Matthew 27: A King Mocked as King

Judas, seeing Jesus condemned, brings the thirty pieces of silver back to the chief priests: “I have sinned in that I betrayed innocent blood” (27:4). Their answer is bureaucratic and brutal: “What is that to us? You see to it” (27:4). They took the money seriously enough to pay for the betrayal, and not seriously enough to hear the guilt over it. Judas is left alone with a confession no one wants.

Read it in the terminal: bible matthew 27

A choice the crowd is talked into

Pilate offers the crowd a release — Jesus or Barabbas, a notorious prisoner — and the chief priests “persuaded the multitudes” to ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus (27:20). Pilate washes his hands of it publicly, which changes nothing about what he’s about to allow. Nobody in the scene wants full responsibility for what happens, and everybody gets some of it anyway.

Mocked with the truth

Soldiers dress Jesus in a scarlet robe, twist a crown of thorns onto his head, and kneel before him sarcastically: “Hail, King of the Jews!” (27:29). The mockery is, unintentionally, accurate. The sign nailed above his head — “THIS IS JESUS, THE KING OF THE JEWS” (27:37) — is meant as an insult and reads, to anyone paying attention since chapter 1, as a fact.

The curtain that tore itself

At the moment of his death, “the veil of the temple was torn in two from the top to the bottom” (27:51) — not bottom to top, as a person might do it, but from the top, as if something on the other side had decided the barrier was finished.

Questions for study

1. Judas felt guilt but sought it from the wrong people. Where do you take your own guilt, and does it actually hear you?
2. Pilate’s handwashing didn’t change his responsibility. Where are you distancing yourself from a decision you’re still party to?
3. The mockery of Jesus as king turns out to be true. What does that irony do to how you read the crucifixion?
4. What does a curtain torn “from the top” suggest about who removed the barrier?

cd .. cd ~ (back to terminal)