Exploring My Strange Bible - The Blood Cries Out - Gospel of Matthew Part 34

Episode Date: January 28, 2019

We are in the final moments of Jesus’ story, and we focus on his trial, but also the story in Matthew about Judas after his betrayal of Jesus. Judas experiences extreme remorse and ends up committing suicide. These are grim stories, but they are very important insights into human conditions. You can see how Judas became trapped in his black hole of terrible decisions and how they destroyed him. It’s a very sobering and sobering portrait of the human condition. I think you’ll find these stories profound and interesting while they address some of life’s biggest questions.

Tim Mackey, Jr. utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 10 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission of Jesus and the journey of faith. And I hope this can be helpful for you too. I also help start this thing called The Bible Project. We make animated videos and podcasts about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology. You can find those resources at thebibleproject.com. With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week. All right, well, in this episode, we are going to continue exploring the gospel according to Matthew. We are in the final moments of Jesus' story.

We're going to focus in on some moments in his trial before Pilate, but also the story that's in Matthew about Judas after his betrayal of Jesus experiences extreme remorse and ends up committing suicide. These are grim stories. They're not cheerful, but they are really profound insights into the human condition in Judas about how he became trapped in this black hole of his own terrible decisions and how these destroyed him. It's a very somber and sobering portrait of the human condition that we stand a lot to learn from. The moments that he stands before Pilate shows the sham and the tragedy of a noble religious and political judicial system that has completely become corrupt and ends up becoming an instrument of great evil instead of justice in the world. These are very profound stories.

They open up all kinds of questions about the most important issues in human culture and existence. And it all is taking place with the life of Jesus on the line. So there you go. Important stories, they're familiar, but if we allow them to become strange to us and unfamiliar, I think we can learn a whole lot of new things from them about ourselves. So there you go. Let's open our minds and we'll dive in and learn together.

We're looking at chapter 27 today, and we're right in the middle of one of the most well-known, memorable moments of the story of Jesus, and specifically of his trial before the Roman governor. Anybody remember his name? Pilate, yeah. You know, it's one of those figures from ancient history who has a permanent fixture in the minds of most people now. Whether he likes it or not, I doubt that he would because he's portrayed as kind of a chump in the story.

And, you know, his legacy of history is of him being a wishy-washy pushover who's just trying to cover himself. But this is the story of Jesus before the great Roman governor Pilate. And this story has inspired, this itself is a famous well-known story of Jesus before Pilate. It's inspired many other famous stories throughout history. And I want to begin by showing you one of them. I don't know... Shakespeare tends to divide a room, just like cilantro tends to divide a room. People love it or they hate it. It's about 50-50

usually. Shakespeare, I feel like, is more like a 70-30 nowadays. I don't know. Shakespeare fans? Anybody? Who in high school went down to the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland? You went down on a high school bus. So few, so few of us anymore. So, William Shakespeare, 400 years ago, was deeply impressed by this story of Jesus before Pilate. And it's one of many influences that he draws

upon in one of his most famous stories. Anybody? What's one of the most well-known Shakespeare plays? Romeo and Juliet. That's probably the best one. The second, well, I won't fish for answers here. Macbeth. Any fans of Macbeth? Right, Macbeth. And right, so you have this story. It's all about blood guilt. It's about what happens to humans when they give in to their impulse to get rid of people that they don't like.

And then the moment they start getting rid of them, you know, it gets them ahead in life, but it also, like, it does something. It dehumanizes them in some way. And so, you know, the key players are Macbeth and then Lady Macbeth. And they've eliminated, they've assassinated one of their great rivals, another royal figure.

Remember his name? Duncan. King Duncan. So they've murdered Duncan. And there's this epic scene at Act 5 near the end of the story. And Lady Macbeth, the psychological trauma

of having assassinated this rival and like how bloody it became and all of this kind of thing, it so traumatized her that she can't sleep anymore. And so it's the sleepwalking scene. Anybody? What's happening to America?

We don't. It's the sleepwalking scene. You all should know this as much as you know how to tweet her on your phone. So anyway, so tweet on your phone. Anyway, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. So it's a sleepwalking scene. The whole point is that she's going crazy. And so she can't even sleep. And so she gets a doctor to come, you know, they get a doctor who's observing her at night because she's sleepwalking and she's living out these nightmares. And her nightmares as she sleepwalks is that her hands are covered with blood of all of the murder, you know, that she's coordinated and so on. And so there's this famous scene in Act 5, Scene 1, and these are her words. She's living and

walking her nightmare, imagining her hands, in particular her clothes, are stained with blood. And you'll see it up here on the screen. Yet here's a spot. Out, damned spot. Out, I say. What need we fear, who knows it, when none can call our power to account?

