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Your message for the moment is Dr. Reef W. Thielman. No escape. Number three in the Via Dolorosa series. We are concerned tonight in our teaching together about the trial of Jesus before the court of Pontius Pilate. All four gospel writers give to us different details concerning this trial.

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We do not have the time to share all of these readings. I've chosen then just to report on the trial that is given to us by John in his gospel. I read from chapter 18. I begin at the verse number 28. "Then the Jews led Jesus from Caiaphas to the palace of the Roman governor.

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By now it was early morning, and to avoid ceremonial uncleanness, the Jews did not enter the palace. They wanted to be able to eat the Passover. So Pilate came out to them and asked, 'What charges are you bringing against this man?' 'If he were not a criminal,' they replied, 'we would not have handed him over to you.'

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Pilate said, 'Then take him yourself and judge him by your own law.' 'But we have no right to execute anyone the Jews have defeated.' This happened so that the words Jesus had spoken, indicating the kind of death he was going to die, would be fulfilled. Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus, and asked him, 'Are you the king of the Jews?'

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'Is that your own idea?' Jesus asked. 'Or did others talk to you about me?' 'Do you think I am a Jew?' Pilate replied. 'It was your people and your chief priests who handed you over to me. What is it you have done?' Jesus said, 'My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews.

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But my kingdom is from another place.' 'You are a king then,' said Pilate. Jesus answered, 'You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.'

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'What is truth?' Pilate asked. And with this he went out again to the Jews and said, 'I find no basis for a charge against him. But it is your custom for me to release to you one prisoner at the time of the Passover. Do you want me to release the king of the Jews?' They shouted back, 'No, not him. Give us Barabbas.'

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Now Barabbas had taken part in a rebellion. 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, O king of the Jews!'

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And they struck him in the face. Once more Pilate came out and said to the Jews, 'Look, I am 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 him! Crucify him!'

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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.' Now when Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid, and he went back inside the palace. 'Where do you come from?' he asked Jesus.

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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.'

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From then on Pilate tried to set Jesus free, but the Jews kept shouting, 'If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.' And 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 "Gabatha." It was the day of preparation of Passover week, about the sixth hour.

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'Here is your king,' Jesus 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 priest answered.

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And finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified. May God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his words. Somewhere nearby a cock ruffled its feathers. Dawn was breaking over Jerusalem, the city of David. And the morning dove, upon her nest, high up on the stone capital of one of the temple pillars, stood and then flew out into the clean blue Syrian air.

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The streets were still empty, largely at least. Most of the sons of Abraham were still asleep. But there was one group moving along one of the narrow streets which caught the attention of the tiny bird as it flew, and drawn by it, it flew closer. It was, of course, too simple and innocent to understand. But this was a group going from the palace of Caiaphas to the palace of Pontius Pilate.

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Wonder of wonders, this was the people of the Jews taking their Messiah to be judged by a Gentile governor. They arrived at a large stone pavement, broad and wide. The remains are still there to be seen. It is called the Gabbatha. Now why they were there, the dove did not know. But why they were there, we do know.

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And the next minute, we're so influential in the world's history that we dare not even think of them until we have prayed. Let us pray. Our Father, as we draw near to this time of great solemnity, when Thine only begotten Son did appear before a ruler of this world and find himself condemned to die,

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give to us open minds and sensitive hearts that what happened then may live again in us, that we might be brought to a recognition of our own sin and to a seeking after Thee. For it is in Thee and in Thee alone that our saving is to be found. We pray this through Jesus Christ. Amen.

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There are many different perspectives from which we might look at Jesus' trial before Pilate. Too many to consider them all. I focus on only one. Let us see the trial through the eyes of Pilate. It is appropriate that we should do this. For when all is said and done, it must be acknowledged that in these minutes, Jesus was not on trial. Pontius Pilate was.

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Pilate seriously sought to evade judging Jesus. When the Jews brought Jesus to him, they brought him without any specific charges. They knew Pilate would sneer at their religious protestations. So Pilate, hearing those charges, said, "Take him away and try him for yourself."

