Thursday, February 11, 2016

Matthew 27: 1-31, Good Friday Trial

Now the religious leaders have what they want, a criminal conviction of blasphemy.  It is time to get rid of Jesus.  

Matt 27:1-10
Early in the morning, all the chief priests and the elders of the people came to the decision to put Jesus to death. They bound him, led him away and handed him over to Pilate, the governor. When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the  thirty silver coins to the chief priests and the elders. "I have sinned," he said, "for I have betrayed innocent blood." 

"What is that to us?" they replied. "That's your  responsibility."

So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.

The chief priests picked up the coins and said, "It is  against the law to put this into the treasury, since it is blood money." So they decided to use the money to buy the potter's field  as a burial place for foreigners. That is why it has been called the Field of Blood to this day. Then what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled:  "They took the thirty silver coins, the price set on him by  the people of Israel, and they used them to buy the potter's field, as the Lord  commanded me."

What motivated Judas?  Notice how the chief priests stay true to their legalistic worldview. They have just betrayed the Messiah but want to make sure they follow the rules on tainted money in the treasury!

Verse ten quotes several Old Testament passages. See Zechariah 11: 12-13, Jeremiah 19: 1-13 and Jeremiah 32: 6-9.

Matt 27:11-18
Meanwhile Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him, "Are you the king of the Jews?" 

"Yes, it is as you say," Jesus replied.  When he was accused by the chief priests and the elders, he gave no answer.

Then Pilate asked him, "Don't you hear the testimony they are bringing against you?"

But Jesus made no reply, not even to a single charge--to the great amazement of the governor.

Now it was the governor's custom at the Feast to release a prisoner chosen by the crowd. At that time they had a notorious prisoner, called Barabbas. So when the crowd had gathered, Pilate asked them, "Which one do you want me to release to you: Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?" For he knew it was out of envy that they had handed Jesus over to him.

Pilate thinks Jesus is innocent and that he should be able to find a way out of this bind.  So he offers to free either Jesus or this notorious criminal, thinking that the crowd will not want the criminal freed. But Pilate has misplayed his hand.

Matt 27:19-26
While Pilate was sitting on the judge's seat, his wife sent him this message: "Don't have anything to do with that innocent man, for I have suffered a great deal today in a dream because of him."  But the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus executed. 

"Which of the two do you want me to release to you?" asked the governor. 

"Barabbas," they answered.

"What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called Christ?" Pilate asked. 

They all answered, "Crucify him!"

"Why? What crime has he committed?" asked Pilate. 

But they shouted all the louder, "Crucify him!"

When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. "I am innocent of this man's blood," he said. "It is your responsibility!"

All the people answered, "Let his blood be on us and on our children!"

Then he released Barabbas to them. But he had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.

Pilate thinks Jesus is innocent.  But Pilate is a politician.  He fears the power of the people and the people seem determined.  He believed that offering them a criminal like Barabbas would make them choose Jesus, but not so. Despite even his wife's dream, he reluctantly hands Jesus over to the Romans soldiers for execution.

Matt 27:27-31
Then the governor's soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company of soldiers around him. They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand and knelt in front of him and mocked him. "Hail, king of the Jews!" they said. They spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again.

After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him.

Execution, in that time, was not a mercy killing.  It included taunting and violence.

Lloyd C. Douglass took this image, of Roman soldiers mocking the Messiah, and turned it into a novel, The Robe, presumably tracing the path of Jesus's robe after his crucifixion. That novel examines what it means to live as a follower of the Jewish Messiah, amidst the secular Roman world.

After the taunting and violence, the Roman soldiers complete their task, executing Jesus. That account is next in Matthew.

1 comment:

  1. So very many issues surface in the earlier passages and the above study. We had the issue of fighting evil with weaponary vs faith in our relationship. We have power gone amuck. Money used to manipulate and exploit is highlighted. Fear of the unknown and its misguided focus plays out. The scenes leading up to a rip in eternal changes follow.

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