HAND WASHING

A Sermon Based Upon Matthew 27: 11-26

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Fourth Sunday of Lent,   March 15th, 2015

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." (Mat 27:24 NRS)

Several years ago, I had a young man who had once been a lawyer in the church where I was pastor in Greensboro.  I’ll never forget how nice and caring the guy he was.  He was newly married, had a new baby and he rescued greyhound dogs.  He had strong faith in Jesus Christ, tender love for his family and had a big, formerly abused dog walking around in his living room. 

Quiet, abused, big, needy dogs make me nervous, but he assured me, when the dog eyed me, and I eyed the dog, that he didn’t want me for lunch, but was only starved for love.  As I watched the dog out of one eye and we talked, I wondered why he wasn’t practicing law anymore.  It finally came up in our conversation and I asked ‘why’ he had left the law practice to work for an insurance company.  I’ll never forget this answer:  “I quit working as an attorney, because I wanted to remain a Christian.” 

The problem we have with our legal system not the system, but the problem is we have a system that is built by the people, is of the people and is for the people.   As long as we, the people are ethically concerned and morally motivated, our system works.  But when the people lose their moral compass, or are naively taken advantage of by the professionals who work the system to their own advantages, the system fails.  No system rises above the people who are running it.  When people become corrupted by power, or by political or monetary gain, no system works justly.    

Legally, the trial of Jesus, is one of the most ironic in human history.  As the world passed moral judgment upon Jesus, it was really passing judgment upon itself.   This was a ‘monkey trial’ if there ever was one.  While we certainly can’t learn how to fix our own legal system by studying this trial, we might certainly learn something about what can be broken in us.

AN  EMPOWERED CHOICE

The text begins with this unforgettable scene:  “Now Jesus stood before the governor” (27:11).  Matthew’s wants to etch in our minds the complete power this governor had.  Pilate’s power was full and seemingly unlimited.  Matthew has already shown how all the Jewish religious and legal leadership put aside all their difference to ‘confer together against Jesus’ to ‘bring about his death.’ (27:1).   Since these Jewish leaders had no legal right to enforce a death penalty, they had to ‘hand him over to Pilate” (27:1-2). 

Life or death was placed in Pilate’s hands so that he had to decide.   Here’s where the great irony comes in.  Even though Pilate was the highest ranking official of Rome in that region, what he does next has little to do with his “official” duty.   It is the human choice that keeps coming out.   Whether it be Judas, Peter, the Jewish elders or Pilate himself,  they each had to make a choice about Jesus and the choice they each made was to hand him over.  Do you see it?  Judas handed Jesus over to the Jews.  The Jews handed him over to Pilate and Rome, and finally,  Pilate handed Jesus over to the will of the crowd.  In each of these characters around the cross, we observe them making a choice just like we are given the power to make our own choices.   No one was holding sword over Judas’ head saying, you must betray Jesus.  No one was forcing Peter to deny him.  No real charge was making the High Priest want him dead.   And more than anyone else, in Pilate we see a governor who should have been free to make his own verdict. Each of them were freely choosing,  deciding and self-determining people.  Fate is never as powerful as their ability to decide or to choose what they would do.

When we choose to live and work as Missionaries in Europe, we seldom had family or friends to visit, but when they did come, we would take vacation and travel together.  Once, when Teresa’ Aunt and Uncle came to see us, they wanted to see Paris, so we got in the car and drove.   But as we approached Paris, we noticed the traffic slowing.  It was becoming a traffic jam that was slowly coming to a halt about 20 miles outside of Paris.   Instead of staying on the Interstate, I decided to take the first exit to stop and eat.  While there, I learned that the traffic snarl was due to a strike (the French love striking) and that all routes into Paris were blocked by tractors and transfer trucks.  The French government had just introduced a point system on driver’s licenses, so in protest, the farmers and truck drivers blocked all the roadways into the capital.  Paris was totally closed by land and by air.  

