The scripture reading this morning is taken from the gospel of John. It is chapter 19. You are welcome to open your own Bible or the Pew Bible to read along if you choose. Let's stand for the reading of God's Word. Beginning at John 19, verse 1. Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him and the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe. They came up to him saying, Hail King of the Jews and struck him with their hands. Pilate went out again and said to them, See, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in him. So Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, Behold the man when the chief priests and the officers saw him. They cried out, Crucify him, crucify him. Pilate said to them, Take him yourself and crucify him. For I find no guilt in him. The Jews answered him, We have a law. And according to that law, he ought to die because he has made himself the son of God. When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid. He entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, Where are you from? But Jesus gave him no answer. So Pilate said to him, You will not speak to me. Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you? Jesus answered him, You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore, he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin. From then on Pilate sought to release him. But the Jews cried out if you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend. This is the word of the Lord. Please be seated. I wonder if you know that in the Apostles Creed that we frequently say, there are only two proper names mentioned other than the Lord himself. One is the Virgin Mary and the other is Pontius Pilate. Why do you think it is that in the early days of the church when this first of the universal creeds was formulated by the church, why do you think it is that they chose only those two names? Well, when we think about it, I think it becomes fairly obvious. The church marks the beginning and the end of our Lord's life emphatically. And so the largest portions of our gospel writings do, in fact, occupy themselves with the birth of our Lord and with his death or his passion. And particularly it is his passion, this last week of his life, beginning with what is called Passion Sunday, last Sunday, and ending with the Resurrection Day, which is this coming Easter Sunday, it is this week that occupies the mind and the writing of the gospel writers more than any other part of the Lord's life. The church marks these two themes in that calendar that the church uses to mark and celebrate the seasons of the church year as we call them. Namely, there is Advent where we mark the coming of Christ and Christmas's birth as one sort of unified part of his story. And then there is, of course, Lent, Holy Week, Good Friday, and Easter, which also is, as it were, a kind of unified presentation of the last days of our Lord's life, his death, and then, of course, his resurrection. Pilot is central to this last series of episodes. He is the one who plays a critical role in all that unfolds in the last days of Jesus' life. And what I would like you to notice this morning about Pilot and about these last moments and the way in which Pilot navigated these moments into the final pronouncement that Jesus is to be crucified and executed by the Roman method of the cross. What I want you to notice is how many questions Pilot asks. There are, I think, in our lives three reasons, at least three reasons. There may be more, at least three reasons why we ask questions of someone else. One is we want to know something. We simply need to know a fact. Secondly, we want to really understand someone. That is to say, we really want to listen to them, and questions become means not just of obtaining some knowledge, but they become the means by which we listen to people, and we enter into their hearts and lives. And the third reason that we ask questions is often to deflect responsibility, to shift the focus of things away from ourselves and onto someone or something else. So, for example, men, if you were to say to your wife, excuse me, let's do it the reverse way, I think it will be more fair. Wives, you were to say to your husbands, sweetie, you forgot to put gas in the car, and the husband was to respond, well when was the last time I ever did that? Or he was to say, do you think I intended to forget? What would he be doing? Well, not only the words, but also the nasty tone of the way I just said it would indicate that he was trying to evade responsibility for what he had done. And when we read Pilate's questions, we need to read them with that nasty tone. He is seeking to displace himself as the responsible one for what is transpiring here, even though he ostensibly is the one in charge. In all four gospels, when we add up the number of questions separately, in other words, the number of separate individual questions which Pilate asks, there are 16 of them. Here in John, we actually have 11, so the largest number of them is in John's gospel, and many of them have this specific purpose of evading responsibility. For example, in chapter 18, which we didn't read this morning, do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews? A mocking and insulting way of referring to that, which is true. Jesus is the king of the Jews, but he does it in a way knowing he's speaking to people who despise Jesus and completely renounce his kingship. He does so in a way that is evading responsibility. Do you want me to do this? Or perhaps in chapter 19, then what do you want me to do with Jesus who is called the Christ, same tone, same intent? Or in his conversation with Jesus, which is not recorded in what we read this morning, again the previous chapter, Jesus says he has come to speak the truth, and Pilate says the very familiar words, what is truth? Very sarcastically, not only is he denying that there