Crossing the line:
Joseph of Arimathea thinks again

There are moments in life when you realise that someone you’ve held to be a close colleague has crossed a line and things will never ever be the same.

The previous night, I had watched Caiaphas manoeuvre Jesus into condemning himself. My mouth dropped open when I realised what he was doing. But I had said nothing. Then Jesus talked about coming on the clouds of heaven and I knew he was lost. After that, there wasn’t even a formal vote. The council had agreed unanimously about his guilt.

Actually, that’s not quite right. Neither Nicodemus nor I thought the case had been properly heard but a tide of prejudice against this strange and wonderful man had somehow swept us along. Now I was standing outside Pilate’s residence as the council presented their prisoner to the governor.

How a killing creates peace has never been explained to me

I was not essential to this part of the process but I was determined to be there in case there was any chance to redeem myself and ensure, even at this late stage, a proper legal process. It seemed unlikely. According to Caiaphas, the governor had already agreed to rubber stamp our decision in order to ensure a peaceful Passover. Although, how a killing creates peace has never been explained to me.

We stood outside the palace while Jesus was taken to Pilate. This allowed us to maintain our strict rules about observing the Passover Festival. Although such strict adherence to rules hadn’t seemed to bother any of us a short while earlier.

Pilate came out on to the balcony that overlooked the street. ‘What charges are you bringing against this man?’ he asked.

That completely wrong-footed Caiaphas and his team. Pilate had been told earlier what the accusation was and the council had merely expected to confirm publicly to the governor that they’d found the prisoner guilty.

Instead, Pilate had begun as if he was going to do things properly, in the correct Roman fashion. For a moment, hope rose again for this man I had admired so secretly. The reply from the street to Pilate was a mixture of astonishment and barely concealed rudeness.‘ We wouldn’t have handed him over to you if he weren’t a criminal.’

You don’t talk to the Roman procurator like that. A thin smile curled around his lip for just a moment. Then it disappeared. ‘Seeing as you find him to be a criminal, take him away and use your laws to make a judgement.’

The Accusations

‘Brilliant,’ I thought. He wants us to deal with it and we’ve no authority to impose a death penalty. He’ll be imprisoned and we’ll be able to find a way to reopen the case. Some of the teachers of the law pointed this out to Pilate.

Then Caiaphas’ men began, under his whispered instructions, to make up accusations that would rattle the governor. ‘Perverting our nation’, which was the first accusation, seemed weak. The Roman Empire is always perfectly happy to see us squabble among ourselves.

The second accusation was more serious. They shouted that he had forbidden us to pay taxes to Caesar. Almost the opposite was true but Pilate didn’t know that.

In all of this, Jesus said nothing. Pilate looked back towards him several times but I never heard him utter a single syllable. Perhaps he thought silence was his best defence or perhaps he felt it would be a waste of words.

Finally, they yelled that he had been claiming to be king. That was the most serious charge. It’s the Romans who decide who may or may not be king. It’s their system we live under, not ours. If we started taking things into our own hands, you’d soon smell the whiff of revolution and right after that you’d be able to hear the march of Roman soldiers come to crush it.

Then he turned on his heel and marched like the soldier he was back into the palace.

Obviously he had retreated in order to speak to the prisoner himself. If we hadn’t insisted on being so exact about religious observance, Caiaphas might have been able to be there in person to make his part of the case. Instead, we were all left outside I looked across at our high priest and thought that at last he was experiencing what it’s like to be an outsider, just like the man he was so keen to persecute.

Where to find this story in your Bible?

John 18:28–31
Matthew 27:12
Luke 23:1–2

Inside the palace: Pilate meets the prisoner

I stared at the prisoner: anyone less like a soldier, let alone a terrorist, was hard to imagine. He was a bit weather-beaten and obviously exhausted but there was quietness about him that you might expect to find in a scholar. I’d have placed him in a library not on trial for his life.

‘So what did you do before all this started?’ I asked.

‘Carpentry,’ he told me. ‘Anything with wood and anything with buildings – if it needed mending, I would do it.’

I was trying, for once, to fix in my mind what I was dealing with here. My wife’s note about her dream had made me curious; otherwise, I’d have simply waved the execution through without a thought. I’m not a romantic.

Are you the king of the Jews?

‘You’ve heard what your own people have accused you of and you’ve said precisely nothing. Frankly, that amazes me. Are you the king of the Jews?’

He answered my question with a question. Nobody does that to a Roman governor! ‘Is that your own idea?’ he asked. ‘Or did others talk to you about me?’

Somehow he’s found out about my conversation with Caiaphas, I thought. Of course he could have been talking about the rabble who had yelled about him from the street but I doubted that.

‘Am I a Jew?’ I replied. The idea amused me faintly. I’ve been many things over the years but Jewish isn’t one of them.