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But the evasive tactic did not work. The Jews proceeded to bring specific charges against Jesus, three in number. First, that he was perverting the nation. Second, that he refused to pay taxes.

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And third, that he called himself a king. Interestingly enough, none of these were the charges on which the Jews themselves had condemned Jesus. They were charges brought up with the intent of leading Pilate to judge against Jesus. But after examining Jesus in the light of these charges, Pilate said, "I find no fault in this man."

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He declared Jesus innocent and once again sought to evade further judgment. But the Jews pressed the case. And so Pilate, noting that Jesus spoke with a Galilean accent, and remembering that Herod, the king of the Galilee area, is present in Jerusalem at that time,

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suggests that Jesus should properly be taken and tried before Herod. It was a clever move, but Herod would have none of it, and sent Jesus back to Pilate again. Pilate tried once more to evade the Jews. "You have a custom," he said, "whereby one prisoner is released to you at the Passover time,

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and then, trying to stop the death, Pilate brings out to stand beside Jesus Barabbas." Barabbas was a creature of the alley, a backstabber, who did what he did in the name of patriotism. As you all know, some hideous and terrible things are done in the name of patriotism. He set Barabbas against Jesus and said, "Now which one would you have released?"

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But Pilate was beaten by the Jews again. For you see, that small group of people there on the stone pavement that morning was in the pay of the Jews. They were the adherents of the priestly caste of the temple. And so when the Jews moved amongst them and said, "Are you going to agree with us, you fellow Jews,

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or with this Roman governor?" they immediately took side with their own. "Give us Barabbas," they said. And Pilate's last attempt to evade judging Jesus vanished away. The fact of the matter is, no one has really evaded Jesus.

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There are certain things in life that we cannot get away from. Natural law, for example. You may decide that you do not want to breathe air. You won't succeed at it long.

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You may decide that you will defy the law of gravity. But by stepping out of a 17-story window, you will not defy the law of gravity. You will simply demonstrate it. Natural law prevails.

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There is no way that we can evade it. Another thing that we cannot evade is our own heritage, our own history, the roots from which we have come. Just this last week, one of our freshmen, caught up in all of the pressures of academics and also the pledging procedure, came to my home and sat down in the chair before the fire, and as we sat there and talked, he closed his eyes,

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and perhaps even for a moment or two drifted off. In the flickering firelight, I looked at his face. I know this lad. I know his background.

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I know the two great nations from which his family has come. And as I looked at his face, I could see very clearly in his face both of the peoples in which his roots ran. He is a product of the ethnic background which is his. It is woven into every fiber of his being, and it is the same with each and every one of us.

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There are some things you cannot evade. One of them is your heritage, the parentage which is yours. But another thing we cannot evade in life is the presence of God. Anthropologists searching every place, at all times, and with all peoples,

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have never found a group of men and women who did not have some concept of the divine. We have been made in such a way that there is a hole in our hearts, and that hole cannot be filled with anything other than some understanding of God. Augustine was far within the mark when he said, "Our hearts are restless until they rest in God."

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God moves throughout history in many ways, most specially and magnificently in the person of Jesus Christ. One could say that God haunts history in Christ. He seeps into the corners of our consciousness. Even when we deny that he is, his presence is still so much a part of the living human experience

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that we are called upon to react to him. It is as if he is some kind of force of opposition. There are, of course, two kinds of opposition. There is the opposition that tears you down,

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and there is the opposition that challenges you so that you do better. Criticism can tear at you, or it can build you up. God moves in history, especially in the person of Christ, in such a way that he is a divine opposition that stands always over against us,

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and when we confront him in however subtle a way, he calls us to be more than we have been. A week ago I was a guest of the United States Army for three days of lecturing and preaching at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

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On the first day I was lecturing to the chaplains there, and a number of doctors and others attended. One of them came up and introduced himself to me, and after a very pleasant greeting he said,

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"I'm a Floridian, a strict Floridian psychiatrist. I think that religion is an illusion. I'm an atheist." And then, with just the trace of a smile on his face, he went on to say,

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"But you know, every day in my work here at this hospital, I am called upon to deal with the things of God." In his mind he was an atheist, but in his heart, every day, dealing with the wounded minds and hearts of others,

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he was touched and touching things that he could not explain with his atheism. Christ was somehow catching hold of the corners of his conscience. There was a whispering desire in him. You can't evade the ever-present God.

