Pilate's Point Of View
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“Pilate’s Point Of View” by David O. Bales
“Priests for Whom?” by David O. Bales
Pilate’s Point Of View
by David O. Bales
John 18:33-37
It’s the spring smell in the wind and the fully rounded moon. Does it to me year after year. I regret and rehearse what I should’ve done. I should’ve smacked him with the haft of my sword, or ordered the soldiers to crack his knee caps. But I was distracted by all the hubbub, and I was surprised. Yet no matter the passing decades, I remember the details. I was yanked out of sleep by the guard, and I’d rushed to pull on my armor to arrive fully official for examining a prisoner. Seemed I’d been asleep only an hour after I’d received the last reports of the patrols, and the patrols were late to headquarters because they’d been monitoring some incipient mob. The Jews’ temple police, as usual, had been snarling all day about our men needing to stay clear from the religious rigmarole that goes on in there. The tribune could’ve received the late reports, but at that time of year -- Jerusalem swelling with an extra half million people -- I wasn’t about to trust that recently stationed, snobby, status seeking tribune.
The Jews insisted I come outside. Of course they just couldn’t enter the headquarters where I was warm. Oh no. Couldn’t let our Roman dust deefile them. If they were deefiled, they couldn’t eat their super-holy meal. So out I go, then in I come with this…, hmm…, individual. I just wasn’t mentally prepared. Thought it was a normal incident: An idiot dragged in to receive my judgment, which usually was quick. But here’s the man, split lip, torn ear, bleeding nose mashed to the side of his face. He strikes the pose of a king who’s been captured in battle and ready to endure public execution in a manner that is, to the end, an example to his beaten army. I’d seen a couple like that before, just not so close. His blood was dripping on the floor and splattering on my boots.
So, alright, I was unnerved. I gave a last glance around to make sure what was going on. Then, figuring I’d get into the sham interrogation with the very tip of the spear, I asked him how he pled. “Are you the King of the Jews?” Pretty simple. He answers, “Yes,” and off he goes to a cross. He answers, “No,” as I expect, and I’ll rough him up some more and boot him out of Jerusalem, teaching him and other screwballs a lesson in Roman justice.
But he’s going to debate with me. He answers, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?”
I’ve got this Galilean in my hand. I whisper a command and he’s immediately on his way to a slow death. But my thinking was disheveled. I felt tricked into this conversation. I should’ve sent him right back to those priestly wild bulls lusting for violence upon him. I didn’t mind the idea of violence, comes in handy sometimes. But what can I do? I can’t let him get one up on me. Everything in me screams forget it. Let him go or just kill him, but don’t get caught in anything approaching a genuine interrogation. I look in his eyes. He thinks he’s going to stare me down. His swollen left eye blinking faster than his right, but he won’t turn his gaze off me. I reply, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?”
I’m stuck, caught in this verbal dance. He goes on, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here."
So, fine. I could care less about fantasies of world domination, but I can’t let him sneak out of this verbal tit for tat. He’s completely beaten, abandoned by all his followers. Why does he pretend? But if he’s going to keep it up, I’ll dislodge a confession from his smart bleeding mouth and get him off my door step. I call him on it: “So you are a king?” It seemed this time he couldn’t wiggle out without a plain “yes” or “no.” But he slips through that noose and answers, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”
As I ponder it these decades later, I add him to my memory’s pile of unsolved problems. But none bothers me quite as much. The full moon of every spring…
Considering everything, I’ve done alright. I’m satisfied living out my life here, not exactly in exile. So I drag a foot and need this cane to prop me up? Adequate house, enough honor from the village, money. I’ve no power of course, but I didn’t seem to have much power over that one fellow either. And I’ve never gotten over him: His bloody stare and his absolute certainty -- almost nonchalance. I still see him. I hear his voice. Most of all I remember my first impression: A king captured and on his way to execution who by his every word and gesture demonstrates his royal status to the end.”
Preaching Point: Recognizing Jesus as king.
