“GETTING OUR HANDS DIRTY”
Matthew 27:11-26
(03-21-08) Good Friday

The Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria and the Jewish historian Josephus,
both writing at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion,
record just how much of a challenge the Jews were to Pontius Pilate
in his role as Governor of Judea.
It is recorded that during his ten years as governor, from 26-36 AD,
there were 32 riots in Judea.
That’s about three riots per year.
It was bad enough that the Jews hated the Romans for being their occupiers
and because they had to pay taxes to them
but what made it even worse for Pilate
was that these Jews were also quite fanatical about certain aspects of their religion.
According to Josephus, on one occasion,
when the soldiers under his command came to Jerusalem,
Pilate made them bring their banners with them,
upon which were the usual images of the emperor.
These banners were considered idolatrous by the Jews.
They were brought in secretly by night, but their presence was soon discovered. Immediately multitudes of excited Jews rushed to Caesarea
to petition him for the removal of the obnoxious banners.
He ignored them for five days,
but the next day he admitted the Jews to hear their complaint.
He had them surrounded with soldiers and threatened them with instant death
unless they ceased to trouble him with the matter.
The Jews then threw themselves to the ground and bared their necks,
declaring that they preferred death to the violation of their laws.
Pilate, unwilling to kill so many, succumbed and removed the banners.
(Josephus, Jewish War 2.175–177; Ant. 18.60–62)
Philo of Alexandria states, that on another occasion,
Pilate dedicated some gilded shields in the palace of Herod Antipas
in honor of the emperor.
On these shields there was no representation of any forbidden thing,
but simply an inscription of the name of the donor
and of him in whose honor they were set up.
The Jews petitioned him to have them removed;
when he refused, they appealed to the emperor Tiberius,
who sent an order that they should be removed to Caesarea from Jerusalem.
(Philo, Legatio ad Gaium,, 38)
At another time he used the sacred treasure of the temple
to pay for bringing water into Jerusalem by an aqueduct.
A crowd came together and clamored against him;
but he had caused soldiers dressed as civilians to mingle with the multitude,
and at a given signal they fell upon the rioters
and beat them so severely that the riot was quelled.
(Josephus)

It is in the midst of this environment that Jesus is brought before Pilate
according to the text this morning from Matthew’s gospel account.
In all four of the gospels, Pilate is portrayed as a somewhat ambivalent figure.
He doesn’t institute the charges against Jesus, but neither does he set Jesus free.
I suppose one might be able to sympathize to some extent with Pilate.
No doubt he wishes he could be anywhere but where he is.
Governor of the backwaters of the empire.
Consigned to a troubled region, full of fanatical people, his career headed nowhere.
In fact, when he is recalled from Judea after having rather severely put down another riot, he disappears from the historic record and is never heard from again.

Normally Pilate would have resided in Caesarea Philippi, near the sea,
but at certain times he came to Jerusalem,
especially at times when the city was full and the likelihood of another riot was high.
On this particular occasion the Jewish leaders, the high priests and the scribes,
had brought to him a man named Jesus, whom they had charged with treason.
The Jewish leaders told Pilate that Jesus had claimed to be king of the Jews
and had told the people not to pay their taxes and so was a political threat to Caesar.
Pilate asked Jesus to defend himself.
Jesus choose not to do so.
In the face of the accusations of the chief priests and elders, Jesus said nothing.
Pilate was amazed and probably admired Jesus for his strength.
Finding no evidence of Jesus’ guilt, Pilate tried to set him free.
But the Jewish leaders and the mobs which had gathered, would have none of it.
Given the choice of releasing Jesus or Barabbas,
a notorious prisoner who other gospels note had been charged with murder,
the crowds cried out for Barabbas to be freed
and for Jesus to be crucified.

Matthew’s gospel records, So when Pilate saw that he could do nothing,
but rather that a riot was beginning,
he took some water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying,
I am innocent of this man’s blood, see to it yourselves.
When push came to shove,
Pilate opted to send an innocent man to the cross to diffuse another possible riot.
In some ways we’ve all been Pilate.
We’ve all faced the same situation that Pilate faced those many years ago.
We’ve had to choose between siding with Jesus
or siding with something else in our lives.
We’ve had to wrestle with whatever riots we would have to deal with
if we chose to side with Jesus,
and probably far too often, we have done as Pilate did,
we decide to diffuse the discomfort that would arise from choosing to side with Jesus. And then we wash our hands of our choices, claiming that we had no choice, no option.
But Pilate had a choice and so do we.
On this Good Friday, the reality is that we have a choice to make.
There may be many things in life that we can waffle on,
that we can pick a little here and a little there, try to compromise and negotiate,
a little give and take to make everyone happy.
But when it comes to the cross, when it comes to Jesus,
there’s not much to give or take.
There’s not a lot to waffle about, nothing we can negotiate or compromise.
Our decisions won’t make everyone happy, in fact it may offend some,
but when it comes to Jesus and the cross,
we are either for him or against him.