Yet who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him? What, will these hands never be clean? Here's the smell of blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh. I should have been an actor, shouldn't I? I actually tried to be, but that's a whole other story. So this is such a powerful scene, and I'm not doing it justice by reading it out of context. You know, we should really, I should have arranged an actor to read it on stage here. But this is one of the most epic moments

in the history of Western literature and art and so on. This scene is iconic for depicting the idea of blood guilt. The idea that when one human extinguishes the life of another human, it does something. It does something irreversible, unalterable, something sacred and horrifying, and something that ruins us. And so she, you know, you can see it's like this self-talk that she's doing here, because she's saying, listen, like, we're the king and queen.

Like who can make us accountable for this murder? We're fine. No one's going to get us. But yet what's getting her is not any other source of authority. What's getting her is the guilt that's eating her up on the inside. And it's this nightmare, right? This damned spot, right? This blood on her hands and on her clothes, and she can't get it out. And so she actually begins to envision that there's nothing in the universe that could ever remove this sense of guilt and horror that she has at eliminating the life of another human. So powerful.

And this, there's a lot going on in Macbeth and I'm not a Shakespeare expert. But for certain in this scene what Shakespeare is exploring is this idea that's a deeply biblical one that that there's something so beautiful and sacred about human beings that when one human being eliminates and murders another human being that something has gone wrong in the universe, right? It's different than squishing an ant. And there's something that it does to you. It's like it dehumanizes you. It degrades you.

And it begins to do something irreversible to you that's so powerful. And there's lots of influences for this scene. We're going to see one of them in the story about Pilate, but there's another one. It comes from page four of the Bible. This idea that blood guilt, the innocent blood, is still bearing witness against the murderer.

It's a very powerful image that comes from page four. Maybe you know the story. It's the story of two brothers. Anybody? You ought to know this one. I mean, the story. It's the story of two brothers. Anybody? You ought to know this one. I mean, my goodness. Two brothers. Good, well done, class. Well done. I'm a professor, too, so I have to do this from time to time. So, yes, he's two brothers, and one brother's jealous of his other brother. Cain's jealous of Abel. And so he conspires to murder him.

And here's how the story goes. Genesis 4. It says, Now Cain said to his brother Abel, Hey, let's go out into this field. And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.

Then the Lord said to Cain, Where's your brother, Abel? I don't know, he replied. Am I my brother's keeper? The Lord said, what have you done? Listen, your brother's blood cries to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from

your hand. When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You'll be a restless wanderer on the earth. And Cain said to the Lord, ah, my punishment, it's way more than I can bear. Do you feel it? You feel like you're in the out-damned spot scene, don't you? Right? Where he's killed his brother, and all of a sudden it becomes this curse over him. This thing that he can't bear. And in both this story and in Macbeth, the blood cries out from the ground.

You've done something that now the accountability, the blood guilt, it's something outside of you that you're accountable to, but there's also something inside of him that's ruining him now. It's more than I can bear. And this is such a powerful image of guilt. And it's explored in all kinds of literature,

Shakespeare, the Bible, and I think it's pretty universal to the human experience. Now, I've spent a lot of time talking about guilt from murdering somebody. I have a strong hunch that nobody in the room has ever murdered another person before. I haven't. You just have to take me at my word for that one. But I haven't. So why is this significant for us to think about? We are a community of Jesus' followers. So we take seriously what Jesus meant

when he said that if you want to obey the Ten Commandments, one of the Ten Commandments is don't murder. And he said, you know, you don't actually show your faithfulness to that command by never murdering anybody. You know, we think, man, I've never murdered anybody. I'm clean on at least one of ten, you know, of the Ten Commandments. And Jesus says, no, no, no, no, think again. Because he says, you know, think about what happens inside of you when there's another human being that you really, really don't like. And you think that you're better than them. And so you find yourself in these moments,

elevating yourself over them, showing contempt for them, and then you start to speak poorly about them. And you degrade their character in front of other people and you say mean things or insults or gossip about them. Anybody. You have no idea what I'm talking about. You've never murdered anyone and you've never done this either.

