Every cliche has more than a little truth to it.
We’ve all felt trapped “between a rock and a hard place.”
We’ve all felt like we are living between “the devil and the deep blue sea.”
We have all found ourselves in “Catch 22" situations where there doesn’t seem to be any good option between two choices both of which may yield equally bad results.
We have all faced moments in our lives when we have faced a Hobson’s “take it or leave it” choice between two alternatives when neither is a particularly good one.
Moments like this may make us wish we had a “mind palace” – a place where we could go where we might discover whether there might be another option, another way out.
If you watched the most recent version of Sherlock Holmes on PBS you know that Holmes had a “mind palace” where he would withdraw to get away from the noise that surrounded him and retreat into a world of his own where he could see things more clearly.
While Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never used “mind palace” as a literary device I discovered recently while cleaning out mine that it was an concept employed by the ancient Greeks and Roman philosophers to organize thoughts and remember things that were really important while throwing out ideas that were not.
According to Smithsonian Magazine:
Given the technique’s power and history, it’s a little surprising that Arthur Conan Doyle never mentioned such a thing in his stories. Instead, he attributed his creation’s prodigious memory to an exceptionally well-organized, well-stocked “brain attic.”
“I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose,” Holmes tells John Watson in A Study in Scarlet, the first of Conan Doyle’s tales about the detective. Holmes is careful to fill his brain attic with only memories that may be useful.1
I am willing to bet that Pontius Pilot would have given everything he had to have a “mind palace” where he could go to help him sort out what was before him in today’s Gospel.
Every cliche in the history of literature – maybe even the history of the world! – is standing before Pilate in the person who has been brought before him.
“It’s early morning and the air in the room is laced with lamp oil and irony.”3
Pilot has been roused from sleep by a bunch of rabble who, in Pilot’s eyes, could have rivalled the mob who stormed the laboratory in Mel Brook’s movie “Young Frankenstein.” He also has before him an unlikely suspect on a even more unlikely charge.
Getting him out of bed must have made him angry enough but when he looked over the faces of the crowd he may have become even more angry.
His relationship with the people standing before him has been tumultuous from the start when he, full of himself, insulted “their religious sensibilities ... [by hanging] worship images of the emperor throughout Jerusalem and had coins bearing pagan religious symbols minted.”2
They were not his supporters, and Pilate was afraid that it is possible to lose control of this angry mob very quickly. If word of a revolt got back to Rome it would call his leadership abilities into question. It might cost him his job, his pension, his security, even his life.
He is investigating the only charge that interests a Roman prefect. Pretension to kingship in this restive province on a festal weekend is an annoyance and requires his attention. But the man before him would never have caught the notice of imperial profilers, and Pilate is a little incredulous: “Are you the King of the Jews?”4
We must understand that matters of religion do not matter to Pilate. He has only one legitimate concern, and that is whether Jesus poses a threat to Rome. If Jesus is assuming the role of king, that is treason—punishable by death. If not, call it a day and everybody can go back to bed.
Pilate can hardly imagine that this ordinary looking man would be trying to pass himself off as a king. His question to Jesus is really a mocking question of the crowd: “Are you the king of the Jews?” He is baiting them and appealing to their sense of tribalism.
We know all about that.
A leader who may be afraid keeps showing us his anger. A leader who is afraid may exploit divisions that may already exist and make them deeper. He may play to the people’s fears.
The people in front of Pilate were exhibiting their fears in their anger as well. They too were afraid that they were going to lose everything.
Anger born of fear can lead us to terrible places. Anger born of fear can lead us to do terrible things.
It can lead some people to define truth as anything they want it to be.
It can lead some to seek to destroy any who oppose them or, at least, threaten to lock them up.
It can lead some to want to separate families lest they, while searching for a better life, take jobs that few are willing to do anyway.
Anger born of fear can cause us to call out the military to “protect” us from a group of men, women, and children who are fleeing their home counties for the lives.
Anger born of fear can cause any who have a heart, or fear for their mortal souls, to look back at what they have done and be very, very sorry.
And today’s gospel tells us that anger born of fear can lead to the death of an innocent man.
Yet this innocent seems to be the only one in this little tableau to not be fearful or even angry. Instead, he seems to be the only one who is in control.
Instead of referring to Jesus’ trial and crucifixion as a Passion Narrative Father Raymond Brown in his book The Death of the Messiah calls it “The Book of Glory” in which Jesus comes to do what he ultimately came to do.
He came to do what he is recorded as doing today: Challenging the powerful.
Pilate, who may see himself as the most powerful man in the city, is ultimately the one Jesus puts on trial here.
When Pilate asks him sarcastically here, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus replies in effect, “Who told you that?”
At this point Pilate has to admit that he is just listening to the cries of a fearful, angry crowd. He is not his own person. He is not thinking for himself. He is just parroting what others have told him.
What they have told him is kill this guy and we’ll have nothing to fear. Kill Jesus and we will have one less thing to be angry about. Kill this rabble rouser and maybe his crowds will go home and our nation will be safe. Kill Jesus and maybe, just maybe, everything will be great again.
It is not as Pilate asks, “What have you done?” but a matter of what Jesus about to do. He is about to do that for which he was born and for which he came into the world.
He is about to show us that his Kingdom is not of this world because it is a kingdom built on something else.
Jesus' way out of our cliched choices is another way. His way is to follow him. His way is to do what he did and act as he acted.
There will always be those who live in a perpetual state of anger. There will always be those who live in a perpetual state of fear. Jesus is showing us another way that is above politics and power but it is about “peace making instead of war mongering, liberation not exploitation, sacrifice rather than subjugation, mercy and not vengeance, care for the vulnerable instead of privileges for the powerful, generosity instead of greed, humility rather than hubris, and inclusion rather than exclusion.”4
In the midst of all the cliches that divide. In the midst of all the cliches that induce anger and fear we can choose to follow Jesus.
It’s not a once and for all choice, it’s a daily choice, that continually turns us back to him. For to live as Jesus would have us live doesn’t present us with one grand victory but little victories that ultimately point to him and his kingdom.
For as Walter Bruggemann reminds us:
Like Jesus and all the ancient prophets, we are sent back into the world to do the good work entrusted us. It is the work of peace-making. It is the work of truth-telling. It is the work of justice-doing. It is good work, but it requires our resolve to stay at it, even in the face of the forces to the contrary that are sure to prevail for a season” but in the end will not ultimately triumph.
That is not a cliche. That is not something that exists only in some room in our “mind palace.” That is our hope, and it is to that hope we must ultimately cling even on those days when we feel ourselves stuck between a rock and a hard place because our rock, our leader, is Jesus Christ our Lord whose kingdom, whose reign and rule, has lasted to this very day and will last “to infinity and beyond.”
And that’s no cliche. That is a promise.
1. Sarah Zielinski, “The Secrets of Sherlock’s Mind Palace,” Smithsonian.com February 3, 2014, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/secrets-sherlocks-mind-palace-180949567/.
2. Encyclopedia Britannica, s.v. "Pontius Pilate: Govenor of Judea," accessed November 21, 2018, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pontius-Pilate.
3. Leonard Beechy, “A New Kind of King: John 18:33-37,” The Christian Century, November 17, 2009, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2009-11/new-kind-king?code=4GITJI3cX0u9i3UFWJBw&utm_source=Christian%2BCentury%2BNewsletter
4. ibid.
5. Dan Clendenin, “King Jesus,” Journey with Jesus, November 17, 2024, https://journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay.
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