1Then the whole assembly rose and led him off to Pilate. 2And they began to accuse him, saying, "We have found this man subverting our nation. He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar and claims to be Christ,[a] a king."
3So Pilate asked Jesus, "Are you the king of the Jews?"
"Yes, it is as you say," Jesus replied.
4Then Pilate announced to the chief priests and the crowd, "I find no basis for a charge against this man."
5But they insisted, "He stirs up the people all over Judea[b]by his teaching. He started in Galilee and has come all the way here."
6On hearing this, Pilate asked if the man was a Galilean. 7When he learned that Jesus was under Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who was also in Jerusalem at that time.
8When Herod saw Jesus, he was greatly pleased, because for a long time he had been wanting to see him. From what he had heard about him, he hoped to see him perform some miracle. 9He plied him with many questions, but Jesus gave him no answer. 10The chief priests and the teachers of the law were standing there, vehemently accusing him. 11Then Herod and his soldiers ridiculed and mocked him. Dressing him in an elegant robe, they sent him back to Pilate. 12That day Herod and Pilate became friends—before this they had been enemies.
Dig Deeper
One of the great movies of the 1980’s was the classic war movie “Red Dawn.” The movie had to do with an invasion of the continental United States by the Soviet Union and the Cubans. The plot of that movie seems a bit campy these days, but at the time, especially as a kid, it seemed almost like a documentary. We watched that movie, completely engrossed with it, because we were constantly told that we could find ourselves in a similar situation at any time. As the movie opens and the Soviet-backed Cuban army takes over a town in the American West, a group of teenagers hides out in the mountains after grabbing supplies and weapons. Eventually they become a rather significant force of guerilla fighters that serve as a great thorn in the side of the occupying forces. Throughout the movie, there is a great deal of back and forth scenes between the American teenage guerilla fighters and the Cuban military leader who desperately wants to stop them but they never actually meet. The tension continues to mount between these two sides, especially between Jed, the leader of the Americans and the Cuban leader. They finally meet near the end of the movie in a climactic battle scene. The Cuban general finally encounters Jed and has an opportunity to kill him, but he doesn’t. Jed is not what he thought he would be. He realizes that Jed and all of these feared guerillas are just a bunch of kids. He also sees that Jed is mortally wounded and simply poses no threat so he chooses to walk away. There had been enough killing and he would not participate in any more.
Obviously, the parallels between that movie and the encounters here between Jesus and Pilate and Herod are not exact, but there is an important similarity. The tension has continued to build up throughout the Gospel of Luke, pointing to the confrontation between Rome, as represented by Pilate, and the Jewish leadership as represented by Herod. And now that encounter has finally come. But like the Cuban general, Pilate and Herod will find that their assumptions about their opponent were quite mistaken. They had many things about their enemy wrong. He was not what they expected. Perhaps he was not as worthy of death as they once thought.
The scene of Jesus’ trial shifted dramatically from the Sanhedrin as they hastily took him to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. The entire assembly of the Sanhedrin (at least all those that were present) were apparently rather unified in their desire to be rid of Jesus. To do this, however, they needed the power and authority of Rome. They simply did not have the power under Roman rule to put Jesus to death, so they needed Pilate to do it for them.
As they brought him before Pilate, they leveled three specific charges. The first charge was that he was subverting the nation. The word rendered “subverting” can also be translated “perverted.” The point is that Jesus was leading the people astray and stirring them up. This was a fairly formal and serious charge for the Sanhedrin that would have been casting Jesus as a false prophet. Both the basis of this charge and the sentence for such actions are rooted in Deuteronomy 13 which calls for the immediate execution of such false prophets. Yet ironically, it was both Moses (Ex. 5:4) and Elijah (1 Ki. 18:17) who were charged with stirring up the people (using nearly identical language as used here for Jesus, although that is obscured somewhat by the TNIV’s rendering of those passages) and leading them astray. But in both of those cases the accuser was one who was opposed to the purposes of God and it seems that Luke has made it clear that the Sanhedrin fell into that category.
The second charge was that Jesus opposed payment of taxes to Caesar. Because part of Pilate’s role was to ensure that the collection of taxes went smoothly, this charge would have peaked his interest. This was something that Jesus was clearly not guilty of (Lk. 20:20-26), but it was a charge that could endanger his life if Pilate took it seriously. The first charge, quite frankly, held no interest for Pilate. Whether or not Jesus was a false prophet and was subverting the religious fidelity of the nation carried little importance for Pilate and for Rome.
