John 18:28-38

Hey, everybody. Thanks for joining us.

Thanks for, continuing to be with us.

And, and, grateful to have you in this journey as we go

through the gospel of John.

We are moving toward the end of the 18th chapter.

We're in the 28th verse today.

As Jesus makes his stand before Pilate.

Pilate is a kind of regional governor

and plays a significant role

in the story of Jesus and,

interesting role in John's telling of it.

Let me read.

Let me read a chunk here, and then we'll come back and talk it through.

Then they took Jesus from Caiaphas to pilot's headquarters.

It was early in the morning.

They themselves did not enter the headquarters so

as to avoid ritual defilement and be able to eat the Passover.

So Pilate went out to them and said, what accusation do you bring against a man?

He answered, if this man were not.

They answered,

if this man were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you.

Pilot said to them, take him yourselves, and judge according to your law.

The Jews replied, we are not permitted to put anyone to death.

This was to fulfill what Jesus had said, and when it was indicated

the kind of death he was to die.

Then Pilate entered the headquarters again,

summoned Jesus, and asked him, are you the King of the Jews?

Jesus answered, you ask this on your own?

Or did others tell you about me?

Pilate replied, I'm not a Jew, am I your own nation?

And the chief priests have handed you over to me.

What have you done?

Jesus answered, my kingdom is not from this world.

If my kingdom were from this world,

my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews.

But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.

Pilate then said, so you are a king.

Jesus answered, you say that I am a king.

For this I was born, and for this I came into the world

to testify to the truth.

Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.

Pilate asked him, what is truth?

So, an interesting interaction here with Jesus.

And we have primarily seen Jesus with Roman or.

Excuse me, with Jewish figures.

Now we see power through the eyes of Rome, the empire.

Pilate represents the empire here.

And interestingly enough, right off the bat,

John gives us a little dig here that you could miss when he tells us

that the Jews, won't go into headquarters.

They won't go into pilots place, because that would render them unclean,

and they wouldn't be able to keep the holiday.

So there, there is this sense that these people who are against

Jesus are concerned about all the wrong things.

They're concerned about quote unquote, kind of keeping the rules.

And and, John, I think, in a subtle way, is showing us here

that they're misguided at best,

hypocritical at worst.

And then we have and we have, different versions

of the interactions with Pilate in all the Gospels.

But in all the Gospels, Pilate makes an appearance.

And here, Michael, the interchange between

Jesus and Pilate, I think, is telling.

Yeah. No, absolutely. And it's intentional.

The way that John has told this story, I think, is indicative

of a very soured relationship with the Jews that that came

many, many years, you know, even after the the writing of John as a book

that was received by the later church is fast fading that you see here

the pilot and the Jews being cast in these particular roles.

And I think it's subtle, but a pilot's response,

verse 35, I'm not a Jew, am I your own nation?

And the chief priests have handed you over to me.

And by the way,

this is the guy who had to leave the headquarters to go talk to those Jews

because they were unwilling to walk through the door.

I mean, this is this is a military political figure,

a man with immense power having to deal in the dirt

and rabble of sort of local politics and trying to manage very,

very hostile and very unwelcoming groups of people.

He's very much trying to keep it all tamped down and contained.

You can just imagine, I think, the way that John tells the story, it's

it doesn't have a ton of details, Clint, but you can just imagine

so easily how how upset this guy is.

He's got to leave the headquarters to come and mess with all of this

really minor detail kind of stuff of the people being upset.

And here, you know, hey, I'm not the Jew.

I'm not the problem.

I don't have a problem with you.

So why are you here, then?

Well, you know, ultimately convince me that you're a problem.

And I think it's fascinating because Jesus's response is classic.

For all of the teachings that Jesus offers in the gospel,

John, he does what he's always done, whether it be with his disciples

or the religious leaders or people before or after the miracle.

And he gives this red leather teaching in which he says, well,

my kingdom is not of this world.

And if it was, my followers would be fighting to keep me

from being handed over to, by the way, the Jews said not to you.

That's an interesting detail, but my kingdom, not from here.

But pilot has a very attuned ear to anyone

who claims that they aren't subject to Rome.

That's his job.

His allegiance is to the power structures that love his taxes,

that keeps the people from rioting, revolting, that keeps all the instability

because he's been put there for that task by Rome.

And it's fascinating that Jesus, with this whole kingdom talk, is dancing around.

It is right on the edge of the stuff that would make Pilate livid

that this is the kind of stuff that people get crucified for by saying

that they are going to rise above the true king,

which is the Caesar, which is the leadership in Rome.

But here Jesus is saying, yeah, but my kingdom's not from here.

And, you know, if it was, my people would be fighting

to preserve an earthly kingdom. But they're not.

It's a spiritual teaching given to the most physical, earthly, political guy.

And I just think there's a beautiful irony

in Pilate, who's upset with the Jewish leadership.

And the Jewish leadership was trying to manipulate Pilate to get their way.

And Jesus, who was doing something entirely different

than all of that, because he's testifying to the truth.

He it's a really messy, chaotic scene in the gospel.

It is. And I think

John gives us an interesting picture.

You know, there's going to be quite a bit more from Pilate.

We're only about, at this point, maybe only halfway

through the pilot material, maybe not even quite halfway through.

And pilot's role in the Gospel of

John is really interesting.

The question

is Pilate responsible?

Is Rome responsible?

Are the Jews responsible?

Each gospel maybe gives a slightly different nuance on that.

In John's gospel,

Pilate is,

I push back.

If you disagree, Michael, I would say Pilate is treated

relatively favorably.

He come, he converses with Jesus.

He tries to let him go.

In fact, on two different occasions in this narrative, that'll be

we'll see that, not tomorrow, but Thursday.

I think John

is continuing his tendency

to lay blame for what's happening to Jesus

squarely at the feet of the Jewish leaders.

And Pilate,

though he has political

and even some military power, he's really

kind of treated as a neutral in the way this story is told.

Now, it's possible that that because John is written later

and and John wants to soften

any thing that might anger the Roman government

and lead them to persecute the church even more than was already happening.

It could also be related to this idea that John

very much holds religious leaders accountable for what happened to Jesus,

and it could be a combination of both of those things. But,

I'll leave it.

I'll leave it to our our listeners as we get done

reading the whole story in the next days to come.

But I.

I feel like pilot

gets off the hook a little bit here in the Gospel of John.

I got to be careful that we don't get too far

from the text here with conjecture, but I want to see how you respond to this.

It seems to me that pilot is in

many ways right in his judgment of Jesus.

And this is what I mean by that.

Pilot is right that Jesus is not a political threat against Rome.

He's right that Jesus is not come to do the thing that the hundreds of rebels

before him have been trying to do, which is to rile the people up.

But yeah, Trump, because Jesus in this teaching is explicit.

My kingdom is not from here.

And and you know, I think pilots question verse 38 is a unique question

in the Gospel of John.

And I think that we need to pause and experience the weight of it.

Pilate asked him, what is truth?

And it's nearly the right question.

It is so close to the right question.

All that would need shape shifted would be who is truth

to be able to fully see what's happening in front of him?

But even what is truth?

Even that question?

It exposes a willingness and desire to hear

in a way that the Jewish leadership had never been portrayed

as allowing or a place that they've either been willing to consider going.

I think the fact that that you could read pilot as being cynical,

you could read him as in some ways, having given up the idea

that there is a foundation of truth that that one can live in.

Even that, though, is a kind of charitable portrayal of the man.

Because when he stands in front of Jesus and he asked that question whether or not

that's an earnest question, and he wants an answer, or whether

that's a throwaway question, and it's just simply, yeah, what is truth?

At the end of the day, he is engaging with a kind of depth

almost a humility that might not be the right word, but

certainly an openness to experiencing what's happening in front of him

that that the Jews have shown none of us up to this point in the story.

And is that a pass?

I don't know that it's a pass. I don't think so.

I just think it does portray him being

right about Jesus in a way that even the Jews are not.

Yeah, no, I don't think

I, I don't

think it would be accurate to say that

Pilate is innocent in John's betrayal.

Jesus is going to be flogged on his watch.

He's going I mean, Pilate has authority here, but

there's also a sense in which John paints Pilate as being backed into a corner.

And that's not unique to John.

The other gospels have some sense of that as well.

And really, again, I think it comes down to this idea of

while everyone may play a role,

it is clear that it certainly

in the Gospel of John, the driving force, are the religious leaders.

And, we we don't want to we don't want to get bogged down there.

Michael, I do think there's another important thing in this conversation.

Jesus and Pilot have my kingdom is not of this world.

John, as we've seen,

draws a division between the world and the kingdom.

And so Jesus is this rings very importantly,

I think, in the Gospel of John, my kingdom is a different kind of kingdom.

And and ironically, he says that to a man of earthly power

who probably doesn't get it, doesn't understand,

and for whom the question what is truth is also some

indication that he

doesn't know the answer to that.

But John again

loves this language, and I want you to notice,

even as we go through this narrative,

that this is told in such a way

that Jesus is always the one, ultimately

with authority and power and dignity.

Jesus is truth,

and therefore Jesus stands alone in the center.

And it is a reversal of how you would look.

You have chief priests and you have the regional governor working against you.

You are the victim.

You are at the bottom.

That's not true in this story. Not for John.

Jesus is

in control.

Jesus has an authority that he will not call upon, but it's above

those around him.

Jesus is innocent of what they're telling.

And so there's a lot happening in in the way that John writes this.

Yeah.

And there's another detail here I think need to point out in verse 37,

this, this talk of truth to your point is really helpful and illustrative.

It's important that we see the detail

when Jesus says it's for this purpose that I was born

for this, I came into the world to testify to the truth.

Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.

I, I think that we get caught up as Christians sometimes, Clint,

thinking that truth is propositional.

It's a it's a bunch of words and statements

and the correct order and the the correct weight.

I think that we, we like to think of truth as ideas

that need to be rightly ordered and enacted.

But in this story, I just want to make sure that we see this,

that we belong to the truth, right?

That that we ultimately are people for whom

the truth claims us.

And the the nature of the person who belongs to the truth

is that we listen to the voice of Jesus, that that's very different

than sort of this modern conception that we have, that I know the truth.

I speak the truth.

How in Jesus's portrayal of truth we belong to the truth,

which is God, that God owns and holds

us, that that's the gift, that now the task is to listen.

The task is then to hear

and then to speak and testify to the truth that we also have seen.

That is a it's a nuanced view, but I really think that truth

is relational in this story.

While it is framed as what is truth, pilot,

you're so close because the one who belongs to the truth.

And if you would listen to his voice, you might also belong to.

That's right.

I mean, that's the amazing tension of this text that instead of

can we cram the right words and propositional ideas into your head,

it's know, are you in relationship with the one who has claimed you?

That's what truth. Is.

I think in a really skillful way.

Michael.

John is bringing us as we near the end of the gospel,

bringing us back around to where we started.

What what did we just a couple of verses here from the very

first chapter, verse ten, he was in the world.

The world came to be through him, yet the world did not know him.

Even his own people did not accept him.

And then if we read verse 14, the word became flesh lived among us.

We have seen his glory, the glory of the father's only son,

full of grace and truth.

So I think

John is is ringing bells

that were foundational in the very beginning of this gospel.

And now we see them playing out in the

the person of Jesus and the work of Jesus.

And we we see this,

I think, in a really in a really powerful way, this connection

between where John started and where Jesus ends up.

I don't know how you could go through a study with John.

You can end this study easily by saying, whoa, that's a lot.

That's a lot detail that that, you know, that's hard to follow.

Or sometimes it was hard to read. Like all that's fair.

I don't know how you finish this book without admitting it's masterfully written

from beginning to end, that it it coheres through the whole.

And I think that it's amazing how Jesus doesn't change

when Jesus is standing in front of the religious powers,

and when Jesus is standing in front of the military political powers,

Jesus is the same who he represents remains constant.

And there's a kind of groundedness in John's portrayal whether Jesus is

turning water into wine, or whether Jesus was revealing God's plan

to a Samaritan woman, or or whether Jesus stands in front of the man

who has the power and will ultimately use the power to take his life from him.

Jesus is not different.

He is who he is, and he testifies to what he's been called to do

because he's the Son of God.

And John's telling Coheres, yeah.

There is a sense in which John is very, very cohesive.

We he he doesn't take a lot of detail.

He comes back to home base very often, and it's easy

to see what's important to John for us to know about Jesus.

I think that's I think that's totally fair.

We we have more Pilate to come.

So certainly I hope you'll continue along with us.

In the study and, mindful, yes, that tomorrow

we are out, do some to some scheduling here at the church.

So, certainly hope you you'll join us for the live study on Thursday.

And of course, give this video a like if it's been helpful,

it helps others find it in their own study actually years to come.

So really appreciate it.

We look forward to seeing you on Thursday.

Thanks everybody.