Being young and adventurous, and not a little self-assured, I turned and asked our guests, if they wanted to continue to Paris.  When they answered ‘yes’,  I found a detailed map and started finding back roads, pig paths, and even driving through parking lots and empty fields to find a some way around the road block into Paris.  After a few hours  we arrived in the center of Paris, and I learned that people in cars and buses had been stranded on the interstate and at airports for days, even doing without food.  They choose not to get off the main road and were stuck.  We literally took  “A Road Less Traveled” and arrived.   The power we had to  arrive at our destination, was all about the choice.

When we look at the choice Pilate, Judas, or the High Priests had to make with Jesus, there is only one way the New Testament limits their choice.   If you go back to when Jesus was betrayed by Judas and arrested, a disciple (Peter) pulls out a sword to resist.   Jesus objects to any kind of resistance to the choices being made, saying “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?   But how then, would the scriptures be fulfilled, which must happen this way (26:53)?

What do you think Jesus means by scriptures being fulfilled by that ‘which must happen’?  Does Jesus mean that the Messiah had to be betrayed, denied, rejected and crucified to save his people?   What kind of God would send his Son to die such a horrible death?   What kind of God would work out a plan of salvation that involved such horrendous, ugly, cruel sacrifice?  People today look at the crucifixion of Jesus and say,  Uck!   People today resist any kind judgment from God or anyone, and say, Uck!   So, how can Jesus say this ‘must happen?’   Did God plan everything that happened to Jesus, or were humans empowered to freely choose?   A lot of people today want no part in such a ‘bloody’,  violent, messy religion where things have to happen a certain way.   They think themselves better than following a God who demands blood to show true love.

Part of the answer to all the religious confusion may come in the choice Jesus made as he said: “Do you not think I can appeal to my Father?”  By going to the cross Jesus was doing what he had to do.  The Chief Priests were also doing what they had to do.  Finally,  Pilate was doing what he had to do.  Who was really calling the shots?   Here,  I’m reminded of what used to happen when my Father was playing checkers with me as a little boy.  My Father was a good at checkers, and it might sound cruel what he sometimes did to me, but it was life lessons.  When he’d out-maneuver me and trap me, he’d say,  “Now, Son, you have to make your move”.  Knowing what the next move would mean, I’d hesitate and resist, “But I don’t want to.”  “Son, you have to take the jump!  “You have to take your move’.   You cannot, not make your choice.

However you view what happened to Jesus, the story calls upon us to make the next move too.  Judas, the Priests, and Pilate himself, have fallen into the hands of a righteous, holy, and God, who will not use His power against them.   God empowers them, just like he empowers us to make the next move.  When you face truth head on, you can’t  ‘play the game’ without making and living the choice we make; good or bad, easy or hard.     You cannot, not choose.  You have to choose.  Even not choosing is a choice.  Like my trip to Paris, circumstances, situations, opportunities, and the Lord of Life himself, calls for us to make our choice—and to know that we will not only live with it, but we will also die with it.  You can choose get stuck in life, or you can seize the moment and take another route.   The poet was right: “I took the road less traveled by, and it has made all the difference?”   Through Jesus, God calls us to make our choice.

INDECISIVE RESPONSE

The one thing we should not do in life is become indecisive.  But that is exactly what Pilate does.   Pilate makes the choice not to choose.   Ironically, the one with the most power, legally and politically; the one who holds all the cards and the keys to life and death; he is the one who proves to be the weakest character of all.  With all his power, Pilate appears helpless.  Can’t you see it?  Pilate hardly gets a single word out of Jesus.  Jesus says almost nothing to him.  Pilate is also being easily manipulated by the Jewish leaders and the High Priest.   This governor, with all Rome’s power at his disposal, is the one who refuses to govern, and he is the one who fully and finally gives in to the fickle wishes of the crowd.   He is the one who knows the choice that needs to be made, but he doesn’t make it.  Instead, “He washes his hands.” 