* * *
Priests for Whom?
by David O. Bales
Revelation 1:4b-8
Kenny swung the ax with more effort than needed against the large sage brush. His violent swing jammed in the roots entangled around a rock. His next swing hit the rock and pinged off to the side with a splash of sparks. This made him swing harder and even less effectively. After two minutes when he’d finally displaced the ornery spot of vegetation, he surveyed what awaited him: a field dotted with sage brush. To his right and left neighboring homeowners labored on this cleanup day of the 25 feet buffer to the hillside nature preserve behind their housing development. Their housing development, he thought. Not his. He angrily chopped on the next sage brush.
This? I’ve survived six years of college for this? I’ve been dragged through 2,000 years of church history, prodded through my piddly-poor preaching, and immobilized in the Greek language for this? Kenny was the congregation’s summer seminary intern. The congregation and Pastor Shleck had never received a seminary intern before, and Pastor Schleck clearly didn’t know how to relate to Kenny, teach, counsel, or direct him.
On this Saturday, because Pastor Schleck hadn’t planned anything for Kenny, how about if he’d help behind the pastor’s house as the homeowners cleared the insipient sage brush and skinned the ground with their weed trimmers? What was Kenny supposed to do? Start an argument that might, in a year, prevent him from becoming a pastor? He was here to learn about the church from the inside and to garner hands on knowledge of ministry. This was not, however, the kind of hands on knowledge he’d expected would teach him Christian ministry.
After half an hour he’d worked up a sweat and also worked himself toward the edge of the pastor’s property. He could see another young man working toward him, but he kept his head down and hit and hit and hit.
“You’re mumbling!” Kenny heard the sounds, but didn’t recognize the words. Again, “You’re mumbling!” He looked up and saw the young man 15 feet away laughing at him. Kenny glanced down at his hands, then turned slowly to face the pastor’s neighbor. “You’re right. One of my bad habits.” He set the ax upright and leaned on the handle. It was too low to be comfortable, so he picked it up and held it as he tried to decide how to speak to someone when he was so enjoying being angry. His neighbor just kept smiling, and soon he did also. The young man walked over taking off his glove. “I’m Dean.” Kenny smiled and shook his hand. “I’m Kenny.”
“Haven’t seen you here before. You the pastor’s son?”
Kenny used all his will power to respond without anger, “No, I’m the congregation’s seminary intern. The incline of this hillside is the beginning of my higher calling.”
“Ha,” Dean said. “Good. Use that humor in your sermons.”
Dean was so friendly that Kenny felt prompted to tell the truth. “I wish I could say I was praying. Sorry. I was angry.”
“An almost-minister angry?”
“Sure am, or was. I’m pretty well over it. Thanks,” he said, and decided to use the moment to share something of the Christian life. “Jesus was angry. Pastors get angry. Anger and grudges are some of my greatest temptations.” He took a chance, “You worship?”
“Used to,” Dean said with a guarded look. “Raised Baptist. Got some problems with churches. But I’m a priest,” he asserted. “Learned that in Sunday School. Don’t need anybody else to make the dogmas or decrees. ‘Priesthood of all believers,’” he said, clenching his ungloved right hand, “the center of Protestantism.”
Kenny was startled by someone who said he didn’t worship yet so forcefully claimed the priesthood of all believers as the center of the Christian faith. He responded, “That sounds like the center of the faith for you.” And he held his hand toward Dean as an invitation to say more.
Dean bowed his head as he shook it side to side. “Not like the Catholics,” he said.
When Dean just stood there as though his statement should be completely understandable, Kenny said slowly, “Catholic….”
“And mostly my wife. She and her priests and pope. No. Bible says we’re all priests. You believe that don’t you?”
“Yes,” Kenny said and quickly continued, “What’s your wife’s name?”
“Emily.”
“Known her long when you married?”
“A year.”
“She was Roman Catholic when you married?”
“Uh huh, but we kind of slid over that. Now she’s got this Legion of Mary thing. Goes every week.”
