Of course, two days ago, on Wednesday, we celebrated the Passover, and like many other fathers, I told my children the story about "why is this night different from all other nights."
MANY, any blogs, vlogs, sermons, essays, and even entire textbooks have been written about all that stuff, and if you're expecting me to write another one, I'm afraid that's not the case. Candidly, I don't think I have anything to say about Palm Sunday, Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday (also known as "Easter" in some circles) that hasn't already been said by many others. Even if I DID have something original to add to the commentary, I don't have a lot of energy to write something like that because Israel is at war and like all the other Israelis, I've been running myself ragged these last few weeks dealing with everything that's associated with being in a country at war.
So, I'm just gonna give you a rather short piece on one of the most important people in the Bible, and that's Pontius Pilate.
Pontius Pilate plays a small, almost accidental and yet vitally important role in the events we're commemorating this week. He is viewed as the villain in the story by Western Christianity, although there is a tradition in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church that this man eventually came to faith in Jesus, repented of crucifying Him and was himself crucified by the Roman authorities as part of their efforts to stamp out the early Church. This is possible, but unlikely.
In any case, there are other historical records about Pontius Pilate outside the New Testament and they don't tell us much, but there's one thing I think these records make very clear. Pontius Pilate was a man who wanted to be remembered after he died. He didn't want to be just another person who is born, lives a rather unremarkable life and then dies, and his own grandchildren barely even know his name, while everyone else has completely forgotten he ever existed at all. That's what happened to the overwhelming majority of human beings who have ever been born on this planet, and that's not what Pontius Pilate wanted for himself.
The fact is, though, for better or for worse, when Pilate died a few years after the events described in the Gospels, he probably thought he'd failed to achieve anything in his life that would be long remembered.
I wonder what he would have thought if he could have known that his name would be spoken thousands of years later all over the world, by citizens of countries that didn't even exist in his time, speaking in languages that didn't even exist in his time. His name would be printed in millions of copies of a Book that had not yet been completely written on the day he died, and it would be all because of an incident that he probably thought at the time was literally "just another day at the office."
You see, brothers and sisters, Pontius Pilate probably ordered hundreds of crucifixions during his career. As he spent many years in the Roman Army he probably killed people with his own hands, in face-to-face combat. He also did things that were of some benefit to the people of Judea and Jerusalem, including supervising the construction of public works that improved the quality of life for everyone. He did many things in his life. Some were good, others were bad, but most were neither.
In this, Pontius Pilate was a great deal like you and me.
The few hours Pontius Pilate spent crossing paths with Jesus Christ were the most important few hours of Pontius Pilate's life. They are the reason people are still talking about him 2,000 years later.
But as they were occurring, he probably had no idea anything unusual was going on. It was, as I said before, "just another day at the office" for a Roman procurator, not much different than the day before or the day after or a thousand days on either side of it going back into the past or stretching into the future.
In fact, as Pontius Pilate was on his deathbed, with the last few minutes of his life ticking away, I doubt he even remembered those few hours he'd crossed paths with Jesus Christ, and I'm sure he would have been very surprised to hear that anyone else remembered it.
There's a couple of different takeaways from this.
First, there are several other people mentioned in the Bible that played a very small, almost accidental but vitally important role in the plans and purposes of God. They are mentioned briefly in the Bible, usually because of their interactions with people who play a much larger role in the story. These include Potiphar, Eli, Nathan, and many others. I have always had a particular fascination with Eli, because he was a man who probably thought the work he was doing for God was really important, but the fact is that the only reason we ever even hear about Eli is that he was a mentor to Samuel, whose role in God's plans and purposes was much more significant. Whenever I see a person who thinks themselves to be really important, I always remember Eli, and that includes any time I catch myself thinking that I'm kind of important. Like Eli, or Potiphar, I might be just a small player in a much bigger drama in which I'm definitely not the big star. My only reason for even being included in God's plans and purposes is just to teach someone else something important that they'll need to do their part.
Getting back to Pontius Pilate, the other takeaway I want to leave you with is that there are no unimportant encounters with Jesus Christ, and there are also no unimportant encounters with the Body of Christ, which is His Church.
As I often have occasion to remind people, every single one of us is either part of the reason things are getting better or we're part of the reason things are getting worse. Cultivating the awareness that Jesus Christ cares DEEPLY for His Church has helped me in my own efforts to be part of the reason things are getting better instead of being part of the reason things are getting worse.
That's something to keep in mind on Resurrection Sunday, during Passover, and all throughout the year.
That's what I've got for you this week, brothers and sisters. I hope it blessed someone.