Very interesting. So we're all in denial, of course. Because Jesus says that that's actually, that's what the command don't murder is talking about. And that's where murder starts, right? It's seeing another human being as less than human. So I'm going to degrade their character. I'm going to dehumanize them in the eyes of other people as I speak poorly and speak these words of gossip or

whatever about them. And Jesus says, it's the same thing. You're guilty of breaking the command. And so there's a very strong sense that like when we read the story of the innocent blood of Jesus and all of these people sharing in the blood guilt of Jesus, or we think about all of the innocent blood spilled in human history, and we can distance ourselves from it. And what we're going to look at in this story with Pilate is this story is trying to help us see this isn't just an ancient story about something that happened a long time ago. This is a story in which all of humanity participates. Because we have all participated in the guilt of innocent blood in some way or another. Whether I've murdered somebody or not, we're all contributors to why this world is the way that it is.

And we've all done that thing in our hearts that Jesus considers essentially murder. And we're also participants in what happened to Jesus. Now how does that work? And we'll see that in the story. But what essentially this story is about, it's about portraits of how people respond to blood guilt. There's four main characters in this story. There's Judas, there's Pilate, there's the leaders of Jerusalem, and there's the crowds. And all of them, like Lady Macbeth or like Cain, have this reaction to the blood guilt. And I think we're all meant to find ourselves in at least one of these characters and to consider the way that we participate in the death of the innocent in our world today

and also in the death of this innocent Jesus of Nazareth 2,000 years ago. So with all that in mind, Matthew 27, let's just dive in. So early in the morning, all of the chief priests and the elders of the people, they made their plans about how to have Jesus executed. So they had him bound,

and they led him away, and they handed him over to Pilate, the governor. Dun, dun, dun. If I could cue music at some point, that would be it right there. So if you were here last week, we had this middle of the night arrest of Jesus. We had this sham of a trial. I mean, it actually gives it too much dignity to call it a trial that Jesus had before the Jewish leaders. It was more like an exam that they

guaranteed that he failed. They accused Jesus of two charges in the middle of the night. One of them was a false charge, and one of them was a true charge. So the one false charge that they could get anybody to agree on, because they needed at least two witnesses for each charge, was that Jesus is a terrorist, because he said he was going to blow up the temple. That he said, I'm going to destroy the temple and raise it up again. Now, of course, Jesus never said that. He never said he was going to destroy the temple in Jerusalem. He predicted that it would be destroyed, but not by himself. So there's a false charge, but the even more significant one is a true charge

that Jesus does not deny. And it's the charge that's gonna get brought up before Pilate, and that's that Jesus thinks that he's a king. So just stop and paint the scene right here. It's very difficult. The political circumstances are so different than what we experience in America. So you've got a country that's actually under

the authority of an empire that is a military occupier of this territory, right? You have Rome. They're a military occupier of Israel. And they've allowed the elders of the people to govern Israel. And they used to have a king. The last king was a puppet king. He was the big bad king who tried to kill baby Jesus. Remember his name? Yeah, Herod. And that didn't work out well.

And so when he died, you know, he appointed his sons, and they were really, really corrupt. And so they just said, forget this king business, the Romans said. Let's just go ship one of our military generals over there and he'll run the place with an iron fist. And that individual's name is Pilate. So, you know, the fact that Pilate is there, he certainly didn't pick this position. You know what I'm saying? He certainly didn't pick this position.

You know what I'm saying? This is kind of like a general getting assigned a position in a dusty city over in the middle of nowhere full of people that he doesn't like, and he's just waiting for his promotion to get back to Rome. Pilate was not a good man. Everything we know about Pilate was that he hated his job and that he hated Jewish people. Pilate was that he hated his job and that he hated Jewish people. He made so many decisions that made the Jewish people angry that ancient history is filled with stories of riots that were caused by him being a jerk. And then when the people would protest outside of his palace, he would send out the soldiers and just kill them. He was responsible for the murder of many, many, many Jewish people. People hate this man. And so here's one moment where the Jewish leaders decide to cozy up with

Pilate because they can't execute Jesus on their own. They need the Romans to do it. And so they go before Pilate and they're going to accuse him on these two charges. And that's the scene here. And right in the middle of this moment, we think, Pilate, the story, Matthew interrupts the story. And he gives us the portrait of how Judas is doing after his betrayal, verse 3. It says,

When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse. So he returned the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. And he said, I have sinned, for I have betrayed innocent blood. Watch how many times the word blood and innocence gets repeated in this story. What's that to us? The elders replied. Hey man, that's your responsibility. The hey man is my addition there. So then Judas went and he threw the money into the temple and he left

then he went away and he hanged himself it's horrifying it's horrifying we don't know what caused Judas and his conscience to turn on here. You know, this story shows us that for Judas to have betrayed Jesus,

he's turned something off inside of him. Some sense of conscience or compassion or self-awareness. We just don't know. Was it that he heard that Jesus didn't even try and defend himself in the sham of a trial? Was it when he heard that Jesus got beat to a pulp by the religious leaders? We don't know. But somehow once he hears or sees Jesus being marched to the governor's palace, he realizes what he's done. He realizes that Jesus was not a threat to Israel.

