What Is Truth? Reflections for John 18:1 - 19:42, Good Friday, Year C

by John C. Holbert on Monday, February 17, 2025

          The collectors of the lectionary give the preacher/teacher fully 80 verses of the tangled and challenging Gospel of John to reckon with this Good Friday. In my experience, it is not uncommon to present a kind of reader’s theater based on these verses, assigning parts of the drama to various members of the church staff and congregational members. No preacher would dare attempt a sermonic analysis of such a vast corpus of Scripture, and if she did, no congregation could withstand the pulpit onslaught that would result! Two options are thus presented: reader’s theater or a chosen portion of the whole appropriate for the day. Since my task in these essays is to illuminate parts of the biblical text for readers and teachers, thereby helping them with their weekly tasks of interpretation, I make the latter choice. My choice is John 18:28-38, that famous and fascinating confrontation between Jesus and the Roman procurator, Pilate. All four gospels present this scene to their readers, but John has his special slant that provides insight into the goals of his particular presentation.

         “Then they led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the praetorium. It was early. They themselves did not enter the praetorium so that they might not be defiled, but might eat the Passover” (John 18:28). Annas, father-in-law of the high priest Caiaphas, has his chance to question Jesus, and though in John 18:19-24 he is given no direct speech; only Jesus speaks and is struck by one of the court’s officers for not showing proper deference. Jesus merely makes it plain that he has said quite openly what he has come to do, and if the Jews had listened, they would not be persecuting him. After that, Jesus is bundled off to Caiaphas. While all that is going on, John the Baptist is performing his three-fold denial of Jesus, after which the cock crows, fulfilling the prediction Jesus had earlier made. 

         The second line of vs.28 is odd. Exactly how a simple entry into the praetorium of Pilate would make the Jews unclean is not made at all clear. To be sure, the desire of the Jews to maintain ritual purity is presented in sharp contrast to their unremitting desire to bring about the death of Jesus, but this note about not going into Pilate’s official headquarters to avoid uncleanliness seems frankly strained and almost ludicrous. John is ever intent to blame the “Jews,” a fact that has caused no end of rage at Judaism, fomenting through the centuries a horrifying anti-Semitism with consequences too numerous and too appalling to enumerate here.

         Pilate, now charged with the necessity of putting Jesus on trial, first asks the Jews what are their accusations against him (John 18:29). They reply with studied vagueness: “If this man were not an evildoer, we would not have handed him over” (John 18:30). How exactly he is a doer of evil, they do not bother to detail. Pilate, not convinced by this vague charge, tells them to “judge him by your own law.” It is clear that Pilate wants no part of what he thinks is an intra-Jewish theological debate, and wants to avoid involvement. Not so fast, shout the Jews. “It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death” (John 18:31). It is obvious that the charge of “evildoer” is hardly worthy of a death sentence. There is no need to argue about whether or not historically the Jews had the authority to put Jesus to death (though it has been argued about ad infinitum!); “evildoing,” whatever it may entail, is not an offense that calls for the penalty of death. For John, what is important is that Jesus must die a Roman death, “lifted up on a cross,” hence fulfilling “what death he was to die” (John 18:32).

         Now Pilate engages Jesus in a discussion of kingship: “Are you the king of the Jews?” he asks. Presumably, if Jesus admits that reality, then he will have set himself over against the Roman emperor. Such a claim might well be worthy of a death sentence. But Jesus avoids a direct answer, as he regularly does in the gospel.  “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?” In other words, is this idea that I am king of the Jews your own or have you borrowed the idea from someone else? “Am I a Jew?” retorts Pilate. Your own people, your nation, your priests have handed you over to me; what have you done?” (John 18:35). Twice Jesus claims that his kingship, such as it is, “is not of this world” (John 18:36). “You say that I am a king,” Jesus says to Pilate, but then adds a phrase that appears somewhat odd in the context. “For this I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice” (John 18:37). Pilate, before that shift of emphasis, says “So you are a king?” (John 18:37), apparently wanting a very simple yes or no response. But after Jesus moves the issue to one of “truth,” a thoroughly confused and perhaps increasingly angry Pilate blurts out the famous phrase, “What is truth?” (John 18:37).

         And, of course, that is finally, for John, the central question: exactly how is Jesus the truth? Earlier in the gospel Jesus had said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Indeed, the word of Jesus is truth. Pilate’s brief question is nothing less than a dismissive rejection of what Jesus represents, and not at all a probing philosophical query, however often it has been employed as such. In John’s Gospel Jesus is always in full control of the scenes in which he plays a role; he is truth and life, he himself, and any who question that reality has no part in him, nor any part in the God who sent him. The one about to die on the Roman cross is the truth of all things, the way toward God, and the very essence of eternal life, a life that may be experienced by those who see and embrace the truth even today.