Jesus treads step by step the road appointed for Him, as described in S. Mark 11:7-10, in complete submission to the will of His heavenly Father. First He is given a recognition by the crowd of followers who accompanied Him into Jerusalem as the King who comes in the Name of the Lord - the Messiah-king. Indeed as the Palm Sunday hymn puts it, He “rides on, rides on in majesty”, but in spite of His careful teaching, nobody could then accept that His most kingly responsibility was in lowly pomp to ride on to die.

Several days later after the appalling and astounding events of His betrayal and His condemnation by the court of the Jews, Pontius Pilate’s interest in this prisoner seems to hang upon this issue of kingship. We read in S. Mark 14: 53-65 that the religious leaders of the Jews, the chief priests, the elders, the scribes and the council have carefully used the situation to obtain His condemnation. Yet even this they were incapable of bringing into effect without the remarkable cooperation of the Prisoner Himself.

Jesus acted as if He was without the slightest intention of defending Himself from them. The evidence of the witnesses against Him, in the face of which He remained silent, was incapable of forming the basis of a conviction in the Jewish court; so the judge of the court, the High Priest, questioned Him with the aim of provoking a blasphemy. To Him then, as to Pilate later, Jesus answered with complete candour, just as if they were making enquiry to seek the truth for themselves. For indeed, His kingdom is the Kingdom of Truth, and over that kingdom He will reign supreme.

In the eyes of the High Priest and the Jewish court Jesus condemned Himself by answering affirmatively (as the earliest source-document tells us) that He was the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed, which was to say the Son of God. That gave them just enough leverage to accuse Him before Caesar’s representative, Pilate, that He was purporting to be a king other than Caesar over the Jewish people.

The fact that Jesus’ Messiahship was no insurrection, as the records clearly show, did not prevent the religious leaders from making the lying accusation to Pilate. But they could affect to justify it on the pretext that their own court had condemned Him for the blasphemy of claiming to be divine, deserving of death. To Romans after all, claiming to be divine was competing with the claim of the Emperor to be divine.

Pilate seems fixated by the idea that this gentle and wounded Prisoner before him could be made out to be a king. He sees it as a great opportunity to taunt these Jews by pretending to recognise Him as their King. So He condemns and mocks the Lord for His true role as the divinely appointed King. For the sake of His subjects, it was the Lord’s kingly responsibility to be condemned and mocked.

Throughout it all the Lord bore the pain and insult with kingly fortitude, indeed in a way that everlastingly provides a fresh measure for the concept of royalty. The most royal action ever done by a king for his subjects was the action of our Lord, in taking upon Himself the sins of mankind, so that He who knew no sin was made sin for us.

And then in that mysterious darkness over the land, in which the sun’s radiation seems to have been temporarily suspended, the face of the heavenly Father who cannot look upon sin was averted from His Son, who was made sin for us. Jesus was forsaken so that we might never be. His obedience, His kingly obedience, was unto the death, even, of the cross.

“Therefore, as St. Paul proclaims in Philippians 2:9-10, “God has highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the Name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth, and under the earth.” So the judgment was made, but it is for us to understand who judged whom.

The court of the High Priest was forced to transgress its own rules to secure conviction when the witnesses to the substantive charge failed to agree. The conviction on the new charge of blasphemy relied solely upon the truthfulness and candour of the One being condemned.

So who and what were really being judged in the court of truth?

It is a terrible thing to trade truth for some temporary advantage, as both the High Priest and Pilate in their different ways did. And it is easy enough for us to do the same, as individuals, as a community, whenever we want to secure some temporary benefit. In fact they gained nothing and He who suffered and died took all the spoils of victory from His encounter. For it was not He that was condemned then in the court of truth, but the Jewish High Priest and the Gentile Pilate.

For commentary, information and devotional material see www.churchofenglandcayman.com and www.anglicansatprayer.org