That actually, Jesus is living out his teachings of turning the other cheek and loving your enemy. He's watching Jesus be the very person that he called his disciples to be. And it just, it breaks him. And so he does his last ditch effort to minimize his guilt, right? He's like, oh my gosh, what did I do?

Innocent blood. So he tries to like give back the money. And the chief priest, I mean, you can just imagine the scene. They're just like stone face, you know. You deal with it, man. You made your bed, now sleep in it kind of thing. And so he doesn't, he's so overwhelmed

by the blood crying out from the ground, right? Judas can't imagine a world where there could be enough forgiveness or grace to cover what he's done. And so it leads him into total despair. done. And so it leads him into total despair. And he can't, he doesn't want to live in this world anymore. And so he kills himself. So of our four portraits, this is the most dismal. It's the most dark, right? It's Lady Macbeth, or it's Cain. But it's Cain not even turning back to God to say this is more than I can handle. This is Judas becoming utterly overwhelmed by his acknowledgement that he's

contributed to the death of an innocent man and it destroys him. That's portrait number one. Portrait number two. The chief priests, verse six. So the chief priests, they go and pick up these coins. And they said, man, you know,

it's against the law to go put this in the temple treasury since it is blood money. So then they have a meeting, committee meeting. What are we going to do with this money? So they decided to go and use the money to buy a potter's field as a burial place for foreigners. That's why that field, Matthew says, has been called the field of blood to this day. Matthew says, you know, in his day, just a few decades after, you can still go to Jerusalem and see the field. And then Matthew says, you know, this is what was spoken about by Jeremiah the prophet. It was fulfilled that they took 30 pieces of silver, the price set on him by the people of Israel, and then they used them to buy the potter's field just as the Lord commanded me.

That's portrait number two. You have Judas and then you have the chief priest. So this is a strange story. I'm guessing most of you are like, okay, it's interesting, but what does this have to do with anything? Why should I care what some ancient priest did with their blood money?

So no, no, no, be patient. This is really, really powerful. So they do this thing where they Judas is overwhelmed when he recognizes he's accountable for the death of an innocent man. But what do the chief priests do? Do they know that they're accountable for the death of an innocent man? What do you think? What do they say? I mean, if this was a trial where they were carrying out true justice,

here's a criminal, right? He's worthy of a death sentence, of a capital sentence. Justice is carried out. Then it shouldn't matter where this money came from. It was done in the name of justice. But that's not what happened, then it shouldn't matter where this money came from. It was done in the name of justice. But that's not what happened, is it? This is all a sham. They just don't like Jesus. They think that he's a threat to them, and so they've essentially hired his betrayal, and they're going to get this guy killed, but it's murder, not done in the name of justice.

So then they just quite happily say it to each other. This is blood money, right? This is dirty money, they say. So they say, you know, we probably shouldn't use, like dedicate this to God in the temple, you know? Like we shouldn't put it in the offering box. That's just awkward, you know? So God wouldn't be pleased with us if we did that. So here's what we'll do with the blood money. Let's go buy a field. Yeah? And so here's what Matthew tells us. What's the field for that they buy? Look again. What's the field for? It's going to be a burial plot for foreigners. Now, okay, this has no relevance because we wouldn't ever do anything quite like this. So let's paint this scene. Let's say that your grandpa and grandma go to Hawaii, and one of them has a heart attack. Grandpa has a heart attack, and he dies in Hawaii while on

vacation away from home. In our culture, what would happen is that the body or the remains, if maybe the body was cremated and then the ashes, the remains, would get transported back to Grandma and Grandpa's hometown, buried there, memorial service, and so on. That's totally not how they did it. In Jewish culture, the highest priority is for a proper burial and they never, never, never cremated the bodies. They would have

the bodies wrapped, anointed with all of these oils, and then put into a tomb so that it could decompose. And quickly. The whole point is like quickly, like as soon as possible. So let's say you're from Jesus' hometown, Nazareth.

Yeah, that's like a long, that's like four or five days trip. And let's say grandpa goes down to Jerusalem for Passover and has a heart attack there. What are you supposed to do? Like there's no, is there any family here? Like they don't have any connections. Like what do we do? So what they're doing is they are doing a public service.

