Transcript
Jesus Condemned
Richmond’s First Baptist
March 22, 2026
The Fifth Sunday of Lent
John 19:1-16a
He said to the Jews, “Here is your King!” They cried out, “Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!” Pilate asked them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.” Then he handed him over to them to be crucified.
At the end of today’s Gospel lesson, Pontius Pilate brings Jesus out before the crowd dressed in a purple robe, with a crown of thorns on his head. He says to the Jews, “Here is your king!” But they say, “Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!” In disbelief Pilate asks, “Shall I crucify your king?” The chief priests answer, “We have no king but Caesar.”
And somewhere a rooster must have crowed.
Because these were the chief priests of Israel! Part of their job was to oversee the worship of the people, and woven into that worship was the sovereignty of God. Psalm 47:7–8 says, “For God is the king of all the earth; sing praises with a psalm. God is king over the nations; God sits on his holy throne.” Psalm 93:1 says, “The Lord is king, he is robed in majesty…” Psalm 95:3 says, “For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods.” And yet, when Pilate asks them, “Shall I crucify your king?” they say, “We have no king but Caesar!”
Blasphemy!
Because even if they didn’t believe that Jesus was their king, they should have known that Caesar was not. They could have said, “We have no king but God!” and
somehow managed to hold onto the last shred of their integrity. But that’s not what they said. In that moment when they were eye-to-eye with the Roman Governor they said, “We have no king but Caesar,” which makes me think they needed something from him.
I’ve been looking at that moment under a magnifying glass for the past week, wondering what could have moved them to say such a thing. I’ve been flipping through the pages of John’s Gospel like a detective, trying to find the verse that could explain it. I finally stumbled onto John 11:48, and I think that may be it.
We rarely read that verse in worship because it comes right after the raising of Lazarus. That’s a long story, and when Jesus says, “Unbind him and let him go,” it sounds like the end. But listen to what comes next, beginning with verse 45: “Many of the Jews, therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council and said, “What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.”
That’s verse 48, and I think it may be the key that unlocks the mystery. Look at the first question: “What are we to do?” That “we” refers to the members of the Sanhedrin, the supreme Jewish legislative and judicial council in ancient Israel. It was made up of 71 members—including a high priest, elders, and scribes—who met in Jerusalem. It functioned as the final authority on Jewish law, handling religious, civil, and criminal matters. So, the “chief priests” mentioned in today’s Gospel lesson had both a religious and a political role.
§ Religiously, they were responsible for the worship life of Israel, especially at the temple. They oversaw sacrifices, ritual purity, and special days. In other words,
they were the custodians of that place where heaven and earth were thought to come together—no small job.
§ Politically, Rome allowed them to maintain order among the Jewish people, to oversee temple operations, and to work with the Roman Governor. But there was a catch: they held power only as long as Rome trusted them to keep the peace. If things got out of hand, that is, if there were riots, or messianic movements, or unrest during the festivals Rome could—and did—step in brutally.
So you can see why the chief priests might be concerned about Jesus.
In chapter two of this Gospel he had come to the temple and found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves and the money changers seated at their tables. You may recall that he made a whip of cords and drove all of them out of the temple, with the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” The Romans would have been watching when all this happened, and they might have been less than pleased by the response of the priests, who simply asked, “What sign can you show us for doing all this?”
In chapter six Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee and a large crowd followed him because they saw the signs he was doing. When Jesus saw the crowd he asked Philip, “Where will we find bread for all these people to eat?” And Philip said, “Two hundred denarii wouldn’t buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” Andrew said, “There’s a boy here who has five barley loaves and two small fish, but what is that among so many?” But Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” And then he blessed and broke the loaves and handed them out along with the fish until everyone had eaten their fill. There were about five thousand people there, and when they
realized what had happened they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who has come into the world,” and some tried to take him by force and make him their king.
The Romans would not have been pleased.
Jesus didn’t seem to be interested in being a king, but he certainly did talk a lot about a kingdom. We’ve gotten so used to hearing terms like “the Kingdom of God,” or “the Kingdom of Heaven,” that we have forgotten that kingdom is a political term. But the Romans would not have forgotten. Anybody who talked about a kingdom other than the Roman Empire, or a king other than Caesar, would have been watched very closely. I can almost hear them saying to the chief priests, “Keep an eye on that one.”
And then there’s the fact that people were starting to believe in him. It says so in the passage I quoted from John 11earlier, just after Jesus has raised Lazarus from the dead: “Many of the Jews, therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did believed in him.” And why wouldn’t they? The man had just raised someone from the dead! But some of [the Jews] went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. And that’s when the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council and said, “What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.”
That’s not just hyperbole.
Less than forty years after the chief priests held that conversation “Roman forces led by Titus besieged the city of Jerusalem [in order to put down a rebellion against the Empire]. After months of fighting, they breached the defenses, destroyed the Temple, and razed the city, killing, enslaving, or displacing much of its population.”i Anyone reading John’s Gospel forty years have that event would have looked back and realized that the Romans not only could do such a thing, but actually had done such a thing.
