“A set up”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Thursday, July 6, 2023
Luke 23:13-25 (Forward, p. 69) CEV p. 1095
I have had the unfortunate experience of witnessing, and indeed, being part of the crowd during a public disturbance, and I have to say that it was quite upsetting, disturbing and frightening. Somehow, I was not actually caught up in the shouting and chanting, but it was all around me, and the mere experience was quite harrowing, and quite memorable.
I can thus fully understand what it was like for Pontius Pilate. Normally a hard, forceable and inflexible man—which was part of his problem, here he was ‘between a rock and a hard place’. The official party of chief priests and elders had infiltrated the crowd with well-placed agitators, and together they knew fully well how to stir up the crowd. Furthermore, they knew exactly how to ‘get Pilate’s goat’. He was already under sanction from his Roman overlords for past misconducts and was essentially ‘living on borrowed time’. His opponents out there in the crowd knew that just one more negative report back to Rome would probably be enough to have him ‘sacked’, recalled to headquarters—and who knows what else. And, in all things, Pilate was fully aware of his predicament. And so, even though he knew fully well that Jesus was innocent of any capital crime, he took the lesser, less noble route—to ‘save his own skin’, as it were, gave in to the crowd’s demands and gave Jesus over to them to be crucified. Indeed, as very authors have alleged, it was a ‘set up’ as far as the Jewish leaders were concerned.
But it was also a ‘set up’ in yet another way. It was also something of God’s plan, something that Jesus had ‘bought into’ there in the Garden of Gethsemane. As Jesus had Himself mentioned, He could have called on legions of angels to protect and rescue Him, but He did not. He knew that this crucifixion was part of the overall plan, part of what was necessary to conquer sin, death and the devil on our behalf. And so, it was out of love, love for us, that He did this—it was part of the ‘set up’ that God, that He, had planned from before the dawn of time. And all out of His great love for us. It is pretty incredible, and pretty awesome. What an incredible God, and an incredible love. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Forward notes: “But they kept urgently demanding with loud shouts that he should be crucified; and their voices prevailed” (verse 23).
“Mariana is an Episcopal friend who studied in a boarding school as a teen. Corruption was rampant in that institution. During finals, it was normal for students to cheat so that they could pass their classes. Mariana didn’t like cheating. During a test, another student asked her to whisper the correct answer, but she refused to do so. After the test, her classmates called her ‘selfish,’ ‘a clown,’ and added other insults. That was the price she had to pay for being fair; she was fair, courageous, and loyal to her convictions.
“Sadly, more often than not people yield to crowd pressure, as Pontius Pilate did when the crowd cried for him to crucify Jesus. So often, it seems easier to yield to fit in and please the crowd.
“To stand firm, we need courage, resilience, and a sense of justice. May God grant us those gifts all the time.”
Moving Forward: “Many people live surrounded by rings, dings, and notifications. Today turn off your devices for a while and enjoy the quiet.”