The third charge, similarly to the second, carried an accusation that would have perked up the ears of Rome. Jesus, said the Sanhedrin, was claiming to be the Jewish Messiah, the king of Israel. If he was claiming to be a king, Rome would have well known and understood that many of the Messianic hopes of the Jews would be to throw off the shackles of the Roman Empire. So any talk of someone being the true king of Israel, and subsequently the world according to the Jewish belief, meant that the one claiming to be Messiah would need to be quickly killed before Israel got any ideas of revolt.
Pilate was a vicious and harsh ruler that would have had no problem putting Jesus to death if it helped him or made things easier but he was also in a difficult political situation and could not afford another sticky political situation to blow up in his face. It is significant that once he met Jesus he just saw no basis for such charges. Perhaps Pilate didn’t even know what it was, but there was something that told him that Jesus just was not that kind of leader. There was nothing for Rome to be concerned with. But, he didn’t need problems with the Sanhedrin, nor did he need them telling Rome that he wasn’t handling Rome’s interests well. It might be more difficult for Pilate to let Jesus go. In hearing that Jesus was from Galilee, then, a beautiful situation presented itself. Herod was the ruler of Galilee and happened to be in Jerusalem at the moment. Sending Jesus to Herod would accomplish three things. The first was that he couldn’t understand the charges of the Sanhedrin against Jesus but maybe Herod, who lived in Galilee, could find a basis for a charge. The second thing was that it nicely passed the buck of responsibility onto Herod and away from Pilate. And the third advantage was that it was a respectful political gesture towards Herod that would have created good will and would garner Pilate a badly needed political friend.
Luke has been steadily building the tension between Jesus and Herod, who has been looming in the background throughout his Gospel, especially since 13:31 when we were told that Herod wanted Jesus killed. His reasons at that point for wanting Jesus dead are not clear but Herod was, Luke tells us, fascinated by Jesus. It is very possible that Herod thought that a meeting could be a fascinating showdown on the level of Moses coming into the court of Pharaoh. He, no doubt, built the meeting up in his mind and was expecting Jesus to perform Mosaic type miracles. A desire that was surely only increased by constantly hearing of the reports of Jesus’ great works and miracles throughout Judea. Herod had built up this incredible Exodus-like showdown in his mind and quite possibly in an immature child-like fashion was looking forward to it, seeing himself as the powerful Pharaoh type who would be able to bring the great miracle worker down where Pharaoh had failed with Moses.
Herod was surely disappointed. Jesus, like Pilate found, not a great miracle working, violent and dangerous Messiah type but a man who would only reply to questions of his being king with a sentence that literally should be translated as “you say that I am,” but a phrase that language experts point out would have been understood to mean something like “you could say that, but not in the way you think.” This was not a revolutionary. This was not the showdown that they were expecting. This was more like Isaiah’s suffering servant who “was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth” (Isa. 53:7).
But Herod, as did Pilate, found no reason to charge Jesus with anything that would lead to his death. In Herod’s eyes, Jesus was disappointing, yes. But there was nothing there that Herod found to be a threat. What he thought was a great adversary was something altogether different. Herod did seemingly show his immaturity and petulance, however, as he listened to the vehement accusations of the chief priests and the teachers of the law. Herod certainly wasn’t impressed by Jesus so he mocked him. If Jesus was going to be a sad little nothing of a man that wanted to make such grandiose claims, then Herod would take it upon himself to humble him. Herod, in essence, attempted to bring Jesus to his knees. The irony for Luke’s readers is almost overwhelming in its sadness. Here was the true king of the world, the one who would be vindicated as the true Messiah, the one before whom every knee will bow and every tongue will confess as the true Lord, who was being treated as a joke.
It’s a powerful reminder, however, that those that reject and mock Jesus should not be hated, mistreated, or disrespected. Jesus was mistreated and mocked but never responded in anger or in kind. He stood quietly before his captors and let their dehumanizing behavior speak for itself. Perhaps he wasn’t what Pilate and Herod were expecting but this is exactly what it looks like when the reconciling power of God was unleashed into the world. It is a quiet, dignified and controlled love that never responds in anger or hatred. It is to this kind of love and control that we are called to embrace and show to the world.
Devotional Thought
When Jesus was confronted by those that wanted a good argument or showdown with him, he responded only with dignified control and felt no need to defend or justify himself. Does that sound like your response in difficult circumstances? Be determined today to learn from Jesus’ example here and apply it to your own situations and circumstances. How might your responses in some scenarios look different if you followed Jesus’ example?
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