‘Look,’ I told him. ‘It was your people, your chief priests who handed you over to me. I still don’t get what is going on here. What is it that you have actually done?’

His answer astonished me. He wasn’t denying he was a king but he told me that it had nothing to do with the streets and alleyways of Jerusalem or anywhere else on this earth. A sort of heavenly kingdom, I thought to myself. Naturally I don’t believe in such things.

He clearly reckoned he had enough power behind him to make a fight of it but told me the kingdom he was actually willing to fight for was something else entirely. Frankly, his answer had not taken me much further forward. On the other hand, it seemed fairly clear he was not dangerous, only strange.

‘You are a king, then?’ I suggested.

He agreed but went on to talk about being a king of truth whose followers were with him because they too were on the side of truth. It sounded a bit weird but that’s all.

‘What is truth?’ I asked him but I wasn’t really seeking an answer. I just didn’t want him thinking I’d actually swallowed his view of the world.

The rabble outside were furious

However, I’d made up my mind: he was harmless enough. I nodded to the guards and returned to the balcony. The rabble outside were furious when I told them that I had failed to establish a charge against him. They yelled and jeered; said he’d been causing trouble all over Judea.

One of them shouted, ‘He started the trouble in Galilee. Now he’s brought it all the way here.’

That gave me an idea. Galilee was Herod’s province. Herod was in Jerusalem. Surely, he’d be only too delighted to exercise his powers. So that’s where I sent him.

My wife, of course, was delighted that I hadn’t condemned this rabbi to death but less impressed by the fact that I’d sent him to Herod.

The price: Pilate’s hand is forced

It came as no surprise that Herod sent Jesus back to me when he’d lost interest in him. The old fox would never take responsibility for something if he could avoid it.

Still, he was pleased to have met him and it healed the rift between us which proved to be a significant advantage in the years to come. But it was no good to me on that Friday morning. So I called Caiaphas and his motley crew back to meet me again. I’d had enough.

I have found no basis for your charges against him

‘I have examined this man in your presence,’ I told the crowd that had been gathering. ‘And I have found no basis for your charges against him. Herod has also been given an opportunity to review the matter and has come to the same conclusion as I have.

It is clear that he has done nothing that deserves the death penalty. Therefore I will punish and then release him. This is the Passover; that is our custom.’

On any other day in my time as procurator, that would have been the end of it and for a second or two I thought it was. Then I heard a voice say, ‘Barabbas; we want Barabbas.’ As long as it was a lone voice, I could ignore it. But others joined in, ‘Barabbas; we want Barabbas.’ The volume grew.

Of course I knew they had little interest in the troublemaker and murderer who they were shouting for. They’d probably been put up to it by the priests who envied the influence that the man from Galilee was having.

Crucify Him!

‘What shall I do with the one you call the king of the Jews?’ I asked. By this stage, I was willing to release two prisoners rather than one if it calmed the situation.

‘Crucify him!’ they yelled back at me. ‘He claims to be the Son of God; he must die.’ I withdrew from the balcony to the palace in the hope that my absence might help to damp down the storm that seemed to be building. And I looked again at the man who had somehow let loose this mad fire of hatred among the people in the city.

‘Where do you come from?’ I asked. He didn’t answer me. ‘Don’t you realise I have the power to release you… or crucify you?’

‘You would have no power over me,’ he said, ‘unless it were given to you from above. The greater sin lies with the one who handed me over to you.’

He spoke so calmly, so certainly that it unsettled me. There are very many in this land for whom I have no interest in whether they live or die. But he wasn’t one of them. It seemed to me that Claudia might be right about the man in front of me and I determined to free him if I could.

It wasn’t to be. The crowd had been whipped into a frenzy and my return to the balcony made it worse. The cry of ‘crucify him’ was picked up again and shouted rhythmically like a crowd at a Roman amphitheatre. They were baying for blood and suggesting that my loyalty to Rome was in question.

I raised my hand and they quietened for a moment. ‘What crime has he committed?’ I demanded to know.

It was useless. I might as well have been telling the sea to turn back or the desert wind to change direction. The note that my wife had sent me was in the back of my mind and I could see no reason why I should take the responsibility for this man’s death. Herod hadn’t. Why on earth should I?

The Jews understood a gesture like that and there was a growing sense of expectation in the momentary quiet.

As I took the towel from my servant, I declared that this man’s blood was on their hands not mine. They yelled back their delight that his death should be their responsibility and their children’s responsibility. It struck me as a very odd way to practise any religion, but I released Barabbas to them and handed Jesus over to my soldiers.

Claudia was appalled at what had happened and I was furious to have been manoeuvred into a position where keeping the peace for Caesar meant letting some tiny nation’s savage politicians have their way.

‘Could nothing else be done?’ Claudia asked me.

‘It is the price of Empire,’ I told her.