Man of Sorrows — Mariano Di Gangi

The Trial and Crucifixion in John 19

Hear now the reading of this portion of God's written word, as we find it recorded in the 19th chapter of the gospel according to John, beginning to read at verse 1. Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged.

The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe and went up to him again and again, saying, Hail, King of the Jews! And they struck him in the face.

Once more Pilate came out and said to the Jews, Look, I'm bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him. When Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, Pilate said to them, Here is the man.

As soon as the chief priests and their officials saw him, they shouted, Crucify, crucify! But Pilate answered, You take him and crucify him. As for me, I find no basis for a charge against him. The Jews insisted, We have a law, and according to that law, he must die because he claimed to be the Son of God.

When Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid, and he went back inside the palace. Where do you come from? he asked Jesus. But Jesus gave him no answer. Do you refuse to speak to me? Pilate said. Don't you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?

Jesus answered, You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore, the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin. From there on, Pilate tried to set Jesus free, but the Jews kept shouting, If you let this man go, you're no friend of Caesar.

Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar. When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judge's seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement, which in Aramaic is Gabbatha. It was the day of the preparation of Passover week, about the sixth hour.

Here's your king, Pilate said to the Jews. But they shouted, Take him away, take him away, crucify him. Shall I crucify your king? Pilate asked. We have no king but Caesar, the chief priests answered.

The Rising Tide of Jesus' Sorrows

Finally, Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified. You have a little brook running through the woods. It grows and becomes a stream. It's joined by other streams and becomes a river. It is swollen with melting snow.

Its level rises and crests as the downpour comes from above, and it becomes a rising, swelling, and overwhelming tide. That's exactly the way it is with the sufferings of Jesus. Beginning in one place in one way, continuing in another place in another way, and then each of the tributaries joining and joined by others comes to a swelling tide of sorrow.

Jesus is a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And this particular chapter of Scripture tells us of some of the things that contributed to swell the tide and lift the crest that overwhelmed the man, Christ Jesus.

Violence Against the Innocent Christ

And the first of these contributing factors to the swelling tide of his sorrow was violence. The chapter begins with an example of violence. Here you have the governor, Pontius Pilate, in charge of southern Palestine, always a troublesome area.

And on the other hand, you have the prisoner. From what Pilate knows of the situation, the prisoner is not guilty of any charge. As a matter of fact, his enemies can't decide on what charge to bring, whether political or religious.

And Pilate, knowing that the prisoner is innocent, can't condemn him. But knowing that the mindless mob has been manipulated by unscrupulous religious demagogues, knows that he cannot release him without incurring the wrath of the multitude.

He cannot condemn him. He will not release him. He tries an expedient. He decides to beat the prisoner, even though the prisoner is innocent, and then bring him out for the crowd to see as a mass of bleeding flesh.

And moved by pity, the people will then clamor for him to be let go. And so Pilate resorts to the Roman punishment of flogging. They had a whip with leather tongs. And each of those tongs would be set with bits of bone and balls of lead.

And when wielded, it would rip away the flesh and expose the organs beneath the skin, thirteen times across the chest. Thirteen times on the left shoulder. Thirteen times on the right shoulder. Not to go over the legal limit of forty, how stupulously they observed the niceties of the law.

And having stripped the prisoner and bound him to a column, the order is given, and he is flogged until he falls in a crumpled heap at the base of a column. And then Pilate has him brought out to the people.

Surely the sad sight will move the people to compassion, and they will get me off the hook by themselves, demanding that he now be released. And before doing that, Pilate allows the soldiers to play their terrible game.

To violence is added further violence. They take a thorn bush, twist it into a crown, thrust it on his head, clothe him with a purple robe to mock his claims of kingship. And then to physical abuse they add verbal abuse as they come up to him in a seemingly endless procession, one by one bowing the knee in mock homage, with savagery smiting him as well.

Committed with flagellation. Violence committed with hands that smite. Violence committed with tongues that sting. Hail, King. God forbid that you and I should be guilty of the same offense. For isn't that what is done when on a Sunday we sing, crown him with many crowns, or king of my life I crown thee now?

And then, come Monday morning, by the way we do our daily work, by the way that we betray trust, by the way that we show a lack of integrity, by abandoning moral purity, we show that we have bended the knee in mock homage because we still worship self or bow to the pressure of our peer group, while all the while hailing him as king.

And Jesus suffers because of this physical violence and verbal abuse, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. But to the violence that takes place because of the flagellation and the savage mockery of the soldiers, there is now added another tributary.

Malice and the Rejection of the Sinless Lamb

And this one is malice. Pilate brings out this bleeding spectacle. And instead of being moved, instead of being gripped by the pathos of the situation, the people cry out with contempt, kill him. Pilate protests the innocence of the prisoner.

Notice how often this refrain occurs in the gospel according to John, that they could find no fault in him, that he was guilty of no offense, that he could not legitimately be charged with anything, as if to document the fact that this one who is doomed to die dies not for any crime of which he is guilty, not for any charge against him that can be substantiated.

He is the Lamb of God, without blemish and without spot. There was no other good enough to pay the price for sin. He only, spotless Lamb, could open the gate of heaven and let us in. Behold the man, but they are not moved with pity.

They are deepened in their contempt and they clamor even more stubbornly that he should be put to death. And Pilate's dilemma continues. I won't condemn him. I can't release him. And now another charge is brought against Jesus.

Formerly they had charged him with wanting to be king and being a rival to Caesar. Now the charge is religious that he claims to be the Son of God. And the Jews rightly understood that the claim to be the Son of God meant to claim equality with God.

That much comes through in the argument that you find in the 10th chapter of this very Gospel, where they said, You claim to be the Son of God? You're making yourself equal with God. And the answer of Jesus was, I and the Father are one.

Claiming to be a king? Claiming to be the Son of God? Opposed on both grounds by those whose minds were filled with malice? And yet there has never been another person on the face of the earth, nor there ever will be, who could rightly have claimed to be both king and Son of God.

Christ the King and Son of God

Going away back to the 2nd Psalm, the heart of Jesus must have been filled with the words of that Psalm. Thou art my Son. This day have I begotten you. The heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing, and they conspire against the Lord and against his anointed.

But I have set my Son upon the holy hill of Zion. I have made him king, and I will give to him the ends of the earth for his possession. King indeed! Son indeed! By the will of God! And yet these are made occasions of accusation against our Lord.

Pilate's Cowardice and Abuse of Authority

When Pilate hears that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, he knows that this is a religious kind of charge, and being himself a cynical, skeptical, sarcastic pagan, a man who is filled with superstition, he trembles at the thought of the supernatural, and he knows that this is now a very thin ground on which he must tread, for he will not want to get involved in any controversy about the deity.

And so he goes in and asks Jesus a question. Where are you from? And by that he doesn't mean what part of Palestine are you from, but what is your origin? Are you indeed come down from heaven? Are you indeed related to God, the supreme God, the God of the Jews?

He asks Jesus about his origin, and Jesus replies with silence. And to that silence, Pilate replies with insolence. How dare you be silent before me? Don't you know that I have the power to kill you and the power to turn you loose?

The obvious answer we would have given to that is, then why don't you use that power and set the innocent free? And Jesus reminds him that all power, that all authority is accountable to God as a sacred stewardship.

You would have no authority on earth had it not been given you from heaven, for the powers that be are ordained of God to maintain justice and are accountable to him for their use of that authority, for their failure to use that authority, or for their abuse of that authority, right in through our own day, whether it's a government not far from here in Ontario or in Ottawa or anywhere else.

You would have no authority had it not been given to you by the supreme authority to whom you and others will always be accountable. Pilate finds that he is not getting anywhere, and he goes out again and dialogues with the people who are filled with malice and who are insistent that he should die, and they bring against him the threat of personal intimidation.

If you let him go, you show by this act that you are disloyal to Caesar and you are propping up and you are aiding and abetting one who could be a potential enemy of Caesar, and so the sorrows of Jesus increase.

As the people thunder back what must have wounded their own national pride and fiercely independent spirit, we have no king but Caesar, and as for this pretender, kill him. Jesus has been despised and rejected in favor of a robber revolutionary named Barabbas, and now he is despised and rejected in favor of a pagan idolater named Caesar, and the grief of Jesus swells and the man of sorrows grieves, but there is one thing more to be added.

Pilate's Double-Minded Expediency

Beyond the obvious violence and the evident malice, there is sophisticated and refined cowardice. It is very instructive to study the footwork of Pontius Pilate as given to us in the 18th and 19th chapters of the Gospel of John, and I can only touch at it, but when we look at where Pilate went and what he said and what he did, we become amazed at the restlessness inside this person, cynical, going by expediency rather than principle.

He is concerned for only one thing, his own personal survival, whatever else may happen. Look at his footwork as it's given from the middle of chapter 18 through the middle of chapter 19. He goes out to meet with the people and the people tell him, We have already condemned Jesus.

What we want you to do now is to comply with our order. He goes in to Jesus and asks him, Are you really a king? What kind of kingdom is it over which you preside? Then he goes out again to the people and he said, I find him innocent.

Choose between Barabbas and Jesus. Get me off the hook. You make my decision. Then he goes inside and has the prisoner flogged so that he may come out as a sorry spectacle and move them to pity. Then he goes out to the people and finds that instead of being moved to compassion, they scream crucify.

Then he goes in and asks Jesus about his claim to be the son of God. Then he comes out and faces the threat of personal intimidation as being disloyal to Caesar. Then he goes in again. How can I condemn him?

How can I release him? And then he goes out again. Behold your king. And he gives him over to his executioners. Here is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways, filled with self-interest rather than conviction, going by expediency rather than by principle, not having the courage to act on what he knows is true.

He seeks to save his life, and he will surely end by losing it. It wasn't long before the people denounced him to Caesar for other acts of misgovernment, that he was deposed from his office as governor of southern Palestine, that he was exiled away in disgrace and took his life in despair.

The Sorrow of Christ and the Joy of Salvation

Pilate stands for all the subsequent centuries to see the truth of the word of Jesus. What shall it profit a man if he gained the whole world and lose his own soul? We see Jesus, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

But we see more than that. We have come to a glimpse of the mystery of his suffering and his sorrow, and we know that what he endured was for us. And we see that whip plow furrows across his back, and we know that he died for us, and we say, with his stripes, we are healed.

And because he was willing to be a man of sorrows, we can know the joy of our salvation, the forgiveness of sins, and peace with God. Let us pray. Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit has portrayed you in our scriptures for this day, and the eyes of our faith and the eyes of our understanding have seen something of your sorrow.

And we know that it was for our sin that the just died in the place of the unjust. Enable us to experience the joy of the salvation that your sorrows purchased for us. We ask it for your own glory. Amen.