In Your Place; Mark 14:43-65; 15:1-15; 5th Lent; 5th of 7 in “All for You” series; The Promise; 04-02-06; Darryl Bell
For five weeks now we’ve been looking at all Jesus did for you in those last few, fateful days of his life on earth. It’s all based on the last three chapters of Mark’s gospel. He was anointed with perfume in preparation for his burial. He shared his Last Supper with his disciples, predicting that he would be broken and spilled out for them. He endured one of his closest friends denying that he even knew him. How that must have hurt! Last week we saw his struggle in prayer in the garden, asking for some way out of this. But no way out was provided, so he submitted, “Not my will, but your will be done.”
Today I want to just narrate the story as well as I can as Jesus is arrested and brought to trial. Jesus is really the one in charge throughout this trial. Having settled the matter in prayer in Gethsemane, he is not a “victim” but a willing volunteer for your sake and mine. He chooses to endure this for us.
At the end of today’s message we’ll take time for you to ask questions or share insights that come to you as I’m talking. So if questions come to mind, please hold on to them and ask them at the end.
Jesus is still speaking to his disciples late at night in the quiet garden of Gethsemane as Judas steps out of the dark-ness. He had left them while they were having dinner, and now he returns. But he doesn’t come alone. With him is a crowd of misguided rabble sent by the ruling council, the Sanhedrin. They’re armed with swords and clubs, as if they are chasing down a terrorist revolutionary. It’s ironic, because Jesus had castigated the temple as a den of robbers. Now temple goons come to arrest him as if he is a robber.
Judas walks up to Jesus as if nothing is wrong, and greets him with a kiss on the cheek, a sign of friendship and re-spect. Suddenly there is a commotion as the arresting party scrambles to surround Jesus and subdue him. In the confusion Peter grabs a sword and slashes at the attackers. He cuts off the ear of the high priest’s servant—probably aiming for the head, and the servant ducked—but before he can do any more, Jesus stops him. Luke reports that Jesus even heals the slave’s ear.
Jesus asks them, Am I some dangerous criminal, that you come armed with swords and clubs to arrest me? Why did-n’t you arrest me in the Temple? I was there teaching every day. (Mark 14:48-49). Notice, the crowd seems tense and anxious. Jesus is calm. He doesn’t run. He doesn’t resist. He had settled the matter in prayer. Now he was ready to go through with this and lay down his life. In fact, notice he confronts them. Who’s in charge here? It appears that he is.
He doesn’t resist as they pull out their ropes and bind his hands and feet. As their attention is strongly fixed on him, his disciples quietly dissolve into the darkness and are gone. They don’t have the same calm resolve he does because while he prayed, they slept. He says, These things are happening to fulfill what the Scriptures say about me. Just a few hours earlier he had quoted the prophet Zechariah: God will strike the Shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered (13:7). And they are. They run for their lives.
Mark inserts an odd reference to a young man who had been following along behind wearing only a linen outer garment. As they grabbed him the shirt tore away, and he ran away na-ked. What’s that all about? This is probably Mark himself. Outer garments were normally made of wool. A linen garment would indicate someone of greater means, a wealthier person. We know the disciples used to meet at Mark’s mother’s house in Je-rusalem (Acts 12:12), so she must have had some wealth to own a house. The last supper may have been at that same house. When Judas returned with the crowd, he would have gone to where he had last seen Jesus—that house. Seeing that Jesus had already left, Judas moved on to the next place where he expected to find him—Gethsemane. Meanwhile, Mark had been in bed. When the crowd came, he realized what was hap-pening, and he grabbed the linen outer garment, threw it on quickly, and took off running to warn Jesus. He didn’t get there soon enough, and was nearly apprehended. We could say he “barely escaped.” (He ran away naked. He “barely” escaped.)
They roughly take Jesus as their prisoner, and they go across the valley and into the city. The streets are quiet and dark as they take him to the high priest’s house. Most of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council, have been called together, and they are ready to try him. They take him upstairs to a makeshift courtroom for this highly unusual trial in the middle of the night. Actually Jesus endures two trials, one Jewish and one Roman. That’s because the Roman occupiers had given the Jews wide latitude in making and enforcing laws, but they withheld the right of capital punishment for themselves. The Jews could enforce many things, but they could not legally put anyone to death.
The council has already decided that Jesus is guilty and must die. Now they just need to find witnesses who will testify against Jesus to justify their predetermined verdict. In this sys-tem there are no prosecutors. The witnesses serve as prosecu-tors, and the defendant speaks for himself. In this case they have assembled a lot of people to testify against Jesus, but their stories don’t agree. The law requires that two or more witnesses must agree in order to bring a conviction. Finally some men get up and say, We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this Temple made with human hands, and in three days I will build another, made without human hands’” (Mark 14:58). But even they don’t get their stories straight. Actually, Jesus had said, Destroy this tem-ple, and in three days I will raise it up (John 2:19), but he was talking about his own body, not the Jerusalem Temple.
