Sermon on Luke 22:66–23:25: Jesus before the Jewish council and Pilate, and the release of Barabbas
A Sunday sermon by Rev Harry Newton at SumRed Church, preaching through the Gospel of Luke.
Summary
Rev Harry Newton delivers a sermon from Luke 22:66–23:25, the second-to-last chapter in a series through the Gospel of Luke. He walks through the events of Jesus' trial before the Jewish council, his appearance before Pilate, and the release of Barabbas in Jesus' place. Newton argues that Barabbas — a guilty man who literally had his death sentence carried by Jesus — is the clearest picture in the Gospels of what Christians mean by grace: unearned freedom given to someone who deserved judgment. He draws a direct line from Barabbas's story to the personal situation of every person in the room, arguing that Jesus' willingness to absorb guilt and shame he did not deserve is the defining offer of the Christian faith, and challenges the congregation to decide what they will do with that claim.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction and Context: A Series Through Luke
Rev Harry Newton: We are coming towards the end of a series going through the Gospel of Luke, one of four accounts of the ministry, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. As I've said many times, it's my favorite gospel for many reasons — partly because my grandfather smoked his way through it when he was a prisoner of war with the Nazis, and became a committed Christian. I hope you don't find that offensive. I thought that was kind of funny.
We are in the second-to-last chapter, and thank you to Sally so much for reading for us. It's really long, so thank you for doing that. It's a really pivotal part of the Jesus story.
The Arrest and the Council
Just a bit of a recap. Jesus has been arrested and he's being deserted by his mates — they've all gone. Now, the reason Luke, our author, does that is worth noting. Luke wasn't there. He wrote it all second-hand. He gleaned lots of information, did lots of research, and wrote down his account based on the orderly accounts of other people. That's why he uses those names the way he does. It's an ancient form of referencing called bracketing — he brackets the account with different names so we can see that we can actually trust where he's coming from.
Caiaphas, in the early morning, hastily convenes a council consisting of all these different religious factions. We've got the Sadducees, we've got the Pharisees, we've got the scribes, and probably some others hanging on there as well. And these groups hate each other — they absolutely hate each other. The only thing that can overcome their mutual hatred is their shared hatred for Jesus. And so they come together for this council.
A quick note on the side: the reason it happens the way it does is that Jesus is arrested in the middle of the night. He's taken in the early hours and interviewed by Annas, then by Caiaphas, and beaten and treated badly. But it was against Jewish law to hold a council during the evening — you could only hold it in daylight. No idea why; probably some sort of spiritual reason. So they waited till dawn and then hastily got the council together. Why hastily? Because they're afraid of the crowds. Jesus has this growing group of people who love him, and he's becoming increasingly popular. They don't want to annoy the crowds, so they're trying to get across the line before anyone can say, "Hey, you should stop that."
Jesus Before the Council
So they had Jesus brought before them and they said to him, "If you are the Messiah, tell us." And he said, "If I told you, you would not believe. And if I question you, you will not answer. But from now on, the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God."
Now, the Son of Man is a phrase used in the Old Testament in a book called Daniel. It's a self-revelatory statement by Jesus — a cryptic way of referring to who he is. We won't get bogged down in that, but just in case you're not familiar with the Christianese language, that's what that's all about.
And they said to him, "So then are you the Son of God?" And he said to them, "You say that I am." And then they said, "What further testimony do we need? We have heard it ourselves from his own lips." And the assembly rose as a body and brought Jesus before Pilate.
Why They Needed the Romans
Now, the reason they do all that is because they want Jesus to be put to death. We explored this a little last week — we won't rehash the whole thing — but we explored how they paid a man called Judas, one of Jesus' twelve or thirteen closest friends, to betray Jesus to them so they could kill him. Why? Because they saw him as an existential threat to the Jewish nation. It's said in one of the other Jesus accounts, the Gospel of John, that they talked about how they needed to kill this man because he was going to bring the anger of the Romans down on them when he got too popular and started to cause civil unrest. "They will come and destroy Jerusalem and destroy us. We need to destroy him." They also wanted to get rid of him because even if that didn't happen, he was annoying. He said things. He undermined them. He held them to account, and they saw him as a threat to their own privilege, power, and authority.
The problem is they weren't really in charge. They were in charge of religious affairs, but they didn't have the power to have someone executed. Only the Romans, who had conquered them, had that power. So they took Jesus before Pilate.