They're buying a burial plot as a place where people from out of town who happen to die while they're in Jerusalem can have an honorable burial. Are you with me? So we call this infrastructure. Right? This is like roads and telephone poles and in their day, public burial plots. So stop and think about this. This is really significant that Matthew's included this little detail. So this money is dirty, right? What they know is not a just condemnation of a criminal. So what can we do with this money? Well, we can't give it to God, so let's at least make it serve the public good. And so what they do is they buy,

it's a very noble thing, like to buy and then donate a public burial plot. These things were very necessary in their day. And then all of a sudden you see what's happening. So Judas recognizes his complicitness. Is that a word? Complicitness. His responsibility, his accountability in the death of an innocent man.

It overwhelms and destroys him. But now here we see this other group of people. And they also recognize their accountability in what's going to be the death of an innocent man. But here's what they do. They actually, instead of profiting from it, they take the profit from the death of this innocent man and they invest it in the public good. And now what's going to happen is you have this field, right,

where all these people are going to be buried. Who knows how many burial spaces it fits? Maybe let's just say it was 50. Spaces for 50 people. You have 50 families who are then buying spots in this burial plot to bury grandpa when he had his heart attack down in Passover for Jerusalem. And they are without even knowing it now benefiting from the death of Jesus. Are you with me here?

You have now a whole part of the city that's benefiting, unwittingly, but that's benefiting. This is very sophisticated. In terms of this portrait of a city being built on the death and the blood of the innocent, that's what Matthew's painting right here.

It's if you have people who justify the death of the innocent because they don't think that it was that big of a deal, and then they go on to involve all of these other people, whoever's going to buy a spot in this cemetery, and they too are now complicit in the death of Jesus, and they don't even know it. This is very nuanced, I think, what Matthew's putting in front of us. And it's something, if you think about it, it's something that many Westerners feel, a degree of angst.

So you go and you buy a pair of jeans. And then you read a news story two years later and you find out where your jeans have been being made. And then you find out that the factory burned down, and that there were children, child laborers in that factory. You know what I'm saying here? It's what happens when there's an explosion of an oil rig off the coast of Texas, and all these people die,

and millions and millions of barrels of oil get poured into the sea and it's all because of known code violations and then what do we do? We go pull up and go fill our tanks with gas from BP. Are you guys with me here? It's a portrait of a whole society that ends up unwittingly participating in the guilt of innocent blood without even knowing it. It's this image of how sticky the web of the human condition is. And you can respond to it like Judas

and it can overwhelm and destroy you. Or you can recognize that it's actually, it's not just on certain individuals, it's on all of us. The stickiness of the web of human guilt is so interwoven in my decisions and what I purchase and just existing, I'm guilty.

Let's not even get started about where our tax dollars go. And what we pay for, that we would be sick if we knew. So that's the second portrait here that Matthew's given us. And he links it to an Old Testament quotation that I'm so sorry we don't have any time to get into, even though it's super interesting.

Come talk about it with me afterwards if you want to. So this is two portraits, very different ways of reacting to the blood of the innocent. And then we move on to the third. And the third is interwoven here. It's Pilate and his wife. This is the third portrait. And then the fourth is how the crowd responds to the death of the innocent. And they're interwoven. And so I just want to work our way through the story, and we'll watch the portraits develop. Look at verse 11. So it says,

Meanwhile, Jesus stood before the governor. And the governor asked him, Are you the king of the Jews? You've said so, Jesus replied. I don't think he's being snarky here. If Jesus had a way of saying, yes, but what I mean by that is not at all what you mean by that.

I think that's basically what he means here. You're saying it, and I won't deny it, but we have very different views about what that means. When he was accused by the chief priests and the elders, Jesus gave no response. So Pilate asks him, don't you hear the testimony that they're bringing against you? They're saying you're a terrorist, and that you're going to blow up the temple. They're saying you're the king,

you think you're the king of the Jews, and that you're going to somehow replace me around here. Jesus gave no reply, not even to a single charge, to the great amazement of the governor. Now, it was the governor's custom at the festival to release a prisoner chosen by the crowd. So here's Pilate. How is he going to make himself look nice to these people since he's murdered so many of them over the last seven years? Well, here, I'll really give amnesty to a criminal once a year.

How about that? So at that time, they had a well-known prisoner whose name was Barabbas. Any other translations? Do you have another name in addition? Jesus Barabbas. How many of you have Jesus Barabbas? Yes, so interesting.