This continues for some time, and the high priest and council are getting frustrated. They need a conviction. So Caiaphas, the high priest, takes matters into his own hands. He stands up and asks, Well, aren’t you going to answer these charges? What do you have to say for yourself? But Jesus an-swers with silence. Again, it appears that he is the one who is really in control. They can’t make him testify.
So Caiaphas asks, Are you the Messiah, the Son of the blessed God? Now you can hear a pin drop as every eye is fixed on Jesus. He takes a deep breath and answers, I am. Wow! If you want to see a bomb detonated, that would do it. The room is abuzz with council members chattering with one another. “How could he make such a claim?” Jesus goes on, And you will see me, the Son of Man, sitting at God’s right hand in the place of power and coming back on the clouds of heaven. These are allusions to two familiar Old Testament promises about the Messiah (Psalm 110:1; Dan 7:13).
The high priest is outraged! He tears his clothes as a sign of shock and indignation. Nobody can believe it. “Why do we need other witnesses?” he asks. You have all heard his blas-phemy. What is your verdict?” And they all condemned him to death. All they see is a hick from Galilee. To imagine him as God’s Messiah, let alone as one who exercises the power of God, must have seemed laughable to them if it weren’t so of-fensive (Garland, 564).
This hearing, that made a mockery of justice, ends with a mockery of Jesus. They spit on him. They hit him. They blindfold him and then punch him in the face. “Prophesy if you’re really the Messiah,” they say. “Who hit you?” There was a common understanding that the Messiah didn’t need to see people to identify them. He could identify them by smell alone. It is inter-esting that the blindfolded Jesus is the only one who really “sees,” and his oppressors are blinded by their hatred (Garland).
Very early in the morning a procession winds from the high priest’s house through the Jerusalem streets to the resi-dence of Pilate. Actually Pilate’s normal residence was in Caesarea, on the Mediterranean coast, but when there was the potential for any kind of disturbance in Jerusalem, like at a reli-gious feast, he went there personally to keep a close watch on things. It wouldn’t be good for word to get back to Rome about disorder in Palestine. The Roman prefect had the power of life and death over people who were not Roman citizens. There was no criminal code for wrongdoers who were not citizens, so the governor was free to make up his own rules. And Pilate was known for his arbitrary and cruel actions.
The charge of blasphemy, which the Jewish council had imposed, mattered not at all to the Romans. They didn’t care about such things. That was an internal religious matter, and they wouldn’t do anything about it. So the Sanhedrin had to put a different spin on it. If Jesus is the Messiah, that means he is the King of the Jews. That means one thing to Jews, but it has an entirely different connotation to Rome. It sounds like high treason against the sovereign power of Rome. Jesus appears as a competitor to Caesar. That’s a charge that will fly in the Roman world.
The procession enters Pilate’s palace at the break of dawn, which may seem like an ungodly hour to many of us. If you want to make him mad, make him get up that early. But in fact, the governor’s typical workday began at first light. Later in the day was time for leisure. As the procession of priests and religious leaders makes its way into the hearing area, they push Jesus to the front. He is bound hand and foot, giving the im-pression that he is a dangerous criminal. They have already briefed Pilate on the charges. In the Jewish court, the whole council decides on the case. In the Roman court, the governor alone decides.
So the trial begins. Pilate asks Jesus, Are you the King of the Jews? Jesus literal answer is, “You say.” It’s enigmatic. It could be translated, “You say so,” or “Whatever you say.” Jesus already knows where this is going to end up, and he isn’t trying to defend himself. He’s not a victim. He’s a willing volunteer.
One after another the priests in the crowd shout out ac-cusations. “He’s dangerous.” “He leads a rebellion.” “He’s op-posed to Caesar.” And Jesus just stands there. Pilate looks at him, puzzled and amazed. Aren’t you going to say something? What about all these charges against you? But Jesus says noth-ing. If the accused didn’t defend himself, Roman law required that he be found guilty. Yet Jesus stands in silence. He is giving his life. As he said in John 10: No one can take my life from me. I lay down my life voluntarily (10:18 NLT).
Trials like this were normally held in public, with cheering or jeering crowds pressing the magistrate to rule their way. Just a few days before, the Jewish leaders were afraid of the crowds because of Jesus’ popularity. Now this crowd has become their willing pawn, and things turn ugly.
