The gospels seem to be setting up a courtroom drama for Jesus to defend Himself. Why doesn’t He do it?
The gospels seem to be setting up a courtroom drama for Jesus to defend Himself. Why doesn’t He do it?
E ntire chapters of the gospels are devoted to Jesus’s sermons, parables, and private conversations with His disciples. Even among non-Christians, Jesus’s reputation as a teacher is well known, and many of His expressions (e.g., going the extra mile, a house divided against itself, a city on a hill, the good Samaritan) have entered into common language.
Yet in all four gospels, as they approach the climax of the story, the holiday we celebrate today as Easter, Jesus becomes quieter. The shift is especially apparent if your Bible renders Jesus’s words in red ink. Pages go from almost entirely red to mostly black after Jesus’s arrest on Maundy Thursday.
Why does this man the gospel writers so compellingly portray as a brilliant public speaker refuse to use His gifts when they would seem most needed?
It’s not as though Jesus didn’t have opportunities. He is first brought before the Sanhedrin, the religious court, where people line up to make false accusations against Him. Mark tells us these accusations are so ridiculous that they don’t even agree with each other, let alone align with reality. Everyone present is talking, it seems, except Jesus.
As readers, we want the dramatic courtroom scene where the innocent man stands up against evil and appeals to the crowd’s humanity. Even if he fails, and even if he knows he is going to fail, we still want to see him try.
That desire is present in the narrative itself. “Are you not going to answer?” the high priest asks Jesus in Mark 14:60. But verse 61 tells us: “Jesus remained silent and gave no answer.”
It is only when the high priest asks Jesus, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” that Jesus speaks up to say, “I am.” He continues in verse 62, “And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
But that’s all we get. The high priest tears his clothes, Mark says, and accuses Jesus of blasphemy. “They all condemned him as worthy of death,” verse 64 says.
Of course, we knew that was going to happen. Mark tells us throughout his account that the religious leaders were looking for ways to kill Jesus, and they have finally arrested Him, so it’s only a matter of time. But even though we don’t want to put ourselves in the chief priest’s position in the narrative, most of us do probably feel a sense of confusion as to why Jesus isn’t defending Himself.
Then, the narrative moves on to a second courtroom-type scene, Jesus’s appearance before Pilate. Ah, this must be where the great speech comes. Jesus must have been saving it up for the imperial Roman setting. The Sanhedrin was kind of rinky-dink anyway. The Romans are big on spectacle and drama. Jesus already drew a contrast between Caesar and God when he was asked about paying taxes. Now’s the time to bring it home with a grand oration on how the might of Rome is no match for the holiness of God.
Yet again, our expectations are confounded. Matthew 27:11 says Pilate asks Jesus whether He is the king of the Jews, and Jesus replies, “You have said so.” That’s all He says in the whole encounter. Mark and Luke’s accounts are similar.
John records Jesus speaking more with Pilate, but even then it is only to briefly answer a few questions, and nothing He says is really a defense. Pilate, like the chief priest, was bewildered that Jesus wasn’t defending Himself. “Don’t you realize I have the power either to free you or to crucify you?” he asks Jesus in John 19:10. Jesus answers in verse 11 not with a defense but with a parsing of power relationships: “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.”
Come on, Jesus! Stand up for yourself! You’re innocent! The crowds are jeering, the soldiers are mocking, Peter is denying, the religious leaders are saying they have no king but Caesar, Pilate is saying he doesn’t want to kill an innocent man, “Give us Barabbas,” “Crucify! Crucify!” — everyone’s talking except Jesus, the man the gospels are about and who we know is able to use His words to such great effect that they can still speak to us 2,000 years distant.
Ordinarily in courtroom dramas, the defense attorney for the innocent man is appealing not only to the humanity of the characters in the story but also to the humanity of the audience watching or reading the story. The gospel accounts of Jesus’s trials are fundamentally different because Jesus cannot appeal to the crowd’s humanity or to the readers’ humanity. Appealing to humanity would not have helped. It was their — our — humanity that sentenced Him to death.
As songwriter Stuart Townend put it in “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us”: “It was my sin that held him there / Until it was accomplished.” We might find ourselves thinking along the lines of the chief priest and Pilate, wondering why Jesus isn’t defending Himself, because we are really on their side. “Ashamed I hear my mocking voice / Call out among the scoffers,” the song also says.
Jesus died for us anyway. He did so in obedience to the Father’s plan for our redemption. He gave us plenty of words to chew on elsewhere, but on Easter, there are relatively few. Helpful as His words are, they are not what we ultimately need. Ultimately, we need Him, the Word. Other people can give great speeches. Only Jesus can throw open the gates of heaven.