is no truth, he is seeking to evade the bullet of Jesus' own words that there is a truth, and Pilate doesn't understand it. Or perhaps this one, he also asks to Jesus, you will not speak to me when Jesus is silent. You will not speak to me or one more to the Jews again. Shall I crucify your king? In other words, shall I do what you intend to do? And actually, I'm not really responsible for it. Pilate evades responsibility for the death of Jesus. That is his clear, unequivocal motive here. He washes his hands of it literally, doesn't he? He takes a bowl, he washes his hands ceremoniously, which is quite interesting because in Deuteronomy 21, when there is a murder that is unsolved, the elders of the city that live nearest to the slain man, if he's out in the wilderness, the elders who live closest to where the man's body lies, must publicly wash their hands as a way of saying we may be the closest to him, but we are not responsible for what happened. Or in Psalm 26, David is telling the Lord he has walked with integrity, and he does not associate with evil doers, and he says there, I wash my hands in innocence around your altar, O Lord. Is it curious that Pilate apparently understands Hebrew culture enough, and the Old Testament even enough that he is doing what the Jews would do? Pilate washes his hands to publicly disavow responsibility. He wants to avoid condemning Jesus. In fact, in this section in the Gospel of John, three times, Pilate says, I find no guilt in him, and yet the Jews call for him to be crucified anyway. Pilate is doing all he can to evade responsibility in every way that he can. The setting of this play between Pilate, the Jews, and Jesus is in what is called the Praetorium, which was a kind of military headquarters in Rome. Pilate actually didn't live in Rome. He lived out a ways, more towards Antioch, but he would come to Rome frequently and he had to have a place where he could office. So this was his Praetorium, and the setting is that Jesus is inside the Praetorium. He's not being seen by the crowd for most of the time. The Jews are outside, and Pilate is shuddling back and forth between one and other. As one of the best commentators in the Gospel of John Raymond Brown says, as he moves from one stage to another, Pilate is like a chameleon taking on the different coloration of the parties who engage him. Outside there is ceaseless pressure conniving an outcry inside there is calm and penetrating dialogue. Look, morally weak, cowardly, Pilate hides behind his questions and behind his disavow of responsibility. You know, it's really quite interesting, I think, that Jesus was the person here who was most free. He was bound, but he was the most free person in this scene. Why? The Jews needed Pilate because they were forbidden to give the sentence or to carry out the sentence of an execution. Capital punishment was something that only the Romans could do. They needed Pilate to become complicit with their plan to kill Jesus. But Pilate needed the Jews. Why? Because in this remote outpost of the Roman Empire, there had been plenty of trouble, and Pilate had to make sure that the bosses back in Rome understood that he was doing a good job keeping control on the crowd. And only if the crowd was quiet and calm could he possibly prove that, so he had to appease the Jews. This is a curious emeshment, isn't it? The Jews actually unwittingly submit themselves to Roman authority, with the very thing they protest, the very thing they hate to do and say we won't do by saying to Pilate we need you. They're actually submitting to the authority of Caesar, and the Jews need Pilate and Pilate needs the Jews, and Jesus needs neither the Jews, nor Pilate. He is the only one in this scene without constraint. In fact, toward the end, he rises, doesn't he? He walks himself to the cross. He puts his own hands out on the cross beams of that cross. Previously, he was the one who allowed himself to be spit upon, to be hit, to be slapped in the face, which is perhaps the greatest insult of all. Jesus is bound, but he is the one who is free. Jesus doesn't need anyone, except one, and that is his father. Jesus is the one who is free to choose to do what he does not want to do. None of the other players in this play are free to do that. Jesus is the only one who can choose to do what he doesn't want to do because of a greater good. My friends, the Christian life is not a life that results from introspection. As much as it is a life that is lived free from constraining influences, what are the things in your life and in my life that constrain us, that make us do things, whether we want to or not? What are the inward devices and desires of our own hearts as the Book of Common Prayer so aptly puts it? What are the external people in our lives to whom we feel we must prove something and gain the approval? What are these forces that constrain us? Do you see that they keep you from responding freely? Do you see that they keep us from being the people that God would want us to be who are literally, quite literally liberated? We are free to respond to him to whom we become a bond slave. And in our bond slavery to him who is ultimately the free man, even in our slavery to him, we become freer. Then anyone else in the world, the cross constrains Jesus. He must go to it, but not because human beings make him, not because the Jews want it or pilot sentences him to it. He goes because he is constrained only by one. And you and I, do we go to our crosses too, the difficult things in our lives, the things that don't make sense? Do we go to bring that healing that imitates even so remotely that healing of the cross? Do we go under constraint, a happy constraint, a joyful one, even in its sorrow, the constraint of the cross? For he did it for us, and we do it for him and for a world that is broken. The name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.