And a superscription also was written over him in letters of Greek and Latin, and Hebrew, THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS. —St. LUKE xxiii. 38.
That the Gospel is the Gospel of a Kingdom we have been reminded at every turn of St. Luke’s narrative. When we come to the history of the Crucifixion we may be tempted to forget that name; we may even shrink from it. Are we not to hear the cries of a Victim? Should not the Sacrifice be the prominent thought in our minds? Do we not, at least in the hour of darkness, lose sight of the King?
The Evangelist never does; he will not suffer us to do it. The superscription upon the Cross is for him the simplest expression of the truth which the Cross was proclaiming to the Jewish nation—to all nations, Greek and Latin as well as Hebrew. He reads in that superscription the meaning of previous history and of subsequent history. It does not distract his mind at all from the sufferings of Jesus; it explains His sufferings. It does not hide from him the nature or the worth of His Sacrifice. It shows how real the Sacrifice was, and how it was accomplished. If we observe the incidents recorded in this chapter as they arise, we shall see how they all tend to this point.
I. ‘And the whole multitude of them arose, and led him unto Pilate.’ The Sanhedrim would rather, no doubt, have enforced its own decree. Having declared Jesus guilty of blasphemy, they would have inflicted the punishment for blasphemy: but either the Governor or the people might have interfered, and the Passover was not the time for incurring such a risk. It was far safer to quell their Jewish pride, and ask the Gentile to destroy their enemy as his own.
II. ‘And they began to accuse him, saying, We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, saying that he himself is Christ a King.’ This was to be the charge. Let us remember distinctly that Pilate could care for no other. They had the mortification of finding that he did not care for that. This sudden zeal for Caesar, this anxiety about his tribute, in men who were habitually impatient of the foreign yoke, always expecting some deliverer, must have struck a shrewd worldly man, used to different forms of hypocrisy, familiar now with the special forms of it which prevailed in Jerusalem, as very suspicious. His question, ‘Art thou the King of the Jews?’ was equally contemptuous to the accused and the accusers. ‘Art thou the Person before whom the Ruler of the world is to tremble?’ What the answer implied, whether it was or was not a denial of the imputation, was nothing to Pilate. The charge seemed to him ridiculous on the face of it. He dismissed it at once with the sentence, ‘I find no fault in this man.’ I am not afraid lest he should overthrow my authority or my master’s. The priests felt the rebuke; it irritated them; besides, they had no time to lose.
III. ‘And they were the more fierce, saying, He stirreth up the people, teaching throughout all Jewry, beginning from Galilee to this place.’ Pilate knew what it was to struggle with men full of religious fury. He would avoid the battle if possible. He caught at the word ‘Galilee.’ Perhaps he might shift his task upon another. ‘And as soon as he knew that he belonged unto Herod’s jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who himself also was at Jerusalem at that time.’ The men were very unlike. Pilate, merely indifferent—the weary Roman unbeliever of the age of Tiberius. Herod, like the rest of his family, curious and speculative, with an uneasy conscience and intellect, breaking through moral laws—all the more eager to find out whether there was any connection between the visible and the invisible world, what one or another man had to say about it. The prophet of Repentance he had listened to and silenced; his successor, it was said, exhibited wonders, real or pretended, which it would be worth while to witness. ‘And when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceeding glad: for he was desirous to see him of a long season, because he had heard many things of him; and he hoped to have seen some miracle done by him.’ It was mere disappointment. ‘Then he questioned with him in many words; but he answered him nothing.’
IV. ‘And the chief priests and scribes stood and vehemently accused him.’ The nature of the accusation is not stated; it was obviously the same as that before Pilate, otherwise the mockery which followed would have had no significance. ‘And Herod with his men of war set him at nought, and mocked him, and arrayed him in a gorgeous robe, and sent him again to Pilate.’ The absurdity of His kingly pretensions struck Herod as it had struck Pilate. A prophet or an enchanter would have been treated respectfully, perhaps half credited; but who could dream of such a person exalting Himself to a throne? If He or any of His followers had that madness, this, it seemed to Herod, was the best method of curing it. So far the two Judges were agreed, and their sympathy as to the right method of treating the case, as well as Pilate’s courtesy in deferring to Herod’s judgment, removed a long-standing grudge between them.
V. It must have been almost in despair that the priests came again before the Governor’s judgment seat, and heard him announce the sentence, ‘Ye have brought this man unto me, as one that perverteth the people: and behold, I, having examined him before you, have found no fault in this man touching those things whereof ye accuse him: No, nor yet Herod: for I sent you to him: and lo, nothing worthy of death is done unto him.’ In other words, He is evidently a fanatic, with no evil intention, capable of doing little harm. ‘I will therefore chastise him, and release him.’ He believed, no doubt, that the people would be pleased, if the priests were offended. They would accept the release of a favourite teacher as a boon to them. If His teaching was seditious—if He did, as was said, forbid them to pay tribute—the indignity of the chastisement would check the mischief better than any more violent punishment. The Governor was seeking the alliance of those whom the priests feared against them. In that critical moment the thought seems to have been suggested to them—or perhaps they had already kept the proposition in reserve if it should be necessary—that they might win the favour of the multitude to their side.
VI. ‘And they cried out all at once, saying, Away with this man, and release unto us Barabbas: (Who for a certain sedition made in the city, and for murder, was cast into prison).’ A brigand, a leader of insurrection, taken with arms in his hands, must surely be a greater witness for the popular cause than One who had quietly yielded to the officers that were sent to seize Him. If the Governor could be forced by their voices to give him up in homage to the feast, would not that be the greatest of all triumphs? The priests had not been mistaken in their calculations. The name of Barabbas once heard gave a direction to the minds of the multitude, already more than half persuaded that Jesus had not the power which they had ascribed to Him. It was one of those impulses which so often lead to the most sanguinary deeds.
VII. ‘Pilate, therefore, willing to release Jesus, spake again to them. But they cried, saying, Crucify him, crucify him.’ The words are often taken to indicate a serious wish in the people that Jesus should suffer the most cruel kind of death. If we study the reports of the different Evangelists I do not think that impression will remain on our minds. ‘Give us the man we want; what becomes of the other we do not care.’ ‘Treat Him as you like’—that was evidently the sense of the popular cry. The cruelty was given to it by the priestly instigators; in the rest it was a dull, blind instinct, which wants some object to care for, and which, if it lights upon a worthless one, will, through mere indifference, suffer any other, even the most beautiful, to perish. That is the history of the process by which men inspired with religious hatred can turn a people into a mob, and divert passions which might be generous into the instruments of all fury and malice.
VIII. The sense of justice and law, which could never wholly forsake a Roman, if he were individually ever so worthless, was aroused in Pilate. It was mixed, no doubt, with intense contempt both for the Jewish rabble and the Jewish priests. ‘And he said unto them the third time, Why, what evil hath he done? I have found no cause of death in him: I will therefore chastise him, and let him go.’ He was himself perplexed. Supposing Jesus had forbidden to give tribute to Caesar, the people would not be likely to demand His crucifixion for that offence; if they were, they would not be asking for Barabbas. Was it impossible to make them consider for what crime they would inflict so tremendous a punishment? No! the time was passed for any such consideration. The priests had taught the people to shriek. Shrieks, they knew, would be the best arguments with a Governor whose Justice was a tradition, not a principle, in whom it would always yield, at last, to fear or policy.
IX. ‘And they were instant with loud voices, requiring that he might be crucified. And the voices of them and of the chief priests prevailed. And Pilate gave sentence that it should be as they required. And he released unto them him that for sedition and murder was cast into prison, whom they had desired; but he delivered Jesus to their will.’ There are many passages introduced into the story of the arraignment before Pilate by the other Evangelists, especially by St. John, which throw a clear light upon the incidents that are recorded here. They all bear upon His claims to be a King. When He said, in answer to the question of Pilate, ‘Art thou the King of the Jews?’ ’My kingdom is not of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight,—it has been supposed that He disclaimed the title in any ordinary sense that could be given to it. I apprehend that He said precisely what He had been saying since He first went, in the power of the Spirit, into Galilee. He had come to proclaim the Kingdom of God, not a Kingdom which stood by outward force, not a tyranny civil or ecclesiastical; just the opposite of that: a Kingdom which was to emancipate, not enslave; a Kingdom, therefore, before which the kingdoms of the world, civil and ecclesiastical, would have to bow. For it did assume to be, in the strictest sense, a Kingdom over the world, a Kingdom over the bodies as well as the spirits of men; a Kingdom over every region in which the tyrants were exercising dominion. Whether this pretension was true or false was now to be tried. The priests demanded the test, Pilate granted it, Jesus accepted it. When the Jews chose Barabbas instead of Jesus, were they rejecting their King? — Were they destroying themselves as a people and becoming a gang of murderers by that act?
X. ’And as they led him away, they laid hold upon one Simon, a Cyrenian, coming out of the country, and on him they laid the cross, that he might bear it after Jesus. And there followed him a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and lamented him. But Jesus, turning unto them, said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us. For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?
A mysterious worth has been perceived in the words spoken on Calvary. Surely their depth and awfulness cannot be measured. The words spoken on the way to Calvary deserve equal reverence. But I do not think they have received it. They associate our Lord’s death with the miseries that were coming on the land. They clearly represent His death as a prelude to the death of the nation. Christian teachers have shrunk from language which seems to lower and to narrow the signification of the event which they feel to be the grandest in the world’s history, the one which most concerns all human beings. We may honour the sentiment; but if we have followed St. Luke carefully thus far, we cannot participate in it. In his story Jerusalem has never been separated from any of the Revelations of the Son of Man. The hour when Christ set His face to go to Jerusalem is the critical one in his narrative. We have heard from him how Christ declared that a prophet could not perish out of Jerusalem; how He wept over Jerusalem; how He entered Jerusalem as the heir of David’s throne; how He spoke of the fall of Jerusalem as a day of destruction, and yet as a day of Redemption; to be awaited with trembling, as the darkest that had been known; to be hailed with hope and joy as the beginning of a new life to the world. Those who feel the discourse to the daughters of Jerusalem out of place amidst the records of the Passion, cannot look upon the Passion as the Evangelists look upon it; they must separate it from all the other steps in the manifestation of the true King.
That King bids the daughters of the land in which He has been revealing Himself not to weep for Him, but for the people who have cast Him off. He speaks of a judgment approaching them which shall make women regard the curse of being childless as a blessing, in which those who had counted God their champion and the foe of other men, should ask the hills to hide them from Him. He bids them understand that as yet there was sap in the tree, there were some in the land who could weep for its sins. It would become utterly dry, all sorrow would be staunched as well as joy; only the hatred which was working His death would remain. Oh, my friends, let not that vision be exchanged in our minds for any vague rhetoric such as preachers and writers concerning the Crucifixion sometimes indulge in. The actual women, the actual Cross, the actual hills and mountains, these have a power which belongs to no figures of speech. What our Lord said as He turned to the women was fulfilled in the holy city, has been once and again fulfilled in cities that have been accounted very holy in Christendom. They are words which cannot pass away. May He who spoke them enable us to think of them, and to ask ourselves what lessons we are to draw from them. If ever they should seem to be coming near to our land, to our own very selves, may the recollection of His Cross sustain us under the pressure of them.
XI. And there were also two others, malefactors, led with him to be put to death. And when they were come to the place which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left. Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots. And the people stood beholding. And the rulers also with them derided him, saying, He saved others: let him save himself, if he be Christ, the chosen of God. And the soldiers also mocked him, coming to him, and offering him vinegar, and saying, If thou be king of the Jews, save thyself.’
It is not for us to speak of this record. It must speak to us. It has spoken to all generations of men. And beneath the message which it has brought to each separate human heart there has been this. Here is He who would not make Himself a King, or use His power as a King, to save Himself, because He was the King; because all who were mocking him, soldiers and rulers, were His subjects; because He cared for them and therefore gave up Himself; because He cared that the forgiveness for which He asked as a Son should be revealed and proclaimed to the universe. How little do we know yet of the force of that prayer, ‘Father, forgive!’ But if we are Christians, we believe that it was uttered by Him whom the Father heareth always. We must believe that if any petition was ever asked according to the will of God, it was that petition, offered up when He was fulfilling that Will to the very utmost.
XII. ‘And a superscription also was written over him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.’
You will feel, I think, now, that I had some right to take this sentence as a central one; as one which explains the accusation and the condemnation of Christ, as one without which the history of the Passion would be imperfect and incoherent. It must seem a fiction—it can seem nothing else—to those who separate Jesus from the Christ. Instead of complaining of their denial, is it not better for us who say that He is the Christ to accept the testimony of the Roman Governor, and really to believe that the King whom the Jews rejected is the King of Hebrews, Greeks, and Latins? Must not we repent of our desire to divide the crucified man from the Ruler of the world before we can hope to convince any others that they have erred by their imitation of us?
XIII. There was one, at least, St. Luke tells us, who discovered the King upon the Cross. ‘And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss. And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise.’ The evil-doer had been vanquished by many a lust, had been a miserable slave. Often he had heard a voice reproving him and recalling him. Whose voice was it? Was there power in it? Here he has learnt the secret. This is He from whom the voice came. This is the Deliverer, the Conqueror. He must reign. Would He refuse him, the outcast, as His subject? ‘Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom,’ Come into it, He would, some time or other. What says the answer? That very day the robber should be with Him in Paradise. Where is that? What is that? How can the man in his agony debate such questions? What need that he should? What can it signify? ‘Thou shalt be with me. Dost thou want more— in anguish or in bliss, in darkness or in light—than to find that I am near thee, as I am near thee now?’
XIV. In darkness it seemed, not in light. ‘For it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour; and the sun was darkened.’ You will read, in the margin of your Bible, ‘land’ instead of ‘earth.’ There can be no doubt, I conceive, that that was the meaning of the Evangelist. He had no dream of that universal darkness in which Gibbon supposes that Christians believe, and of which he says that some record must have been preserved, at least by so great an observer of natural phenomena as Pliny. We shall weaken, not strengthen, the narrative, if we attribute that force to it. If the darkness had been general, its significance would have been less. The local, direct impression of it would have been lost. And make the earth which it covered as large as you will, it must have been limited to that time. The darkness about the Cross over the region in which the crime was perpetrated has been felt throughout all ages, has been a witness to all. It has indicated that sympathy of Nature with man which we are, at times, compelled to recognise. It does not turn that sympathy into a mere startling phenomenon, which makes us forget the Light of the world in thinking of the natural sun.
XV. And the vail of the temple was rent in the midst. And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.’
That the visible Temple would disappear, that its destruction would be the sign of the Son of Man’s manifestation, this we have been led by former passages and by the whole context of the Gospel to believe. It was for later times to read the meaning of this sign. St. Luke merely announces it in the fewest possible words. And the words which follow he did not dare to weaken by any comments of his own. What that loud cry was of which he speaks we learn from the other Evangelists, not from him. But it is he who tells us what we especially long to know, that the voice, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ ended in this: ‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.’ If we confess Him as the King of the Universe, how many spirits must He have commended to the Father with His Spirit? How many of those who have seemed to others and to themselves to be forsaken by the Father!
XVI. Now when the centurion saw what was done, he glorified God, saying, Certainly this was a righteous man. And all the people that came together to that sight, beholding the things which were done, smote their breasts, and returned. And all his acquaintance, and the women that followed him from Galilee, stood afar off, beholding these things.’
What a Roman soldier, what a few Galilean women said or thought of the deed and the sufferer, St. Luke tells us. He adds no comments. If we think of Christ as he did, we shall be content that our words, like his, should be few.
XVII. And, behold, there was a man named Joseph, a counsellor; and he was a good man, and a just: (The same had not consented to the counsel and deed of them;) he was of Arimathea, a city of the Jews: who also himself waited for the kingdom of God.’
Many legends have clustered round the name of Joseph of Arimathea; he is especially a British saint, associated with trees and flowers that grow on our soil. But which of these stories bring him as near to us as the account of what he was and what he sought for in the land of his fathers? The just man who groaned under the evil deeds which he saw sanctioned and done by those in high places, by rulers of the Sanhedrim, by chief priests of God’s own appointment; the man who would not consent to a wicked deed because it was called religious and was done to preserve religion; the man who waited for the Kingdom of God, in which eternal goodness and justice should prevail;—this, my friends, is the true British saint, though he may have wrought no miracles in Glastonbury; in him we recognise a true human brother, because the Divine Spirit showed him what he needed, and what men in all times and in all countries most need. ‘This man went unto Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus.’ That body must be a sacred body. If it was only the body of a righteous man, as the Roman centurion felt that He who had died on the Cross certainly was, it was sacred, worthy to be wrapped in linen, and laid in a sepulchre that was hewn in stone, wherein never man before was laid.’ It must be that. Might it not be more than that? Might it not be the body of that King of the Jews of whom the superscription on the Cross bore witness? If He was that King, was the Kingdom of God, for which Joseph had waited, at an end? Had that death scattered the dream forever? Joseph would wait still. Others would wait too. The Passover, which spoke of a Redemption, might even promise a Redemption of the body. The Sabbath, which spoke of man’s rest and God’s rest, might point to a rest such as there could not be in a tomb.
‘And that day was the preparation, and the sabbath drew on. And the women also, which came with him from Galilee, followed after, and beheld the sepulchre, and how his body was laid. And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the sabbath day according to the commandment.’