An Easter Tale - Rex Futurus, Part 1

Someone tried telling me the sign was because Pilate and this Jesus fellow were friends. In the moment it almost made sense. I imagined a whole scenario where they hung out together for years, out of the public eye, complaining about Jewish politics. Jesus was a carpenter, that’s probably how they met. One day he delivers a table or whatever to Pilate, they get to talking, discover how much they have in common, and it just blossoms from there.

Now, I’ll admit I didn’t know either one of them personally, but people talk. They were both gossip magnets. Pilate for obvious reasons, and Jesus, because he went around the whole region with his little group of friends in recent years, and it was kind of impossible to avoid what people said about him, the miracles, the idea that he was the messiah, but basically how he was unlike anyone any of us had ever met.

Then of course he ends up arrested, they push through a trial overnight, and this was just last night, mind you! And this morning he’s shown before Pilate, asked to explain himself, and Pilate is essentially backed into a corner, something about sedition, I guess, which is the one thing a Roman governor can never be soft on, and he has no choice but to order yet another execution. 

To be a fly on the wall when they spoke in private! That’s what they say, that Pilate kept pulling Jesus aside, which is strange enough. To listen to most of what Pilate’s reputation suggests, you’d think he’d hardly think twice about the matter, that he would hardly give such a criminal that had been presented to him so early in the morning the time of day! And listen, I don’t really care what they say about the Jews. I’m just a merchant, here, I’m not Roman, I’m certainly not Jewish. If anything I should be mad at Jesus for that outburst at the temple. It was all but a personal attack, right?

But the trouble is, I got to thinking. Not just about why Pilate would humor such a man, why he would stick such a note on the crucifix, “King of the Jews,” what he could possibly have meant (Romans aren’t known for their humor; they’re best understood for their tragedies, since in all things they are always chasing Greeks), but why I should take this Jesus seriously, if I thought for even one moment a Roman governor did.

It’s not because he clashed with his own people. I get that he probably gained some of his followers that way. There will always be contrarians, and hopefully I am never one of those! I think, rather, that he had something worth believing in. A sign says “King of the Jews” above his savaged body, you have to think about that for a moment.

They say he championed the humble. Sometimes it’s easy to believe that anyone willing to do that is just trying to gain their favor, do the state the favor of making such people somehow feel good about their lot, and someone far more cynical than me would then draw the conclusion that Pilate and Jesus bonded in this way. Well, not me.

I think he did it for the very reasons he himself suggested, that, and if you believe what people have said, that he was the son of the Jewish god, and certainly all the Jewish stories in that book of theirs proves what good storytellers they are, and that this story of his was the best they ever produced, because he further suggested he was born to once and for all reconcile his father and these people, and in fact everyone else, too. And he had to do it by dying today.

Ritual sacrifice is an old religious tradition. I think every culture has it at some point. It’s not so common for the sacrifice to be the son of the god. It’s not so common for such a grand gesture. Well, if it is, I haven’t heard about it. 

King of the Jews. Clearly it got me thinking. I’m not saying Pilate believed one thing or another. But perhaps he believes Jesus himself believed it. I don’t think he posted it to antagonize the Jews. I think it was about respect. I think he recognized, for one reason or another, that Jesus was more than just another agitator.

I’m starting to believe a lot of things.