We may not be against him
to the degree that the high priests and scribes were against him.
We may not want him dead.
We may not be against him to the degree that the crowds were against him,
agitated by the false charges that their leaders had brought against him,
frustrated by their own expectations having gone unfulfilled,
to the point that they shouted for a murderer to be freed rather than Jesus.
We may be much more like the disciples,
who in the Garden of Gethsemane swore that they would die with Jesus,
only to have most of them run away when he was arrested.
We may be much more like Peter,
who followed Jesus to the high priest’s house,
but when confronted, denied three times that he was Christ’s disciple.
We may not be against Jesus in a obvious, overt way,
but the fact is that there is no middle ground.
If we are not for him, we are against him.

Pilate thought he could wash his hands of the whole matter,
but the truth is that not all the water in the world would have changed the fact
that he chose to side with his own personal interest, to keep the crowds at bay,
then to side with the one he knew was innocent.
Most of us are decent people.
We don’t like offending anyone, we don’t like confrontation,
we would rather try to find a compromise.
And at times, even in matters of religion,
we don’t want to be seen as pushing our beliefs on others,
we would be more comfortable seeking to try to find a solution which please everyone. Today is not one of those times.
Today is the day that we mark the death of Jesus on the cross.
The cross of Jesus is not something that we as Christians can compromise.
Either Jesus died on the cross for our sins and was resurrected to life
so that our sins and death no longer have power over us,
or he didn’t, and we are still slaves to sin and death.
There’s no in between.
You can’t be just a little bit resurrected, you can’t be just a little bit dead.

And if we choose to side with Jesus,
then we need to get our hands dirty,
living for the things Jesus has set us free to pursue.
I am reminded of a story of a Lutheran minister
who was so adamant about the doctrine of salvation by grace alone, and not by works, that on his death bed, he said,
I am certain that I will go to heaven, for as God is my witness,
I swear I have not done a single good work in my whole entire life!

If we side with Jesus, then we need to be getting our hands dirty
doing the good works Jesus has set us free to do.
Rather than washing our hands of situations
which seem to be out of our control or ability to influence,
we need to be engaged as Jesus has set us free to do.
Instead of looking at situations like the one in Darfur in the Sudan
and thinking that its just too big for me to make a difference,
instead of washing our hands of the problems,
we need to get our hands dirty in praying for peace,
in speaking out for justice, in working to empower those who can make a difference. Rather than looking at the issues of our day that continue to hurt and oppress and divide, issues of racism, of economic exploitation,
of abuse and objectification of people based on sex, ethnicity, wealth or background,
and concluding that these are just too large for us to make a dent in,
rather than washing our hands of the whole thing,
we need to be engaged in speaking honestly in love,
in modelling what the love of God looks like,
what the inclusive, patient, unifying grace of God looks like, sounds like, feels like.
Every time we reject the people Christ Jesus came to save, we reject him.

If we are going to side with Jesus,
then we need to quell the fears we feel inside our stomachs
when speaking out may leave us vulnerable,
when sharing our faith may make us the target of others,
when loving those that others find unlovable threatens to make us pariahs as well.
When we stand before our maker and our judge one day,
our clean hands won’t impress our God.
The God who sent Jesus his son to die for us
so that we would be set free to serve him and the reign of his kingdom
will want to know why our hands are so clean
when they should be dirty with the work of his kingdom.

Its Good Friday, Jesus hangs on the cross and our future hangs in the balance.
We can’t be ambivalent about Jesus.
When it comes to Jesus, we need to know which side we’re on,
there is no middle ground.
You can’t plead neutrality when it comes to the cross.
Sooner or later a choice has to be made.
Let me end with a poem that someone wrote which expresses our situation well.
“I stood alone at the cross of Christ,
In the hush of twilight dim,
And faced the question
That pierced my heart,
What shall I do with him?
Crown or crucify, what shall it be?
No other choice is offered me.”

And to God be the glory, now and forevermore, Amen.