Okay, this is also something we can't nerd out on very long, but it is interesting. There's a thing in the Greek manuscripts of Matthew that's really fascinating. Base it down to say, there are some manuscripts that tell us that two names of this figure, just like Tim Mackey, Yeshua Barabbas. Yeshua was about as common as name as like Bob or something

in our culture, right? So, but it seems as if the manuscripts are reliable, that Matthew is highlighting the fact that there are two Yeshua's being put forward here. One of them is Yeshua Barabbas, which is very ironic because Barabbas is an Aramaic word for son of the father. Think of, what's the word in Aramaic Jesus taught us to pray when we open up the Lord's Prayer?

Do you remember? Abba? Yeah, don't think the 70s band. Think the way Jesus talked to the Father. Bar Abbas, Bar's son, son of the Father. So we have one Yeshua, son of the Father, and he's a well-known criminal at the time. So when the crowd was gathered, Pilate asked them, He's a well-known criminal at the time.

So when the crowd was gathered, Pilate asked them, which one of these Yeshua's do you want me to release to you? Yeshua Barabbas or Yeshua who is called the Messiah? He did this because he knew that it was out of self-interest or envy, some of you have, that they had handed Jesus over to them. So here's the scene. Portrait number three is of Pilate.

And he's not like Judas. He's not like the chief priest. He's watching this accusation go down and he can see the chief priests are just jerks. He doesn't really like them anyway. But he's allowed them into his court. And he's very impressed with Jesus. Like Jesus doesn't defend himself. He doesn't, he's not like rambunctious.

He's not full of aggressive energy. He's just silent. And he's very impressed by Jesus. And so he thinks to himself, like, oh man, you know, I've got this thing, this custom that I do at the feast every year. This is my chance to get Yeshua out of my hair right now. I don't want to deal with this. So he says, listen, you know, I've got this Yeshua that I want to let go to you.

How about releasing him? And they go, no, we want the other Yeshua. We want Yeshua barabas. Now, what did Matthew tell us? He said he's a well-known prisoner. Yeah? Do you see that? What's he well-known for? Yeah, Matthew doesn't say.

He doesn't say. He's well-known for whatever wrong that he committed that got him to be held by the Romans. In the Gospel according to Mark's account, he tells us that this was Barabbas' crime. You'll see it up here. He was a man called Barabbas. He was in prison with a group of rebels.

And he had committed murder in the uprising. So this Yeshua Barabbas is part of a Jewish freedom fighter movement. Yeah? He's a rebel against Rome. And recently, he had been a part of an uprising against Rome. We know of many, many Jewish uprisings against Rome, both before and after Jesus. And this guy was a part of one of them. And so what did he do? You know, did he plunge a sword into a Roman soldier? Did he kill other Jews that he thought, you know, were traitors and partnering with Rome? We don't know. All we know is that this man's a murderer and that this man is a rebel against Rome. This is an individual who could not be more opposite of Jesus of Nazareth. Are you with me here? Like this is a man who thought Jesus was a lunatic for saying, turn the other cheek

and bless and pray for that Roman soldier after he disrespects you, and that you love your enemies instead of kill them. So you have a Jesus of Nazareth who represents the kingdom of God, the way of peace, and then you have a Jesus Barabbas who represents Israel, God and country,

blood, death to Rome. And Pilate is faced with both of these now in front of him. And the crowd's yelling to have who released. Pilate was sitting in the judge's seat. And then he gets a message from his wife. Yeah, don't do anything with that innocent man. I have suffered a great deal today in a dream because of him. This is so strange.

So now Pilate's in this no-win situation, right? Because he's like, see, this is an innocent man. He doesn't deserve to die. And they're pressuring me to start releasing this known rebel against Rome. Then his wife sends him a message. She's like, man, Jesus of Nazareth, don't mess with him. She's been tormented in a dream. This is really, really remarkable.

The only other people who have had dreams so far in Matthew's story is Joseph had a dream about not divorcing Mary when he found out she was pregnant. And then the magi, the sorcerers from the east had a dream telling them about baby Jesus. And now Pilate's wife. So I think we're meant to take this as like some kind of warning or sign from God. And it comes to Pilate through his wife. So now Pilate, he has his own conscience. Like he knows Jesus is innocent.

He's got pressure on him. And now his wife's giving him her intuition and her sense that Jesus is totally innocent. What's he going to do? What would you do? The chief priests and the elders were persuading the crowd to ask for Barabas and to have Jesus executed. Which of these two do you want released to you? Asked the governor. Barabbas, they answered.

Well, what am I supposed to do then with this Yeshua who is called the Messiah? Pilate asked. And they all answered, crucify him. Why? He asked. What crime has he committed? But they shouted all the louder, crucify him. Now when Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, this is just another bad day, he's wishing it could be back in Rome, sipping a martini or something.

