “the blood of this man.” He is not going to commit himself to saying that Jesus is actually innocent; that would go too far. If he said, “innocent” or “righteous” he would be bound to act. He could not both say, “the man is innocent” and also “crucify him.” He is not going to take sides; he is just going to opt out. He refuses to take the responsibility one way, or the other.
Here again is something we can recognize—the flight from responsibility, real responsibility. Our world is afraid of it. As unwilling as we are to own up in our affairs, the buck stops here. Of course it was hard for Pilate, damnably hard. What would you have done even if you believed Jesus was innocent? He must have been afraid for his own life, and for Rome’s presence in Jerusalem. There was a garrison of perhaps 1,000 men. The number of Jews who gathered for Passover in Jerusalem was estimated at 2 million. It was not a matter of guns, bombs, and tear gas against stones; it was sword against sword. And there were moral considerations too—whatever that man had done or not done, Pilate had responsibility for law and order.
But there is that word again—responsibility! This is what Pilate wishes to escape. And so with a clever piece of stage business, he will hand it over to others. He will opt out. This brings me to the next stage in the proceedings. Here were these people who wanted to opt out of the crucifixion, but you cannot opt out.
YOU CANNOT OPT OUT
These three could not, clearly for there they are, comfortably written into the story—Judas, Procula, Pilate; they are all playing their parts. Judas would like to turn back the clock, but that won’t work.
“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it” (Omar Khayyam).
It is hard to stop quoting poetry when you think about this, for all the poets have known the inexorable march of time. “I may remember the house where I was born, the material set up of it, and its surroundings, yet its little joy, to know I’m further off from heaven than when I was a little boy.” We come trailing clouds of glory but we have dragged them in the mud and there is no going back. I shall never be again the cheerful school boy, the bright undergraduate, the young and promising lecturer; I am what I have become, and somehow, because the human race sins, it all crystallizes in a betrayal, and especially the betrayal of Jesus.
Procula wants to live in her dreams, and so do some of us still. But you can no more do that, than put the clock back. You cannot forever turn over in bed and dream another dream. Sooner or later you must get up and face the waking world, even though now and forever that world would have a cross in it. Even drugged dreams must sometime give place to the cold hard truth.
But Pilate’s word is the most terrible of all. You can’t avoid responsibility. How nice if I could just dispense with all the things that are in my conscience, the duties I have omitted, the injuries I have done, by pouring a little water on my hands. But it can’t be done. “All the perfumes of Arabia, will not sweeten this little hand.” And responsibility includes somehow or other, for us as for Pilate, responsibility for the Cross, for this is where our inhumanity to human beings and our rebellion against God comes into common focus. How many times have I quoted on Good Friday—
Who was the guilty, that brought this upon thee? Alas my treason Jesu, hath undone thee.It was I Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee I crucified thee . . . (J. Heermann)
You cannot escape responsibility no more than opt out of the crucifixion. But this is where we take another step. There was one
