The Trial and Crucifixion

The accounts of the trial of Jesus do not wholly agree. According to Mark and Matthew, Jesus was at once taken to the house of the high priest and thus brought before the Sanhedrin while it was yet night. John may be right in stating that he was first taken to Annas, former high priest, father-in-law of Caiaphas and probably the real leader in the movement against Jesus. A night meeting would be irregular, but they were in great haste. The next day was the passover. The preparations for the feast began on this the preceding day and so the latter part of this day was sacred. They must not trench upon the sacred day, and they must run no risk of trouble being made by the people in Jesus' favor. At any cost Jesus must be brought before the Roman governor for judgment immediately. So the leaders may have been gathered at once, and the formal judgment not passed till morning, as Luke 22:66 suggests.

Even now they were scrupulous about the formal rules of procedure. In their own minds the case was settled: Jesus had flouted sacred laws and customs. He had set their authority at naught in cleansing the temple. He had condemned them as faithless in his parables. But they must find a charge upon which they could condemn him to death and they must have two witnesses agree. In this they failed. Then at last the high priest challenged Jesus with the question, "Art thou the Christ?" Jesus had been silent. Now he must respond if he was to be true to himself; and there was confidence and courage in his answer: "I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven." With such assurance Jesus faced the end. To them it was blasphemy, and they forthwith passed their sentence.

They next had to secure a sentence from Pilate. The Sanhedrin had large powers of local government, but not that of the sentence of death. Before Pilate Jesus' offense had to be given a political turn. Not blasphemy was the charge, but that as Messiah he conspired to be king. Pilate's position in Jerusalem was not an easy one. Rome had nowhere a people more difficult to handle. It was apparent to him from the first that there was no real treason here. The poor peasant who stood before him must have seemed to him only a harmless fanatic. But these fierce leaders of the Jews, insistent and stirring up the people, were by no means harmless, and Jewish tumults were not to be courted. So Pilate wavers between the desire to release Jesus and the fear of consequences.

The court seems to have been held before the palace. Pilate's first judgment was, "I find no fault in this man." The priests then added another charge, that he was stirring up the people from Galilee to Judæa to revolt. Pilate grasped at the word Galilee. If this was a Galilæan the case belonged to Herod, who was at the time in the city. So at last Jesus met that crafty, cruel ruler whom he had called "that fox." Before Herod's shallow curiosity, however, Jesus kept silence, and Herod had no deeper interest. So back to Pilate Jesus went, and the governor sought again to release him. And now the people came into action. Their favor had been short-lived; they had no room for a Messiah who could not defend himself, Pilate appealed to them, offering to release Jesus according to a certain custom; but the people, stirred up by the priests, called for another prisoner and began to raise their cry against Jesus, "Crucify, crucify." Cowardly at heart, Pilate at last passed sentence of death.

And now for the third time that morning Jesus suffers mockery and abuse. This meek and silent figure in peasant's garb, yet claiming to be the Messiah, had stirred his foes to brutal ridicule. They had mocked him in the court of Caiaphas, striking the blindfolded captive and bidding him name the man who struck him. Herod's soldiers had put on gorgeous garments in mockery. Now Pilate hands him over to his men and, after the brutal custom of the time, Jesus suffers the cruelty of scourging. The soldiers in play give him crown and robe and a reed for scepter, and then change their mock homage to blows and insult.

All this did not last long, for Mark says the crucifixion took place at nine. The criminal himself was usually compelled to bear the heavy timber upon which he was later hung. Jesus was evidently too weak for this. The name of the man who bore the cross is probably remembered as being later a disciple. Broken though he may have been, Jesus still had a word for the few women who followed him lamenting, and for the city whose end he saw.

Crucifixion was a mode of death made terrible by prolonged suffering, to which was added the shame of a form of execution reserved for slaves and lowest criminals. In the presence of the deeper agony of spirit the mere description of physical suffering is out of place. It was the common place of execution to which Jesus was led, and two robbers suffered the penalty at the same time. In few words the Gospels have given us the picture: the hardened soldiery gambling for his garments, his enemies jeering at him, the crowds looking on, and the women who had followed him from the north sorrowing at a distance. The four Gospels report seven words of Jesus spoken from the cross. In only one case, however, do two of the Gospels report the same word. Two words are reported as spoken to others: one to the penitent thief, "Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise"; and one given by John, spoken to his mother and a disciple: "Woman, behold, thy son," and "Behold, thy mother." Three words of prayer are reported: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do"; "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." The fourth Gospel adds two other words: "I thirst," and "It is finished." The wine and myrrh, offered to deaden the senses and to lessen the pain, Jesus refused. He wished to keep his full consciousness to the last. Instead of the suffering which often lasted two or three days, Jesus' death came after but three hours, and then, apparently, suddenly. "Jesus cried again with a loud voice, and yielded up his spirit."

His death showed again how he had been able to bind men to him. From all the cruelty and brutality and indifference of that hour, there stands forth the devotion of the women from Galilee who watched the scene from afar. And to them must be joined Joseph of Arimathæa, evidently a man of wealth and prominence, probably a member of the Sanhedrin. Joseph had the courage to ask for the body from Pilate, and provided the tomb in which it was buried.

As he had lived, so Jesus died, in the spirit of love for men for whose saving he counted this death, and in utter confidence and obedience toward God. One word seems to indicate that this confidence left him for at least a moment—the cry which Matthew and Mark report: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" The inference is probably wrong. The story of the temptation shows how Jesus, in the days of struggle before his ministry, used the words of the Scriptures for guidance and strength. Here in his last trial, they come again to his lips. It is the twenty-second psalm that he is repeating. But the psalm, of which these evangelists repeat but the first verse, is a song of faith and not simply a cry of anguish:

Our fathers trusted in thee:

They trusted, and thou didst deliver them.

They cried unto thee, and were delivered:

They trusted in thee, and were not put to shame.

What Jesus hoped for from his death was not wanting. It did for men what his life alone had not accomplished. The cross, symbol of shame for that day like the guillotine or gallows for ours, became the center of the message of his disciples and the symbol of honor for the ages following. From the first men saw in his death, as did he, not a tragic accident or the triumph of his foes, but some great purpose of God. It wrought the sense of sin and the feeling of penitence which he had wished to call forth. It stood forth as the crowning deed of his love in which they saw the love and mercy of God. It fixed forever the ideal of his life as that of love and service, and the ideal of the Christian life for those who were to follow him.

Directions for Reading and Study

Before the priests: Mark 14:53-65; Luke 22:63-71.

Before Pilate and Herod: Mark 15:1-20; Luke 23:1-25.

Crucifixion and burial: Mark 15:21-47; Matt 27:32-66; Luke 23:26-56.

Write briefly in your own words the story of the trial, incorporating the items from the three synoptic Gospels.