Right? He's getting nowhere. And instead, a riot is starting. He's got another one of these on his hands. He's like, you know? And whenever riots start with Pilate, these historically have not been good moments for him. So here's what he does. He gets a bowl of water out in front of everybody. Just imagine the scene here.

There's like a riot starting. There's like two. There's Jesus and Barabbas, right? And people are yelling, crucify him. There's this mob mentality. And he gets out I am innocent of this man's blood. It's your guy's responsibility. And all the people answered, his blood is on us and on our children, they say. So he released the freedom fighter, Bada Boss, to them, but he had Jesus whipped or flogged, and then he handed him over to be crucified. That's the scene. So powerful. So Pilate's this conflicted individual

where his conscience is very clearly pointing him that Jesus is innocent. His wife has the very same conviction. But he has other pressures, right? He has the pressures of these crowds. He has the pressures of these leaders who we know he doesn't like. But ultimately, it's about his own personal interests.

He doesn't want to have to deal with another riot today. Is this Jesus of Nazareth really worth it? No, he's not worth the trouble. And so he makes this declaration that sounds so hollow. It's comic, right? Because who do we know is standing there is the only innocent person? Jesus. And Pilate has the gall to declare who to be the innocent one? Himself.

What a selfish, selfish man, right? And if you're thinking that's too strong of a thing to call him, I think it's because we're sympathetic, like we're sympathetic with him to some degree. We're like, what would I do, you know? We have this no-name Jesus of Nazareth, and they're like, what am I supposed to do? I'm just trying to, I just want to go golfing right now. What is, just let them, okay, fine.

And he just lets events run their course. And the irony of this scene, of course, is that he declares himself to be innocent in the very act of showing that he too now is guilty of innocent blood. And then you have the crowds. You have the crowds who are this, they're misinformed, aren't they? One interesting thing, and just because I've heard it repeated so many times, it's just good to put this one to rest. Many people think that this is the same crowds that were hailing Jesus as Messiah. When he entered, how many of you have heard that sign before?

One week they were just completely false. Like, there just couldn't be more wrong. So we're told who was hailing him as the Messiah as they came into the city, and it was all of the Galilean pilgrims who were coming to Jerusalem for Passover. And there was all the people who had known Jesus and seen him doing his deal up north,

and they're declaring him as the Messiah. The people of Jerusalem, we're told in that story, were troubled by Jesus arriving. And then Jesus causes trouble. He pulls the stunt in the temple all week long, right? He's a troublemaker. And now we have the people of the city before their governor. Who else would be standing at 6 a.m. out in front of the governor's palace, right? Not people vacationing in Jerusalem, right? It's the people who live there. It's the people who have relational connections to the local priests and the elders

who live right there in the city. And so they've got this mob gathered that they have persuaded that Jesus is a threat to national security. And so they're actually, other than Judas, they become the other people who accept the fact of their accountability for innocent blood. And they're quite happy to take it on themselves. It's in the name of what?

It's in the name of national security. It's in the name of preserving themselves and their traditions and their people. But they fully think Jesus is a threat and his blood needs to be shed. And so here we have a portrait of a group of people who out of their interest for God and country think it's absolutely necessary that blood be shed. And so they too become accountable in the blood of the innocent and it cries out against them. And the most tragic line of this, of course, is in verse 25 where they willingly accept. Pilate says, I don't want this man's blood in my hand. And so they say, well, let us take it from you. Verse 25, I don't know if you might remember this. 2004, I think it was, was when Mel Gibson's The Passion came out.

And do you know about the controversy of this line in the making of that movie? Do you remember that detail? Very interesting. In their account, Mel Gibson's account of this scene, he had a scene where the crowds were saying this, had a scene where the crowds were saying this, but they ended up deleting it from the version that went public. And that's because this line of the Jewish crowds saying his blood be on us

and on our children, this line is not what Matthew meant by it, but this line has contributed in European history to the tradition of Europeans accusing the Jewish people of being Christ killers and inspiring pogroms and persecutions and shaming and persecuting the Jewish people throughout European history.

It's an absolute betrayal of Jesus' teachings for Christians to have done that, but that's what Christians have done throughout history. But what does Matthew mean by this? And it's connected to the story that Matthew's been telling already, that these are the people who've rejected Jesus and his kingdom of peace. And instead of choosing to follow Jesus, who is called Messiah, right, the whole nation of people going forward is going to choose to follow the Jesus who's called Barabbas, right? Because the whole nation is going to embrace revolt against Rome. And in just 40 years, in the lifetime of these people and

their children, their rejection of Jesus translates into the destruction of Jerusalem as the wrath of Rome falls upon Jerusalem as it revolts again. And it results in the destruction of the city, in the destruction of the temple, and the death of this generation and their children. in the destruction of the temple, and the death of this generation and their children. And I think Matthew's pointing out a tragic irony that in his mind, their rejection of Jesus was embracing the tragedy of what would happen 40 years later in the fall of the city.

