Canter Bridge

As power encounters go, this one has no peer.

So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ Jesus answered, ‘Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?’ Pilate answered, ‘Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?‘ (John 18:33–35 ESV)

If the biblical presentation is to be believed, the Maker of worlds stood before one cynical, beleaguered official of a particularly influential tribe that would in its turn slump into obscurity.

Yet the power in this moment appeared to clump around the Roman delegate who presided over a small and troublesome corner of the empire. The accused criminal before him knew nothing of power. So it seemed.

The ironies run deep, both in the realia of the moment and in the gospel’s reporting of the events.

What have you done?

One imagines the responses that might have ensued.

Tales of galaxies imagined and spoken into existence. Of eternal, shared joy before the little detail of creation. Of powers vast and small. Of things that angels hymn.

But Pilate wants a crime, something on which to hang his prefect’s hat. A misdemeanor’s confession. Some idiotic blasphemy, even, that might explain the noise outside.

Pilate, as so many of us, knew nothing of power and its source, nor where it rests, nor on whom.