The governor knows that the charges against Jesus are not substantial, but that he was turned over out of envy or jeal-ousy. He has a custom every year at Passover time to release one prisoner that the people choose. Perhaps this can be a way out for Jesus. One of the prisoners they are holding is notorious. He’s charged with murder and insurrection. Pilate knows he’s a bad apple. His name is Barabbas. (I’ve normally pronounced it Bar-AB-bas, but I think in Aramaic it is pronounced Bar-ab-BAS.) We learned last week that “abba” is the Aramaic word for father or daddy. “Bar” means “son of.” So literally Barabbas means “son of a father.” In that sense he represents all of us. We are all sons or daughters of a father. The choice was be-tween Barabbas, the son of a father, and Jesus, the Son of the Father. From Pilate’s point of view Barabbas is a major criminal. But the people may not see it the same way. He’s probably a social bandit. To the rich he is a terrorist, but to the poor he is Robin Hood. If he has stood up to Rome in an insurrection, that makes him a hero to the common folk.
In any case, the priests infiltrate the crowd and convince them to ask for the release of Barabbas, not Jesus. Imagine what Barabbas is feeling. He has already been convicted. He knows he’s guilty and is destined to die. But by this quirk of cir-cumstance he’s about to be set free. And an innocent man will hang on a cross prepared for him. He’s the only person who can say that Jesus physically took his place on the cross.
But spiritually Jesus took that place on the cross for every one of us. He was our substitute. We were destined to die for our sins, but he took our place as a willing volunteer. He said, No one can take my life from me. I lay down my life volun-tarily (John 10:18 NLT). The Bible says, Christ …suffered when he died for our sins once for all time. He never sinned, but he died for sinners that he might bring us safely home to God. (1 Peter 3:18). This principle of substitution appears throughout Scripture in the sacrificial system God ordained. Worshipers would bring an animal to be sacrificed. As it was being killed, they would lay their hands on its head, identifying their sins with it. Its death substituted for them. Because it died, they could live. Similarly, Jesus became the substitute for all humanity. The Bible says, He was handed over to die because of our sins (Romans 4:25). It’s an awesome thing to consider. The perfect, innocent Son of God, the only person who ever lived a totally righteous life, laid down his life so that broken, imperfect, rebel-lious people like us could live. It makes no sense apart from love. God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners (Rom 5:8 NLT).
When Abraham Lincoln died, his body was placed on a horse-drawn caisson for the funeral procession. Crowds lined the route of the procession, his admirers hoping to get one last look at this man who had been so instrumental in our country’s history. One black mother, who knew what it meant to be a slave, and appreciated Lincoln’s work in her behalf, picked up her little child. He lifted him up above the crowd and said, “Take a good look, because he died for you.” That’s my hope for each of us today. We see Jesus enduring this trial and the flogging and the crucifixion. “Take a good look, because he died for you.”
Pilate has yielded any moral authority he might have had to the crowd. They have demanded the release of Barabbas. That still doesn’t mean he has to kill Jesus. But he has had sev-eral run-ins with the chief priest, Caiaphas, and politically he can’t afford to cross him. So, moral coward that he is, he asks the crowd to decide the fate of Jesus. “Crucify him!” they shout. “Crucify him!” “Why,” Pilate asks, “what crime has he commit-ted?” But what they crowd lacks in judgment they make up for with volume. They shout all the louder, “Crucify him!”
So, anxious to please the crowd and afraid to stand up for what is right, Pilate gives the order to release Barabbas, and he orders Jesus to be flogged and crucified. Many people died from flogging before they ever got to the cross. The flog was a short handled whip with long strips of leather in it. Embedded in the leather strips were bits of bone and lead that would cut and tear flesh brutally. If you saw The Passion of the Christ, you can’t forget the brutality of the flogging. It’s an indelible image. It’s amazing that human beings could do such a thing to another human being. But they did. And Jesus willingly endured it for you.
David Garland notes that the violence of renegades like Barabbas continued in the decades that followed until it finally erupted into a full-scale war with Rome. Rome invaded Pales-tine and destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple and most of the people who lived there. The leaders had been afraid of Jesus because supposedly he was a threat to the Temple. And they released Barabbas. The violent ways of men like him eventually reigned terror on the land and led to the destruction of the very Temple that they were trying to protect. It’s an interesting irony.
What’s all this mean for us? Sometimes we talk about somebody being “in your face,” because they are bugging you or confronting you. Jesus isn’t really in your face in that sense, although maybe he should be. But he was definitely “in your place” on the cross. I hope we will be moved with awe and ap-preciation to Jesus for what he has done. He willingly took our place in death. Jesus endured a trumped up trial and took a criminal’s place for you. The only proper response is love and gratitude and appreciation and devotion.
“What language shall I borrow to thank you, dearest friend,
for this, your dying sorrow, your mercy without end?
Lord, make me yours forever, a loyal servant true,
and let me never, never outlive my love for you.”
