Every Wise Yet Evil Leader Knows the Humanity of Those Who Follow. 

             11 Now Jesus was standing before Pilate, the Roman governor. “Are you the king of the Jews?” the governor asked him.Jesus replied, “You have said it.”12 But when the leading priests and the elders made their accusations against him, Jesus remained silent. 13 “Don’t you hear all these charges they are bringing against you?” Pilate demanded. 14 But Jesus made no response to any of the charges, much to the governor’s surprise.15 Now it was the governor’s custom each year during the Passover celebration to release one prisoner to the crowd—anyone they wanted. 16 This year there was a notorious prisoner, a man named Barabbas.* 17 As the crowds gathered before Pilate’s house that morning, he asked them, “Which one do you want me to release to you—Barabbas, or Jesus who is called the Messiah?” 18 (He knew very well that the religious leaders had arrested Jesus out of envy.)19 Just then, as Pilate was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent him this message: “Leave that innocent man alone. I suffered through a terrible nightmare about him last night.”20 Meanwhile, the leading priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas to be released and for Jesus to be put to death. 21 So the governor asked again, “Which of these two do you want me to release to you?”

The crowd shouted back, “Barabbas!”

22 Pilate responded, “Then what should I do with Jesus who is called the Messiah?”

They shouted back, “Crucify him!”

23 “Why?” Pilate demanded. “What crime has he committed?”

But the mob roared even louder, “Crucify him!”

24 Pilate saw that he wasn’t getting anywhere and that a riot was developing. So he sent for a bowl of water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood. The responsibility is yours!”

As many times before an accused stands before Pilate.  Pilate has the job of balancing pleasing the people with pleasing the Roman Government.  Somehow this time it’s different.  Jesus stares at him.  His eyes are not pleading for mercy nor revealing hate.  It seems he looks right into Pilates soul.

1.   Every wise yet evil leader knows the humanity of those who follow.

A.    No man lives unaggrieved.

B.    All have a resevoir of pain that can be tapped into.

C.     He finds a common but created enemy then raises their resentment to a level of nobel virtue.      (Edward Delbanco on Ahab in Moby Dick)

2.   What were the Jewish people resentful of?

A.    Roman domination

B.     Povery

C.     Taxes

D.    Desease

E.     The neurotic burden of tradition taught for commandments

3.   Jesus did not manipulate he ministered

A.   He met needs he did not use people

B.   He taught them to look for the enemy within

C.   He identified with their pain

John Chapter Eight

A Woman Caught in Adultery

1 Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, 2 but early the next morning he was back again at the Temple. A crowd soon gathered, and he sat down and taught them. 3 As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd.

4 “Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?”

6 They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger. 7 They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” 8 Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust.

9 When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. 10 Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”

11 “No, Lord,” she said.

And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”

4.   Different court room same Prosecutors

A.   The Pharisees have raised their own resentment to a level of heroic virtue

B.   They resented Jesus

5.    Different judge

A.    Jesus is not persuaded by public opinion nor politcal pressure

B.    Jesus came not to condemn but to save

6.    Different defendent   (You)

A.     Nathan told David, “You are the man!

B.     “It was not an enemy that reproached me for then I could have borne it.  Niether was it he that hated me that did magnify himself against me.  But it was YOU...”

C.     It’s the man in the mirror

7.    Resentment is a mask that covers our own dissappointment in ourselves.  

(Edward Delbanco on Ahab in Moby Dick)