Barabbas, An Undeserving Recipient Series

Barabbas, an Undeserving Recipient

Matthew 27: 17 – 20

Series: A Day in the Life of… (Easter Series)

To give something good to someone who doesn’t deserve it seems irresponsible; it seems perhaps a little careless, maybe even—can I use this word?...reckless. And I think most of us can understand that way of thinking because there’s something within us that hates injustice. It’s not just that bad things happen to good people; it’s also that good things happen to bad people. That doesn’t feel quite right.

Some of my favorite shows on television are shows like CSI, Homicide Hunter, Forensic Files, and Criminal Minds, shows where the bad guys get caught. I like that. I like it where the guy gets it in the end. There’s just something within us that cries for justice. We want to see good, responsible people rewarded and foolish, irresponsible people having to pay their price, reap what they sow.

I guess that’s one of the reasons that I, I really don’t like those game shows very much where people spin a giant wheel, and they clap and they say, “BIG MONEY!”, and in a moment they earn more than my annual income. Sorry honey, I know how much you love Wheel of Fortune and how much you love the fact that Pat Sajak is such a good political conservative. To be honest with you, that’s not entertainment to me. I mean, I find no pleasure in their happiness when it comes to winning money that way.

Instead of a show like Wheel of Fortune, or Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, wouldn’t you rather see a show…this is just an idea…called Wheel of Misfortune or Lose Your Inheritance? And really wealthy people like…I don’t know… Joy Behar or Sonny Hostin, or Ana Navarro, or Rachel Maddow, or Joe Scarborough, or Nancy Pelosi, or Tim Walz people who haven’t worked for their fortune, would come on the show and all they could do is lose their money. Wouldn’t that be great? I would set my DVR to record all the episodes of this show and watch Lose Your Inheritance over and over again.

Or what about this show? I was thinking…what about Extreme Makeunder? Hmmm? Where guys who are dating girls who are way better looking than them would have to bring in their beautiful girlfriends for a MAKEUNDER? So, they would like take off all their makeup and maybe give them some sort of cream that causes acne. They would yellow their teeth, and then for their revealing they would come out in sweatpants and a baseball cap…and be the kind of girlfriend that this average guy deserves. Isn’t there something within you that gets annoyed when great things happen to people who have done nothing to earn it?

…And yet that’s what happens with Barabbas. When we think of injustice, most of us seem to think of Jesus because here is this innocent man who is brutally killed…but what about Barabbas? What about this guilty murderer who is set free? That seems pretty unjust to me.

To be honest with you, we don’t know much about Barabbas. I was talking to my dad about this sermon series and told him that I was going to be preaching on Barabbas. There was silence on the phone and then dad said, “You know, we don’t really know that much about Barabbas.” And I said, “I know, but I think he would still kind of be a fascinating study.” Dad said, “Well good luck with that, Chris.” You know what? It turns out...this week as I was studying…it turns out that we really don’t know that much about Barabbas. We really don’t. If you put everything we know about him together, you’d have about one sentence, maybe two if you like to be a little repetitive. We don’t know that much about Barabbas.

But what we do know tells us enough that we probably wouldn’t care much for him if we would’ve been living in those days. Let me just give you the different adjectives that the gospel writers give to describe this man, alright? Matthew refers to him this way, as a notorious prisoner. Mark calls him a murderer and an insurrectionist. (An insurrectionist terrorist is what he calls him.) John refers to him as a thief. You get the idea. He’s the bad guy. He’s the guy you want to see get it in the end. If you’re watching a movie over the life of Barabbas, what keeps you going through the movie is the thought that in the end this guy is going to get nailed.

Now if you’ve seen most Easter pageants, or most movies that have been made over the life of Christ, Barabbas is kind of portrayed as this psychotic killer. I mean, he’s kind of shown as a madman, but that’s probably not as accurate. You see, Barabbas’ crimes were politically motivated. He wanted to overthrow the Roman government and their authority over the Jewish people. He’s not just this serial killer that goes around murdering. No, he tried to build this riot, cause this rebellion against Rome, and he was sentenced to death for his crimes.