by Donald Senior, C.P.

The passion story shifts to a new scene as Jesus is brought to trial before Pilate, the Roman procurator. Now themes of kingship and allegiance come to the fore.

Pilate questions Jesus on his identity as a king but the mysterious prisoner offers no response to the accusations hurled at him by the leaders. The Christian reader knows that Jesus is truly a king but a king unlike any that Pilate could understand.

It was apparently a custom to release to the crowd a prisoner of their choice on the occasion of the Passover. Pilate offers the assembled people a choice of either Barabbas, a "notorious prisoner" (27:16) or Jesus. Ancient manuscripts suggest that Matthew may have dramatically heightened the focus of the choice by having Barabbas actually named "Jesus the one called Barabbas" paralleling "Jesus, the one called the Christ".

Each time Pilate offers that choice the leaders and the crowds choose to free Barabbas and demand to have Jesus crucified. Matthew builds the drama to the final moment. In a gesture reminiscent of the ritual for declaring innocence in Deuteronomy 21, Pilate washes his hands and tells the crowd: "I am innocent of this man's blood. Look to it yourselves." In reply, the "entire people" declares: "His blood be upon us and upon our children." (27:24-25).

For nearly two thousand years this passage has been tragically misinterpreted as an excuse to punish Jews for their supposed guilt for the death of Jesus. There is no question that Matthew intends this as a dramatic and decisive moment. Jesus, Son of Abraham, Son of David, had come to his people and like the prophets before him had experienced rejection. All of the opposition led by the errant leaders now culminates here in the passion story. While the Gentile Pilate declares his innocence, Jesus' own people accept responsibility for his innocent blood. Matthew sees here a turning point in history which would ultimately lead to the mission to the Gentiles.

But did the evangelist intend this text as a perpetual condemnation of his own Jewish people? Certainly not! Matthew surely faulted Jesus' contemporaries for not being open to the gospel and may even have interpreted the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem during the Jewish revolt of 66-70 A.D. as a sign of God's punishment on that generation (that is, "us and our children"). But there is no evidence he intended this text to be an excuse for anti-Semitism or believed that Jesus' own Jewish people should be exempt from being treated with the same compassion, forgiveness and justice the disciples of Jesus should show to every human being and how much more the very flesh and blood to which Jesus belongs.

Jesus the king was now condemned by his own people and by the Roman authorities. The soldiers mock his seeming powerlessness, using the symbols of imperial power--the crown, the scepter, and the rituals of homage--to deride Jesus. But the reader knows another truth: Jesus is invested with God's power--not the oppressive power of brute force or domination but the liberating power of love and justice.

Email questions or comments about this page to Fr. Victor Hoagland, C.P. Copyright 1997, Passionist Publications, Union City, NJ USA. Passionist Publications reserves all rights to text, illustrations, and HTML.