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Augustine wrote 1,600 years ago, from what he called the "cauldron of hell"— that's the way he described the city of Carthage— he wrote, "God took me from behind my own back and forced me to see.

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Indeed, he set me before my own eyes so that I saw how vile I really was." God whispers to us, speaks to us, signs to us. He comes in music and art and drama

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and the moral and ethical philosophy of which we are heir. But he cannot evade the presence of God in Christ in life. Peter Debris, in his book The Blood of the Lamb, tells of a man whose young daughter was dying of leukemia.

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It was her birthday, and this man took a very beautifully decorated cake to the hospital to celebrate with his daughter. When he got to the hospital, he learned that she had suddenly contracted a very serious infection and was near death,

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and within a matter of a few hours, she had died. But in the early morning, before the father had gotten there, she had put on a tape recorder her words to her dad. And he listened to the tape right there in that hospital room.

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And he discovered that what his daughter had chosen to record was not really her words, but some words of his that she had read. He had written an article for the alumni magazine at his college, and she read some of his own words to him as her last words.

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The words went like this. "We must live without the consolations of religion, for religion belongs to the childhood of the race. Human life means nothing, but it is still worth living.

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Man is not but a wisp of music, a brief haze of dreams before the sun, but he has reason and courage and grace, and the first plus the second equals the third." That's what the little girl said before she died.

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That's what the father had taught her. Leaving the hospital and carrying the tape, he walked toward his car. And as he walked toward his car, he passed St. Catherine's Church, and on the front of the church was a large stone crucifix.

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And turning toward that church and toward that crucifix, he hurled the tape into its face, and it hit the statue face on and splattered across it. And as he stood there, staring up through pierced, scalded eyes,

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he saw the hands free themselves from the nails and move slowly to the soiled face, and slowly and deliberately and patiently wipe the icing from the eyes, and it fell in sticky clumps on the steps of the church,

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and then the teeth with the same gentle ritual. And as he listened, he heard a voice say, "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for such is the kingdom of heaven."

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And he fell on the steps, and he cried, "The inescapable Christ!" I care not whether you believe in him or not, whether you fall down before him or shake your fist in his face.

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He haunts history. Pilate's question to the Jews was, "What then shall I do with Jesus, who is called the Christ?" That, in the end, is the question of every man.

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The dove, circling high above the pavement, came down for a closer view and saw Pilate, as he began, having failed in his evasion of Jesus, to try to compromise with Jesus.

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Pilate, you see, was afraid to release Jesus, and he had good reason to be. Three times already in his administration, Pilate got into trouble with the Jews.

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In the first place, when he entered Jerusalem, he permitted his soldiers to carry their imperial standards, and on those standards was the representation of Caesar as God. The Jews counted it a blasphemy

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to have these representations of a false god in their capital city. Secondly, Pilate permitted his troops to hang their votive shields in the temple, and on those shields were the names of the royal Caesar gods.

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And again, the Jews cried out blasphemy. Finally, Pontius Pilate built an aqueduct into Jerusalem, and he built it out of money which he took from the temple treasuries. And this aroused the Jews so much

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that they went to Rome and complained. And Pilate was rebuked by Rome. It was Roman practice, you see, to let sleeping dogs lie insofar as religion was concerned.

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Their governors were told to allow the people to worship in whatever way the people chose to worship. Pilate irritated the Jews, and they complained, and he was rebuked.

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And now Pilate was afraid, lest he irritate the Jews again. When they cried out to him, "If you are Caesar's friend, you will kill this man," Pilate knew that they would be quick to report

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his failure to cooperate with them to the emperor. And so he sought to compromise. He had Jesus beaten. He thought if he's beaten and they see him beaten,

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then they'll be satisfied. It was long, of course. He had already declared Jesus to be innocent of all charges. But he was trying to compromise.