And did the stain come out?   Even today, in the oldest creed of the church, we still say that Jesus ‘suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried.”  Can you imagine being remembered for who you wrongly murdered?  When it comes to the death, suffering and dying of the innocent, those who try to wash their own hands of their responsibility toward others and toward God will also find that their hands will not come clean.  You can’t wash your own hands clean.   Remember Lady MacBeth’s powerful words in Shakesphere’s play.  No matter how much she cursed, the spot would not come out.

We all want to put our own hands in the wash basin with Pilate and claim we have nothing to do with the darkness of our world, just like Pilate claimed to be innocent of the dark in this world.   We blame the Jews.  We blame the Romans.  We blame the Democrats, or we blame the Republicans, or the Presbyterians, or the Methodist.  Or we might not even care at all, and simply try to wash our hands, but when we do this, our hands may never come clean.  None of us can wash our hands of the responsibility of the choices we make.  None of us can wash our own hands clean of having no responsivity to do the good that we should do.  Pilate thinks he side steps the truth without doing what he needed to do, but when he tried to remain neutral, which was only a political move to secure his freedom, by not choosing he made the worst choice of all.  

DISASTROUS RESULT

In Pilate, we see exactly what killed Jesus and what still kills Jesus.   Jesus was killed by neglect--washing the hands of responsibility.  No one wanted to be caught killing Jesus so they all ‘handed him over’.  Judas handed him over to the Jews, the Jews handed him over to Pilate,  then some say Pilate handed him over the Herod,  and then Herod handed him over to Pilate again.  But finally, Pilate handed him over to the crowd.   Who then killed Jesus?  Who is the crowd?  That’s us!  When we neglect his truth, we too hand him over to die in us by not choosing.  

So make this note:  It was not money, greed, or wrong-doing that finally killed Jesus, but it was doing nothing that killed him.  Doing nothing still kills Jesus.   While we may try to find the bright side of what happened; that through Jesus death we are saved from our sins, we must be careful to understand that it is not 'our' killing of Jesus that saves us, but it is that he was willing to die.   God did not put the fateful choice to kill Jesus into the heart of Pilate, but Pilate allowed Jesus to be handed over to the crowd to be killed at their wishes, because Pilate had no heart and he washed his hands of all responsibility and did nothing.   

Isn't  it also true that sometimes, if not most of the time, the worst thing we can do is to choose not to choose.   Think about a teen who doesn't want to grow up and get a job and make something of themselves.    Think about a person who has something going on, but doesn't want to go to the doctor and then, when they do go, realizes that they have waited too long.   Think about two people who are hurting each other in a relationship, but they won't seek help, and then their relationship falls apart, or they get stuck.   Think about the person who knows they are not living as they should live, but does nothing but allow their lives to continue a downward spiral.   In most all areas of our lives, the worst thing we may do, is to put the matter off, to decide to choose by choosing to do nothing.

What a way to be remembered---as a person who refused to do did not do what should have been done.   Who wants to be remembered that way?   Once a friend reminded the great preacher Charles Spurgeon that his ill health, was due to the fact of how hard he worked away in his youth.  "You preached 10 times in one week, almost all year long, year after year, and you wore yourself out." 

"Oh yes, Spurgeon said,  it may be so and I don't regret it in the least!   Thank God I preached with all my might ever where I got the chance, and I would do it now, as I did in earlier days, if I could regain the strength."

"At least," Sprugeon concluded,  I don't have the misery of saying I wasted my opportunities and spent my days at ease...",  which meant, he was glad he was able to exonerate himself of saying to himself that he did nothing.  The people who do nothing have nothing to fear except 'that their sin will find them out'.  (www.spurgeongems.org/vols31-33/chs1916.pdf)

When we do nothing by refusing to answer the refuse voice of truth, and give in to the voice of the crowd, like Pilate, we too kill the Jesus who would save us, by neglect.  We don't kill Jesus because of what we do, but we do kill Jesus by what we don’t do.  If we wash our hands of our responsibility, the stain won't come out. 

So, don’t listen to the crowd.  Crowds are fickle.  The alternative to the crowd is to listen to Jesus and to follow Jesus.  Amen.