And that's how the scene closes. This is a very, this is heavy, it's heavy. We have portraits of blood guilt, of how different people respond to and are involved in the death of the innocent. And if we take Jesus at what he meant when he said for those who nurse hatred and contempt in their hearts, you're guilty

of the same thing that the crowds were doing and that the chief priests were doing. This is a story that's about Judas and the chief priests and the crowds, but it's a story about us. It's a story about how all of us are participants in the blood of the innocent.

And there are some of us who might be like Judas, and you're like Lady Macbeth. You know the way you've hurt people. You know the way that you've participated in just the brokenness and fallenness of our world and it's overwhelming to you. And maybe you've even entertained thoughts to do to yourself what Judas did to himself

because you can't deal with the shame that you feel. And that's something that lots of people in our world feel. You might be like the chief priests and you have an awareness of your participation in the injustice and the innocent

blood of our world. Or you're like you know the people who would buy one of those burial plots, you know, and you're like I know this is screwed up, but what can I do? I can go be a hermit and never buy anything from the mall or Amazon. But it just becomes impossible, a weight to bear. So what do you do? You could become like Pilate.

And I think many of us are. You could become like Pilate, and I think many of us are. We're completely aware of the way that we contribute to degrading other people. We're completely aware of the way that we contribute to the blood of the innocent in our world, wittingly or unwittingly. But at the end of the day, because of self-preservation, because of apathy, we think, well, what can I do really? You know, I just, I got to go to work tomorrow, whatever. And we declare ourselves to be innocent. Or we might be like the crowds, and we unwittingly take upon ourselves the guilt of

the innocent, but we have no clue what we're really doing. The remarkable thing in this story is that there is actually only one innocent person. Who is it? It's Jesus of Nazareth, who is called Messiah. And what does he make no attempt to do? Any point. He doesn't stand up for himself. He doesn't try and declare himself innocent.

He doesn't try and declare himself guilty. He actually only spoke once in the story, and it was simply to affirm Pilate's question of whether he was the king of the Jews. But as the king of the Jews, what does Jesus see himself doing? Like what? What does he think about all these people? All of these compromised, wishy-washy, selfish, apathetic, clueless people.

And Jesus, he's just a rock. He's just carrying forward this mission because he doesn't think that Pilate's his enemy. Jesus sure doesn't think Judas is his enemy. He doesn't think the Jewish leaders are his enemy. What Jesus is doing is he's moving towards the cross because he wants to die for these people. He's going to die for Judas. He's going to die for Pilate.

He's going to die for the priests. Why? Why would he do that? And there's a powerful passage in Paul, the apostle's letter to the Romans that puts it more perfectly than I could. And so we'll close with these words. powerful passage in Paul the Apostle's letter to the Romans that puts it more perfectly than I could. And so we'll close with these words.

It's from Romans chapter 5 and you'll see it up there. Paul says, You see, at just the right time when we all were still helpless, the Messiah died for the rebels.

Very rarely will anyone die for an innocent person, though for a good person, someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, the Messiah died for us. I can't think of a better set of words to describe the humans who are portrayed in this story. Helpless. Helpless. Like Judas.

Or Pilate. Or the crowds. Just like helpless and hopeless, rebels, selfish, apathetic. Like this is such an accurate portrait of us and of our world. And at the center of this scene stands Jesus, the only innocent person. And who is he and what's he doing? And Paul puts it

perfectly. He just says he is God's love. He's God's love there in the midst of the insanity of this sham of a trial. Just quietly living out sacrificial love for one's enemies. And while we were just stuck in the mess of the human condition, God's love become human, dies for us. That's Matthew 27. So I don't know what this story raises for you. I don't know which character in the story you see yourself in. I don't know how this makes you reflect

on your week or the world or politics or the election or where you buy your jeans. I have no idea. But the one thing that I'm certain that we all must hear from this story is the fact that Jesus of Nazareth, who is called the Messiah,

he loves you. And despite your wishy-washiness and your apathy and your being misinformed and our unwittingly participating in the blood of the innocent, he loves you. And he gave himself for you and for me.

Thank you for listening to Exploring My Strange Bible. We'll be back with another episode exploring the Gospel of Matthew next time. So we'll see you then.