“Mmm,” Kenny said, as he stroked his chin with his gloved hand, “does it make her more faithful to Christ and more loving to others?”
Dean made a gulping sound and looked away toward the top of the hill, “Oh, I don’t know. Might.”
“You guys talk about this much?”
“Not any more. She goes to her meetings. Doesn’t ask me to go, I’ll tell you! I’ve quoted the Bible to her about the priesthood of all believers. I’ve told her we don’t need those other priests.”
Kenny waited for Dean to continue, but when he fell silent, Kenny said, “You helped me when you spoke to me just now.”
Dean took his gaze off the hill and smiled to Kenny, “Good.”
“You did for me what priests are supposed to do.”
Dean looked confused but interested enough to face Kenny and wait for him to continue.
“Priests serve others, not ourselves. You ministered to me, and I appreciate it. I wasn’t doing well working through my anger alone. I needed you, another person. We Christians need one another. That’s why we’re all priests.”
“That’s what you learn in seminary, huh?”
“That’s what I learned in the Bible and in life. They’re both necessary and I’m glad you came by. But I wish you’d think some more about who the priests in the priesthood of all believers are for.”
Dean pushed a rock around with his foot. Then he turned to Kenny and said slowly, “That’s fair.” He paused a moment and squinted one eye, “Since you’re here learning, you going to write about our little interchange here, like I did in salesman training? A ‘he said, I said’ thing.”
“I’m pretty sure I will,” Kenny said with a laugh.
“Change my name, etc?”
“Sure.”
“Okay with me,” Dean said. “I’m glad I came by, too. Yeah, I’ll think about what you said.”
After another few minutes’ chatting, the two young men went back to their Saturday’s toil. As Kenny labored with his ax and weed trimmer he mumbled a constant prayer of thanksgiving for the next door priest and supplication for Dean and Emily.
Preaching Point: Each Christian is a holy intermediary for others.
*****************************************
StoryShare, November 25, 2018, issue.
Copyright 2018 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
“Pilate’s Point Of View” by David O. Bales
“Priests for Whom?” by David O. Bales
Pilate’s Point Of View
by David O. Bales
John 18:33-37
It’s the spring smell in the wind and the fully rounded moon. Does it to me year after year. I regret and rehearse what I should’ve done. I should’ve smacked him with the haft of my sword, or ordered the soldiers to crack his knee caps. But I was distracted by all the hubbub, and I was surprised. Yet no matter the passing decades, I remember the details. I was yanked out of sleep by the guard, and I’d rushed to pull on my armor to arrive fully official for examining a prisoner. Seemed I’d been asleep only an hour after I’d received the last reports of the patrols, and the patrols were late to headquarters because they’d been monitoring some incipient mob. The Jews’ temple police, as usual, had been snarling all day about our men needing to stay clear from the religious rigmarole that goes on in there. The tribune could’ve received the late reports, but at that time of year -- Jerusalem swelling with an extra half million people -- I wasn’t about to trust that recently stationed, snobby, status seeking tribune.
The Jews insisted I come outside. Of course they just couldn’t enter the headquarters where I was warm. Oh no. Couldn’t let our Roman dust deefile them. If they were deefiled, they couldn’t eat their super-holy meal. So out I go, then in I come with this…, hmm…, individual. I just wasn’t mentally prepared. Thought it was a normal incident: An idiot dragged in to receive my judgment, which usually was quick. But here’s the man, split lip, torn ear, bleeding nose mashed to the side of his face. He strikes the pose of a king who’s been captured in battle and ready to endure public execution in a manner that is, to the end, an example to his beaten army. I’d seen a couple like that before, just not so close. His blood was dripping on the floor and splattering on my boots.
So, alright, I was unnerved. I gave a last glance around to make sure what was going on. Then, figuring I’d get into the sham interrogation with the very tip of the spear, I asked him how he pled. “Are you the King of the Jews?” Pretty simple. He answers, “Yes,” and off he goes to a cross. He answers, “No,” as I expect, and I’ll rough him up some more and boot him out of Jerusalem, teaching him and other screwballs a lesson in Roman justice.
