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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
The Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds name Pontius Pilate as the one under whom the Lord Jesus Christ suffered and was crucified, so we might not usually think of Pontius Pilate as one who handed-over Jesus for you. Yet, in the last verse of tonight’s Reading (Matthew 27:3-26; confer Mark 15:15), the Divinely-inspired St. Matthew refers to Pilate’s “delivering” Jesus to be crucified using the same Greek verb that is used elsewhere, we have seen the past three weeks, to refer to God the Father’s “giving up” Jesus for us (Romans 8:32), to Judas’s “betraying” Jesus to the Jewish Leaders (Matthew 26:47‑50), and to the Jewish Leaders’ “delivering over” Jesus to Pilate (Matthew 27:2). You may recall that Jesus Himself had prophesied that the Jewish Leaders would deliver Him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and shamefully treated and spit on and flogged and crucified (Matthew 20:18-19; Mark 10:33-34; Luke 18-31-33) and that in that context, Pontius Pilate arguably is the first and most-important of those Gentiles. And, as we heard tonight, eventually Pontius Pilate had Jesus scourged and delivered Him over to be crucified.
Tonight’s Reading does not say to whom Pontius Pilate “delivered-over” Jesus, though the very next verse, which we did not hear this week, refers to soldiers’ taking Jesus (Matthew 27:27; confer Mark 15:16). In this context, soldiers certainly make sense. Later, when Saul was ravaging the Christian Church, going house by house, dragging off men and women, he was “handing-over” them to prison (Acts 8:3; confer Acts 22:4). Similarly, after Herod the king killed James the brother of John with the sword, he arrested Peter also and put him in prison, having “handed-over” Peter to four squads of soldiers to guard him (Acts 12:4). Of course, in Jesus’s case, the soldiers were not to hold Jesus but to crucify Him. The Divinely-inspired St. John’s Gospel account refers to Pontius Pilate’s “delivering-over” Jesus to the Jewish Leaders (John 19:15-16), but the Jewish Leaders were hardly the ones who then took and crucified Jesus (John 19:16-17). The Divinely-inspired St. Luke’s Gospel account refers to Pontius Pilate’s “delivering-over” Jesus to the “their will” (Luke 23:25), which at least one commentator says means the will of the people (Büchsel, TDNT 2:169) but seems better to mean the Jewish Leaders’ will to crucify Jesus, especially in contrast to Pontius Pilate’s own will to free Jesus (Luke 23:13-24).
As we heard in tonight’s Reading, having taken water, Pontius Pilate washed his hands before the crowd, saying that he was innocent of Jesus’s blood and telling the crowd to see to Jesus’s crucifixion themselves, as the Jewish Leaders had told Judas to see to his atoning for his sin of betraying innocent blood himself. Pontius Pilate’s declaration hardly made him innocent of Jesus’s blood, just as the crowds’ answer about Jesus’s blood being on them and upon their children hardly made them any more or less guilty than they would have been anyway. Rather, the sin of the world—Pilate’s sin, the crowds’ sin, your sin, my sin—is the reason Jesus died. As we have discussed previously, Jesus was delivered-up for our trespasses. Because of our sinful nature and actual sin, we deserve temporal and eternal death, but, when, led by the Holy Spirit, we are sorry for our sin and trust God to forgive our sin, then God does just that: He forgives our sinful nature and all our actual sin, whatever our sin might be. God forgives us for Jesus’s sake.
In some ways, the crucifixion of Jesus, who Pontius Pilate’s wife rightly identified as a righteous man, “in exchange” for the release of Barabbas, who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder (Luke 23:35; confer Lenski, ad loc Luke 23:35, pp.1123-1124), is like the crucifixion of Jesus, God in human flesh, “in exchange” for our release from sin and its consequence of eternal death (Arndt, ad loc Luke 23:25, p.464). As we sang to Jesus in tonight’s Opening Hymn (Lutheran Service Book 420:6), “Thou hast suffered great affliction And hast borne it patiently, Even death by crucifixion, Fully to atone for me”. And, as we sang in the Office Hymn (LSB 444:4), Jesus “bore for mortals’ sake The cross and all its pains”. Pontius Pilate scourged Jesus and delivered Him over to be crucified, but Jesus was crucified for us, in our place, the death that we deserved, and then, as was also prophesied, on the third day, He rose from the dead. Jesus did everything that was necessary for our salvation. When, we call out for the Lord to hear our prayer and let our cry come to Him, as we did in tonight’s Psalm (Psalm 102; antiphon: v.13), then He arises and has pity on us; He shows us His favor, His grace.
Elsewhere, the Lord’s pity, His compassion, leads to releasing a debtor, to forgiving the debt (Matthew 18:27; confer Luke 6:37; BAGD, p.96). In being released, Barabbas received a civil “pardon” from Pontius Pilate, but we receive far-greater spiritual forgiveness from God. That forgiveness comes as God’s Word is read and preached to groups such as this group, and that forgiveness comes as God’s Gospel is applied to individuals with water in Holy Baptism, with a pastor’s touch in Holy Absolution, and with bread that is the Body of Christ and wine that is the Blood of Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar. In all of these ways, God creates and sustains our faith, gives us the blessings that Christ won for us on the cross, and transforms us, so that we at least want to live as He would have us live, keeping His Commandments according to our various callings in life, and being prepared to be “handed-over” to our own deaths.
Jesus explicitly teaches us His followers that, as He was treated, so we will be treated. Jesus says people—parents, siblings, more-distant relatives, and friends—will “deliver‑over” us to courts and flog us and drag us before rulers for His sake, to bear witness before them and all who do not believe. Jesus says that, when they “deliver-over” us, we should not be anxious how we are to speak or what we are to say, for what we are to say will be given us in that hour, for it is not us who speak but the Holy Spirit’s speaking through us, and none of our adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict Him. And, Jesus says that we will be hated by all for His Name’s sake and that some of us will be “delivered-up” and put to death, but the one who endures to the end will be saved. (Matthew 10:17-22; 24:9-10; Mark 13:9-13; Luke 21:12-19.) Of course, we are not saved because we endure such persecution, but we are saved only because of God’s grace, through faith in His Son Jesus Christ, Who was “handed-over” for us. And, even though the kind of persecution that Jesus describes seems more and more imminent, even in places like our country, where we are supposed to have the free exercise of religion, we do not despair, for He rules over all for the sake of His Church (Ephesians 1:22).
The last three weeks and this week we considered God the Father, Judas, the Jewish Leaders, and Pontius Pilate as those who handed‑over Jesus for you, and, in the one Midweek Lenten Vespers Service still to come this year, we will consider one other answer to that thematic question “Who handed-over Jesus for you?” May God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit continue to bless our Lenten walk together, to the glory of His Holy Name.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +