Matthew 27:11-26

Matthew 27:11-26 Pilate questions Jesus and sentences him without finding him guilty

Pilate was given authority over Judea as a military governor from AD 26 to 36, so he is not new to the position when Jesus shows up in his court in AD 30 (or 33 according to some scholars).  His headquarters were in Caesarea, on the Mediterranean coast, but he knew it was important to be in Jerusalem during the Passover feast due to the huge crowds that gathered there.  He was an unsympathetic person, not well liked, and unnecessarily cruel, which eventually led to his being recalled to Rome.  He apparently considered his primary duty to be to keep the lid on the pressure-cooker of Judea, where there were many fervent and sometimes resistant Jews living under Roman occupation.  Sadly, his methods often inflamed the population rather than pacifying them.

Pilate’s formal title was “prefect,” a military governor.  Some translations refer to him as the “procurator,” a generic term indicating that a person has been given power but is subordinate to a higher authority.  Pilate had received power from the emperor and was responsible to him for what went on in Judea.

In verse 11, what does Pilate ask Jesus?  Why would he care about that particular question?

Matthew is providing a condensed version of what happened.   The Gospel of John provides a much fuller account of the multiple hearings that led to Jesus’s execution.

Matthew does not state the formal charges that were brought against Jesus.  We see them in Luke 23:2. The charges included that he claimed to be “the Messiah, a king.”  Pilate asks about the claim that he is a king because that would be an unacceptable claim in the Roman Empire.  He would be much less concerned about whether Jesus claimed to a messiah.  He would consider that to be mainly a religious squabble among the Jews unless it was accompanied by acts of insurrection against the Empire.

How does Jesus answer in verse 11?

When asked if he is a king, Jesus again the same “You say so” that we have seen him use previously.  Again, a straight “Yes” would be misleading because he was not claiming to be the king of the Jews in the military sense that Pilate would have understood the term to mean.

We often get ourselves into trouble by saying too much or by saying things that people can misinterpret and that we could have said better.  What can we learn from Jesus about saying the right things in the right ways at the right times?

How does Barabbas come into the story starting in verse 16)?

The claim that Pilate had a practice of allowing one prisoner to go free during the feast is not mentioned in sources outside of the Gospels, but it is a prominent element of the story in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John.

Verse 18 tells us that Pilate had reached a conclusion as to why Jesus was brought before him.  What does he think is going on?

If that is what Pilate thought, do you think he should have handled Jesus’s case differently?

What happens to Herod’s wife (verse 19)?

It looks like God is giving Pilate every opportunity to do the right thing and refuse to do the wrong thing.  Does God also give us little signals when we are contemplating doing something wrong, or does he just sit back and watch as we wrestle with sin?  What is God’s attitude toward you as you are grappling with temptation?

Reread Matthew 27:20-26.

Who do you think these “crowds” were, that were there in Pilate’s court rather than focusing on their Passover celebration?

Why do you think they asked for Barabbas to be released rather than Jesus?

What does verse 23 tell us about whether Pilate thinks Jesus is innocent or guilty?

How does verse 24 further show what Pilate thinks about Jesus?

If Pilate thought that Jesus was innocent, why didn’t he release him?

We might wonder how concerned Pilate is about justice.  Verse 24 offers some insight about his biggest concern here.  What does Pilate care about most?

Matthew’s is the only Gospel where Pilate washes his hands (verse 24).  What is Pilate’s point in doing that?

The Jews had a practice of washing one’s hands to show innocence.  It arose from an instruction in the Mosaic Law in Deuteronomy 21:1-9, which said that if a corpse was found in the wilderness and no one had any idea who killed the person, the elders of the nearest town were directed to sacrifice a heifer and wash their hands over it as a sign of their innocence, asking God not to hold against the people the guilt of the shedding of innocent blood.  Pilate is unlikely to have had any interest in following a Jewish ritual, and the circumstances in Deuteronomy don’t fit Jesus’s situation.  However, this gesture by Pilate has come down through the ages as a symbol of professed innocence.

Pilate further underscores his innocence by saying to the crowd in verse 24, “See to it yourselves” (27:24), the same thing the chief priests had said to Judas when he repented of betraying innocent blood (27:4).  He is saying, “Don’t put the blame on me.”  However, who ultimately hands Jesus over to be crucified – the crowd or Pilate?

Can a person in power get off the hook or absolve themselves from something by washing their hands of it?  When is it appropriate for them to say, “Don’t blame me,” and when is a person in power still morally responsible for what they allow others to do?

Verse 25 has a statement that has been misused throughout history to justify discrimination, mistreatment, and oppression of Jews.  In Matthew’s telling, the people say, “His blood be on us and on our children.”  In Western history, how have Christian churches and individual Christians used this statement as a bogus reason to treat Jews badly?

Jews in later generations were falsely called “Christ-killers,” discriminated against, kept from good jobs and neighborhoods, forced into ghettos, evicted from their homes, murdered in vicious pogroms, and ultimately subjected to the Holocaust.  Many of these acts were falsely justified on the grounds that a tiny number of their distant ancestors sought Jesus’s execution.

Matthew is expressing a view that arises from the contentious and sometimes violent relations between Christians and Jews in his time.  The words he places in the mouth of the crowd are not a judgment from God.  God’s view is entirely different.

Read Ezekiel 18:4 and Ezekiel 18:20.

Does God allow children to be punished for the sins of their parents?

No.  God says: “For all life is mine: the life of the parent is like the life of the child, both are mine.  Only the one who sins shall die!” (Ezekiel 18:4, NABRE)  If that isn’t clear enough God adds: “Only the one who sins shall die.  The son shall not be charged with the guilt of his father, nor shall the father be charged with the guilt of his son” (Ezekiel 18:20, NABRE).

Is there any legitimate justification for blaming the entire Jewish people for the acts of the few who were there at the time?  Why not?

Note that in the end, in verse 26, it is Pilate who hands Jesus over to be crucified, not the Jews generally or even the chief priests specifically.  Pilate is the only one with the authority to order the crucifixion.  How does that guide your thinking about Pilate’s protestations of innocence?

It is Pilate’s Roman soldiers who will crucify Jesus, and they will do so on the orders of a Roman, Pilate.  How does that guide your thinking about the ways that Christians have unjust treated Jews throughout the ages?

In verse 26, Jesus is scourged.  Scourging was an incredibly excruciating form of torture, where a condemned prisoner was whipped with leather straps that had bits of bone and lead embedded in them.  This was different than using a regular whip to whip someone as a form of punishment.  Instead, it was part of the torture of execution, intended to deliver maximum pain and weaken the prisoner while still keeping him alive to suffer the further intense agony of the crucifixion itself.

In verse 26, Jesus is “handed over” to be crucified.  Matthew uses the same Greek work for “handed over” in all of the following places:

• In Matthew 11:27, Jesus says that the Father has handed over all things to him.

• In Matthew 20:18, Jesus says that he will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, who will condemn him to death.

• In Matthew 26:2, Jesus says that he will be handed over to be crucified.

• In Matthew 27:2, Jesus is handed over from the chief priests to Pilate.

• In Matthew 27:18, Matthew tells us that Pilate knew the chief priests handed Jesus over to him out of jealously.

• In Matthew 27:26, Pilate handed Jesus over to be crucified.

• Interestingly, not in Matthew but in John, when Jesus died, he bowed his head and handed over his spirit (John 19:30).  To the end, Jesus was in control of his destiny.

Do you ever feel like your life is a series of instances where you are “handed over” to some experience or another?

In John 10:17-18, Jesus says that he has the power to lay down his life and the power to take it up again.  In Matthew 26:53, Jesus declares that he could summon legions of angels to intervene if that was what the Father wanted to happen.  What does the fact that he allowed this to happen, when he could have stopped it, tell you about him?

How might Jesus’s example give you a sense of perspective as you deal with difficult situations in your life that are not of your own choosing?

Take a step back and consider this:

The Roman Empire is often praised for the Pax Romana, a period of supposed peace and prosperity the reigned under Roman rule from roughly 27 BC to AD 180.  There may have been relative peace on the Italian peninsula during this time, but to people of other ethnic groups it was a period of oppression that was so extensive that any attempt to fight for freedom was quickly and brutally crushed.  Moreover, people did try to fight for freedom, leading to massacres such as Rome’s destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.  And even during periods of relative “peace” such as the years in which Jesus lived, Roman crucifixions lined the roads of the Empire as vicious warnings not to disrupt the peace of Roman oppression.

How can we hold historians to account, and challenge ourselves as well, to tell an accurate history that includes the experiences of the oppressed and does not present the views of the victors as the only way to understand what happened?

How do you think God would want you to tell your own nation’s history?  Christ died on the cross for all people, not just the people who were most powerful.  Does your nation’s history tell the stories of people who were oppressed or held back as honestly as God would tell their stories?  Whose story might need to be more fully told if seen through God’s eyes?

Why does it matter whether Christians tell the whole history of a people?