But he’s going to debate with me. He answers, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?”
I’ve got this Galilean in my hand. I whisper a command and he’s immediately on his way to a slow death. But my thinking was disheveled. I felt tricked into this conversation. I should’ve sent him right back to those priestly wild bulls lusting for violence upon him. I didn’t mind the idea of violence, comes in handy sometimes. But what can I do? I can’t let him get one up on me. Everything in me screams forget it. Let him go or just kill him, but don’t get caught in anything approaching a genuine interrogation. I look in his eyes. He thinks he’s going to stare me down. His swollen left eye blinking faster than his right, but he won’t turn his gaze off me. I reply, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?”
I’m stuck, caught in this verbal dance. He goes on, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here."
So, fine. I could care less about fantasies of world domination, but I can’t let him sneak out of this verbal tit for tat. He’s completely beaten, abandoned by all his followers. Why does he pretend? But if he’s going to keep it up, I’ll dislodge a confession from his smart bleeding mouth and get him off my door step. I call him on it: “So you are a king?” It seemed this time he couldn’t wiggle out without a plain “yes” or “no.” But he slips through that noose and answers, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”
As I ponder it these decades later, I add him to my memory’s pile of unsolved problems. But none bothers me quite as much. The full moon of every spring…
Considering everything, I’ve done alright. I’m satisfied living out my life here, not exactly in exile. So I drag a foot and need this cane to prop me up? Adequate house, enough honor from the village, money. I’ve no power of course, but I didn’t seem to have much power over that one fellow either. And I’ve never gotten over him: His bloody stare and his absolute certainty -- almost nonchalance. I still see him. I hear his voice. Most of all I remember my first impression: A king captured and on his way to execution who by his every word and gesture demonstrates his royal status to the end.”
Preaching Point: Recognizing Jesus as king.
* * *
Priests for Whom?
by David O. Bales
Revelation 1:4b-8
Kenny swung the ax with more effort than needed against the large sage brush. His violent swing jammed in the roots entangled around a rock. His next swing hit the rock and pinged off to the side with a splash of sparks. This made him swing harder and even less effectively. After two minutes when he’d finally displaced the ornery spot of vegetation, he surveyed what awaited him: a field dotted with sage brush. To his right and left neighboring homeowners labored on this cleanup day of the 25 feet buffer to the hillside nature preserve behind their housing development. Their housing development, he thought. Not his. He angrily chopped on the next sage brush.
This? I’ve survived six years of college for this? I’ve been dragged through 2,000 years of church history, prodded through my piddly-poor preaching, and immobilized in the Greek language for this? Kenny was the congregation’s summer seminary intern. The congregation and Pastor Shleck had never received a seminary intern before, and Pastor Schleck clearly didn’t know how to relate to Kenny, teach, counsel, or direct him.
On this Saturday, because Pastor Schleck hadn’t planned anything for Kenny, how about if he’d help behind the pastor’s house as the homeowners cleared the insipient sage brush and skinned the ground with their weed trimmers? What was Kenny supposed to do? Start an argument that might, in a year, prevent him from becoming a pastor? He was here to learn about the church from the inside and to garner hands on knowledge of ministry. This was not, however, the kind of hands on knowledge he’d expected would teach him Christian ministry.
After half an hour he’d worked up a sweat and also worked himself toward the edge of the pastor’s property. He could see another young man working toward him, but he kept his head down and hit and hit and hit.
“You’re mumbling!” Kenny heard the sounds, but didn’t recognize the words. Again, “You’re mumbling!” He looked up and saw the young man 15 feet away laughing at him. Kenny glanced down at his hands, then turned slowly to face the pastor’s neighbor. “You’re right. One of my bad habits.” He set the ax upright and leaned on the handle. It was too low to be comfortable, so he picked it up and held it as he tried to decide how to speak to someone when he was so enjoying being angry. His neighbor just kept smiling, and soon he did also. The young man walked over taking off his glove. “I’m Dean.” Kenny smiled and shook his hand. “I’m Kenny.”