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But you cannot compromise with the things of Christ. The man who stands up in worship and sings, he who would valiantly follow the Master, and then goes out the next day and lies and steals or cheats,

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or turns a blind eye when others lie and steal and cheat, may think he gets away with it. But you cannot compromise with Christ. The girl who pulls a train at a party on Saturday night

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and then bows her head to thank God at the table in Hicks on Sunday afternoon may think she's getting away with it. But you cannot compromise with the things of Christ. The story of compromise in the Bible, which means the most to me,

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is the story of King Saul. Early in his reign, Saul defeated the Amalekites, and he was told by Samuel, the prophet of God, that he was to kill all of the Amalekites.

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But Saul compromised and permitted some of the Amalekites to live. A few years later, when Saul's kingdom was being taken from him, on the battlefield, defeated, he tried to kill himself. He wounded himself but didn't succeed in taking his own life.

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He begged others to administer the finishing touch, but they would not. They would not lay their hands on the Lord's anointing. But finally, Saul found one man willing to kill him, and that man killed the king and then stole his crown and his royal jewelry.

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The story is read for us in 2 Samuel, the first chapter. The interesting thing about it is this. The man that finally killed the king and took his royal treasure was an Amalekite. One of those whom he'd let live by compromise in the end killed him.

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Compromise always kills when it has to do with the things of God. It weakens our worth. It saps our spiritual strength. Do you remember that great scene in Matthew 25, when Jesus is describing the Last Judgment,

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and he says that all men will be standing before his throne, and they will be separated into the sheep who go to be with God, and to the ghosts who will go forever to the outer darkness. How does he distinguish between the two groups?

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The decision is not made on the basis of their orthodoxy or their theology or their religious practice, not at all. He says, "Inasmuch as you did it to the least of my brethren, fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, visited the imprisoned, clothed the naked, when you did that for them, you did it for me, enter into the joy of your Lord.

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And inasmuch as you did not do it, did not feed the hungry, did not give the thirsty drink, did not visit the imprisoned, did not clothe the naked, you did not do it unto me, go to the place of the gnashing of teeth." And do you remember how those who were confined to the darkness cried out,

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"We didn't know it was you!" What were they saying? They were saying, "If we'd known it was you, we would have done it! When we didn't know it was you, we didn't do it."

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That's compromising with the things of Christ. That's wearing one face when you're in his presence and another face when you're not. And to such ones, Jesus says, "Get away from me! I do not know you!"

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That morning dove circles very high now in that blue sky, frees, catches every breeze. But Pilate, Pilate's not like a dove. He's like a fish trapped in a net,

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because he tried to compromise with the things of Christ. His question, you remember it? "What then shall I do with Jesus, who is called the Christ?" And that's the question for all of us.

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So as a last resort, Pilate tries to get rid of the whole matter. He brings Jesus forward, a mass of wounds. What was beautiful is now ugly. And the cowardly governor washes his hands of the whole affair,

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not just with his words but with his feet. He has two men come, one with a basin and the other with a pitcher, and as the one pours the water from the pitcher, he washes his hands and lets the soiled water fall into the basin.

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"I wash my hands of the affair." It was a Jewish ritual act. It was not a Roman act. It was a traditional Jewish act.

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He wanted to do something to make it very clear to the Jews that the blood of Christ was not on his hands. And of course, once more he failed. Niagara would not have claimed him.

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The judge now faced the judgment. There are many people who, when they speak of Christ, do not like to speak of judgment. They say, "How can you argue that one who was as gentle as a lamb,

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one who took the little children into his arms, one who spoke of love and mercy, one who had pity on sinners and healed the sick, one who wept at the tomb of his friend Lazarus

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and cried over his capital city, Jerusalem, how can you say of one who was so tender and full of mercy that he can be a judge?" Oh, we can say it and we must say it,

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because Jesus spoke so often of his judgment. Search the Gospels, any of the four, and you will find again and again that he sees himself as judge and says that all men will stand before him to be ashamed.

