In preparation for Ash Wednesday on February 28, I read Matthew chapter
27 out loud.  There is great drama as Jesus is confronted by the enigmatic
Pontius Pilate, the Roman military governor of the province of Judea, who
condemns Jesus to death.
        I stand in the long line of those intrigued by Pilate.  I'm never exactly
sure what he represents.  Does he symbolize free will, or his hopelessness
before fate, or his struggle to distinguish good from evil, or the tyranny
of hard choices?
I looked through some old Lenten sermons to see what I might have said
about Pilate.  I have called Pilate a coward.  I once referred to him as
shrewd.  One time I even said, "I have no respect for Pilate."  Holding my
old notes I found myself asking, "Why did I say that?  And what did I mean?"
        As millions of Christians kneel to receive ashes on their forwards this
Wednesday, entering 40 days of fasting and penitence in preparation for
Easter, I will once again ponder the person of Pilate.  But this year I
will be more cautious in casting aspersions toward the man's character and
more careful in speaking about Pilate's culpability in the famous trial of
Jesus Christ.
        British writer Ann Wroe has written an important book simply called
"Pontius Pilate," (Random House, 1999).  In her 380-page treatise she has
convinced me to look again at the man Pilate.  Working from classical
sources, Wroe brings Pilate to life in her attempt to reconstruct his
origins and upbringing, his career in the military, and his confrontation
with Christ.
        Throughout her scholarly discourse Wroe wrestles with the question, "Was
Pilate God's secret agent?"  She says any number of scholars would have
told Pilate he was sent to Judea because the stars were in alignment and
the other players in place.  Others would say that this was God's plan from
the beginning of the world.
        Wroe cites the words of Peter and John in the fourth chapter of Acts: "In
(Jerusalem), in fact, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and
the people of Israel, gathered together against your holy servant Jesus,
whom you anointed, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined
to take place."
        The Catholic Catechism adds:  "For the sake of accomplishing his plan of
salvation, God permitted the acts that flowed from their blindness."
        Wroe says, "But this is a refinement, in which God allows free will and
incorporates it into his design."  She notes that although Pilate had never
heard the voices of the prophets, he fulfilled them in every detail by
trying Jesus and condemning him.  Indeed, weren't the "free" acts of Pilate
already part of the plan?
        Many medieval mythmakers, which Wroe references, wondered whether Pilate
and Judas Iscariot were soul mates.  "Like evil twins, they needed to plot
together and strengthen their complicity in each other's company," Wroe
writes.
        Wroe even engages the idea that Judas and Pilate may have been raised
together.  She retells such a story from the "Golden Legend," (a
13th-century compendium of lives of the saints by friar Jacobus de
Voragine).  Even de Voragine admitted the story was apocryphal but felt it
was worth retelling.
        In this legend, Pilate and Judas Iscariot were separated after childhood
but later reunited as adults when Judas served in the household of Pilate
the governor.  Before long they were knit inseparably.  One medieval writer
described their relationship as "screw to screw and false to false."
        Perhaps their relationship was like that.  But others believe Judas did
not cross Pilate's path until the Passion story was already fast unfolding.
 Whatever their personal history, Wroe concludes that Pilate was "the
winter to Christ's spring.  He could struggle, of course.  He was free to
do that.  But the result of his struggling was already known: however he
wriggled, he would end up as God's agent. … To be merciful and soft, in his
case, would do nothing to advance the transformation of the world."
        Again this Lenten season I am left wondering about the man Pontius
Pilate.  Did he finally commit suicide, as church historian Eusebius suggested?  Or
was Pilate, now revered as a martyr by the Coptic Church, secretly a
Christian who was condemned to death by the Roman Senate?
        Whatever the case, Ann Wroe shows how, in his hesitation before God, in
his skepticism, in his anxiety to do his job and exonerate himself of
guilt, Pontius Pilate's story is very much our own.

Don Follis is an Urbana minister.  Reprinted with permission from the
Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette, copyright 2001.