“Haven’t seen you here before. You the pastor’s son?”
Kenny used all his will power to respond without anger, “No, I’m the congregation’s seminary intern. The incline of this hillside is the beginning of my higher calling.”
“Ha,” Dean said. “Good. Use that humor in your sermons.”
Dean was so friendly that Kenny felt prompted to tell the truth. “I wish I could say I was praying. Sorry. I was angry.”
“An almost-minister angry?”
“Sure am, or was. I’m pretty well over it. Thanks,” he said, and decided to use the moment to share something of the Christian life. “Jesus was angry. Pastors get angry. Anger and grudges are some of my greatest temptations.” He took a chance, “You worship?”
“Used to,” Dean said with a guarded look. “Raised Baptist. Got some problems with churches. But I’m a priest,” he asserted. “Learned that in Sunday School. Don’t need anybody else to make the dogmas or decrees. ‘Priesthood of all believers,’” he said, clenching his ungloved right hand, “the center of Protestantism.”
Kenny was startled by someone who said he didn’t worship yet so forcefully claimed the priesthood of all believers as the center of the Christian faith. He responded, “That sounds like the center of the faith for you.” And he held his hand toward Dean as an invitation to say more.
Dean bowed his head as he shook it side to side. “Not like the Catholics,” he said.
When Dean just stood there as though his statement should be completely understandable, Kenny said slowly, “Catholic….”
“And mostly my wife. She and her priests and pope. No. Bible says we’re all priests. You believe that don’t you?”
“Yes,” Kenny said and quickly continued, “What’s your wife’s name?”
“Emily.”
“Known her long when you married?”
“A year.”
“She was Roman Catholic when you married?”
“Uh huh, but we kind of slid over that. Now she’s got this Legion of Mary thing. Goes every week.”
“Mmm,” Kenny said, as he stroked his chin with his gloved hand, “does it make her more faithful to Christ and more loving to others?”
Dean made a gulping sound and looked away toward the top of the hill, “Oh, I don’t know. Might.”
“You guys talk about this much?”
“Not any more. She goes to her meetings. Doesn’t ask me to go, I’ll tell you! I’ve quoted the Bible to her about the priesthood of all believers. I’ve told her we don’t need those other priests.”
Kenny waited for Dean to continue, but when he fell silent, Kenny said, “You helped me when you spoke to me just now.”
Dean took his gaze off the hill and smiled to Kenny, “Good.”
“You did for me what priests are supposed to do.”
Dean looked confused but interested enough to face Kenny and wait for him to continue.
“Priests serve others, not ourselves. You ministered to me, and I appreciate it. I wasn’t doing well working through my anger alone. I needed you, another person. We Christians need one another. That’s why we’re all priests.”
“That’s what you learn in seminary, huh?”
“That’s what I learned in the Bible and in life. They’re both necessary and I’m glad you came by. But I wish you’d think some more about who the priests in the priesthood of all believers are for.”
Dean pushed a rock around with his foot. Then he turned to Kenny and said slowly, “That’s fair.” He paused a moment and squinted one eye, “Since you’re here learning, you going to write about our little interchange here, like I did in salesman training? A ‘he said, I said’ thing.”
“I’m pretty sure I will,” Kenny said with a laugh.
“Change my name, etc?”
“Sure.”
“Okay with me,” Dean said. “I’m glad I came by, too. Yeah, I’ll think about what you said.”
After another few minutes’ chatting, the two young men went back to their Saturday’s toil. As Kenny labored with his ax and weed trimmer he mumbled a constant prayer of thanksgiving for the next door priest and supplication for Dean and Emily.
Preaching Point: Each Christian is a holy intermediary for others.
*****************************************
StoryShare, November 25, 2018, issue.
Copyright 2018 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