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Daniel Webster, when he was Secretary of State, was with a group of friends one evening, and someone said to him in a lull of the conversation, "Mr. Secretary, what do you consider the greatest thought

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to have ever occupied your mind?" And Daniel Webster bowed his head and then said to a person close to him, "Is there anyone here who is not my friend?"

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And the person said, "You are with friends." Then he looked up and said, "The greatest thought to have ever crossed my mind is that of my individual responsibility before God."

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And having said that, he spoke to the theme for 20 minutes and then left the room in silence. Sir James Simpson was a great British medical doctor. He discovered chloroform and other things.

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A student said to him one day, "Sir James, what is the greatest discovery you ever made?" Without a moment's hesitation, Sir James Simpson responded, "The greatest discovery that I've ever made is

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that I am a sinner before God, and Jesus Christ is my Savior." You see, this Christ we see on trial is finally the one before whom we will all appear on trial.

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And do you know what that judgment will be like for us? I will tell you what it will be like. You have seen these videotapes on which pictures can be made and then put into a machine

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and they are played on the television screen in your house. That's what it will be like. Jesus will take a cassette which contains each and every one of our individual lives.

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And each one of us, one at a time, will sit down beside him and he will play our cassette. And we will sit there and look at our life

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as Jesus looks at it. And we will not be able to say a word. There will be no excuses, no arguments, debates, or evasion.

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There will be no compromise. It will all be there and it will all be seen by him and by each one of us. And when it is done, we will be judged.

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Is it not interesting to you that those who have lived lives most like his are at the same time most conscious of the certainty and extent of his judgment?

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The Apostle Paul was the greatest Christian who ever lived. He began his ministry by saying, "Paul, an apostle." Seven years later he wrote another letter in which he said, "Paul, the least of the apostles and not worthy to be called an apostle."

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Eight years after that he wrote another letter in which he said, "Unto me, less than the least of the members of the Church, is grace given." And then at the very end of his life, he writes a letter to his young son in the faith, Timothy,

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and he says, "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief." The more you know Jesus, the more you know you will be judged.

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But even if you do not know him, the reality of the judgment still stands. Pilate's question, "What shall I do with Jesus who is called the Christ?" is the judgment question for each of us.

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Well, very quickly, you will want to know how Pilate's life ended. The Jews did complain about him sometime later. He was recalled to Rome and committed suicide during the reign of the Emperor Caligula.

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Legend takes over the story then. According to tradition, his body was thrown into the Tiber, but the Tiber was so disturbed by its presence that it had to be removed. It was then carried into the distant province of Gaul.

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There, thrown into the Rhône River was the same result. It was finally dragged to the Alps, and there, according to legend, it was buried in a cave deep in the Alps. Near that cave there was a mountain called Mount Piliathos,

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which means "mountain with a cap of clouds." They changed the name of the mountain from Mount Piliathos to Mount Pilathos, Mount Pilate. I've been to the top of that mountain two times.

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I remember once crossing Lake Lucerne and then taking the railroad and then the funicular and then walking the last few hundred yards to the top. It was a very cloudy day. I could not see the lake below.

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It was cold, and there was a great murk about the mountain, and everywhere I looked there was hard rock and jagged crags and split and broken stones. And I thought to myself, "They named this mountain, well,

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Mount Pilathos." But as I looked up, the sun came through the clouds, and I could see the blue Swiss sky. And there, circling above me in the sun,

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was a pure white morning dove. And I thought to myself how it is that Jesus, in his beauty and purity and freedom, always flies over and about all the ugliness of men.

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What then shall we do with Jesus, who is called the Christ? Let us pray. O God, we cannot evade him.

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O God, make us smart enough not to compromise. O God, make us wise enough to know that we cannot pretend it never happened. There is not enough water in all the world to wash our hands.

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Father, bring us to our knees before thy Son. Bend us and break us until we confess him as Lord. Until we do not evade but acknowledge him. Until we do not compromise him but obey him.

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In the midst of our sin, hear us as we pray for forgiveness. And pray our prayer through him. By the blood of Christ, spilled by the hands of men, we, the children of men, pray,

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Father, forgive us for Jesus' sake and for our own. And the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you

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and give to you and to all those whom you love his peace.