Which leads me to look at the chief priests with a little more sympathy. They are not necessarily villains, but institutional leaders trying to manage a volatile situation.
And Jesus is not making it any easier.
We’ll talk about it more next week, but at the beginning of the Passover Festival, when the city is jammed with people and everyone is celebrating freedom, Jesus comes riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. I can almost picture those chief priests, up on the Temple Mount, trying to maintain order, when one of them looks across the Kidron Valley and sees Jesus coming down from the Mount of Olives in what seems to be an obvious attempt to present himself as the Messiah. That priest wouldn’t have had to have very good eyes to see the huge crowd that went out to meet Jesus, waving palm branches, and he wouldn’t have had to have very good ears to hear them shouting: “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord—the King of Israel!” And he wouldn’t have even had to be a very good biblical scholar to remember that verse from Zechariah that says,
Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
That priest might have nudged one of his fellow priests and said,
“Here comes trouble.”
And so, while Jesus was teaching in the temple that week the religious authorities would have been looking for a way to arrest him when no one was looking, to drum up some false charges against him so they could take him to Pilate, and then hope that
Pilate would be willing to do their dirty work for them—to put Jesus to death and rid them of this problem once and for all.
But Pilate is having none of it, at least not at first. He says, “Take him yourselves and judge him according to your law.” And in the old days they could have. There was a law in Leviticus about stoning anyone who blasphemed and in their thinking Jesus was clearly a blasphemer. He had said, “Before Abraham was, I am.” But under Roman occupation they didn’t have the legal authority to carry out capital punishment, and they told Pilate as much: “We are not permitted to put anyone to death.”
And that’s when Pilate learned that Jesus was being accused of insurrection—a capital offense—and that he himself would have to get involved. But when he did he became more and more convinced that Jesus was not a threat. He asked him if he was a king and Jesus said, “My kingdom is not from here.” “Then what’s the problem?” Pilate may have wondered. “This man is no threat to the Roman Empire.” But the chief priests kept hounding him, determined to eliminate this threat once and for all. Pilate tried to negotiate, saying, “I’ve got a custom of releasing one prisoner during the Passover. What if I release the King of the Jews?” “No!” they shouted. “Not this man but Barabbas!” (who was, in fact, an insurrectionist).
So, trying to appease them, Pilate had Jesus flogged, and then he brought him out and said, “Behold the man!” The chief priests and the temple police shouted, “Crucify him!” Pilate said, “Take him yourselves and crucify him. I find no case against him.” But they said, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has claimed to be the Son of God.” And that made the little hairs stand up on the back of Pilate’s neck.
He took Jesus inside and said, “Where are you from?” but Jesus didn’t answer. Pilate said, “Do you refuse to speak to me? Don’t you know I have the power to release
you and the power to crucify you?” But Jesus said, “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above; therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of the greater sin.”
From that moment on Pilate tried to release him, but the religious authorities would have none of it. “If you release this man you are no friend of Caesar,” they said. “Everyone who claims to be a king sets himself against Caesar.” And so finally, frustrated, Pilate brought Jesus out to the place of judgment and said to the crowd, “Here is your king.” They cried out, “Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!” And Pilate, in disbelief, said, “Shall I crucify your king?” And the chief priests said, “We have no king but Caesar!”
I tell you the truth: I’ve been trying to look at this story from a sympathetic point of view. I’ve been trying to understand why Pilate could have done what he did and why the chief priests could have done what they did. I think Pilate just got tired. I think he could see that he was up against something bigger than he was and that there was no way to stop it. But I think the chief priests were afraid. I think they genuinely believed that if they didn’t find a way to stop Jesus the crowds would go after him, and then the Romans would come and destroy both their holy place and their nation. So the chief priests needed Pilate to do something for them. They needed him to get rid of Jesus. And they were willing to do whatever that took, even if it meant saying, “We have no king but Caesar.”
Blasphemy!
But that was them, and this is us. And, honestly, if this is going to be a sermon and not just a history lesson, it has to about us. We have to ask ourselves the question: what am I afraid of losing? My job? My home? My family? My 401K? And what am I willing to
do to hold onto it? Anything? Everything? Am I so afraid of losing I will do whatever it takes to win, even it means giving up my most deeply held convictions?
I want you to do something for me this morning: I want you to put yourself in that crowd. I want you to see Jesus standing there, dressed in a purple robe, wearing that crown of thorns. I want you to hear Pilate say, “Here is your king!” And then I want you to look around at all those others who are there, shaking their fists, spitting on the ground, saying, “We have no king but Caesar!” This is your moment. This is when you have to decide, “Will I join them, or not?” And then I want you to look back up at Jesus, make eye contact with him, feel his gaze penetrating to the depths of your soul. In that moment I hope you can hear yourself say,
“I have no king but Jesus.”
—Jim Somerville © 2026