The Charges Before Pilate
And they began to accuse him. Now, notice this: when they seized Jesus and took him before the high priest and then later before the council, what was their main issue? Blasphemy. From their perspective, that was the big issue at hand. Why do they bring that charge? It sways the moderates. The moderates are sitting on the fence — maybe we shouldn't, maybe we should give him the benefit of the doubt, all that kind of thing. The moderates get swayed and go, "Yeah, blasphemy is awful. He claimed to be God. We should get rid of this guy," because the death penalty for blasphemy in Jewish society at the time was death.
The problem is the Romans just didn't care. We have a bishop of Christchurch. It'd be like me writing to Chris Lynch in the media and saying, "Chris, I'm really upset about an esoteric comment the bishop made in his sermon last Sunday evening." Who cares, right? It's completely irrelevant. Same thing here.
So they have this problem. They see Jesus as a threat, they want to get rid of him, and they've found a great rationale from their perspective because they can accuse him of blasphemy. But they now have to convince the Romans to carry out the punishment. So they take Jesus before Pilate and they begin to accuse him of three key things. The first is causing unrest amongst the Jews. The second is forbidding people to pay taxes. And the third is claiming to be the Messiah, the king — which puts him in direct opposition to Caesar, the emperor, the king of Rome.
Now, Pilate doesn't seem to care about dissent amongst the Jews. I think he was probably of the mind that, "You guys are a bit weird. I don't care about these weird theological arguments. You're all a bit strange to me." We also know that their claim about not paying taxes is a lie. If you were here a few weeks ago, you might remember how we touched on that — they came and tried to trap Jesus into admitting that, and he did the complete opposite and ran rings around them. So that's a lie. We don't know why Pilate doesn't focus in on that. Maybe he knew the truth. Maybe he'd heard rumours. Who knows?
"You Say"
But what we do know is it's the third accusation that catches his attention — Jesus allegedly saying that he himself is the Messiah, a king, as Luke puts it. And so naturally, Pilate asks Jesus a question: "Are you the king of the Jews?"
Our reading this morning has a translation that isn't quite right. Usually it says, "You say so." In the original Greek — and if you speak Greek, I'm really sorry in advance; I went to Greek school for five years and I can't speak Greek, so I apologize for my pronunciation — what Jesus says literally translates to "you say." And in every account of the Jesus story, they use the same phrase. It's an idiom from the time. It's similar to "so you say," except it's deliberately vague. It's kind of like saying "yeah, nah."
I've got my mate Jamie Rehunga. Jamie is the man. We call him Farmer Māori because he runs a band called Farmer Māori — into Māori farmers. They're all white apart from him because my brothers are in the band. It's a really bad band. But anyway, he was once interviewed by some guy in Wellington — I think it was John Campbell, actually — on the side of the road, about some terrible thing that had happened in Wellington. He had seen it, and the interviewer goes, "Oh, what do you think about this?" And he goes, "Oh, yeah, nah, hey, I just don't know, hey, oh, yeah, yeah, nah, nah." And that was genuinely the interview. They played it on TV. How good is that?
This is essentially the same thing. Jesus is essentially going, "Yeah, nah, oh, yeah, nah, you know — you say." Because "you say so" kind of implies something depending on how you put intonation in your voice, but "you say" — there's no intonation. It's a completely neutral phrase.
Pilate's Attempts to Release Jesus
So Pilate goes back to the Jewish leaders and says, "I find no basis for an accusation against this man." But they're insistent — because it's getting on in the morning and they need to get this business dealt with before the people start to stir. They say to Pilate, "He stirs up the people by teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee where he began, even to this place."
And right there, Pilate spots an out. He hears the word Galilee and goes, "Fantastic. I can make this Herod's problem." Herod is the son of the other Herod who tried to murder Jesus when he was a baby. His dad was an absolute psychopath — drowned one of his own sons in a swimming pool, had his favourite wife killed. It kind of ran in the family. This Herod was known to be particularly evil as well, quite sadistic, and at one point had even been trying to have Jesus killed. So Pilate sends Jesus off to Herod, the puppet king, and says, "Your problem — you deal with it."
How many of us have ever tried to do that? It doesn't usually work, does it? And here it is — Herod can't get Jesus to respond to him, so he sends Jesus back. And Pilate's landed with him again, with the same issue all over again.
Barabbas
So then Pilate, wanting to release Jesus, starts to look for another out. His next move is to try and set Jesus free under the terms of an annual prisoner release program. This is where the name Barabbas comes in.
We don't know much about Barabbas. Legend has it his first name was Jesus, and Barabbas means "son of the father" — so Jesus, the son of the father, and then you've got Jesus Christ, Son of God. Lots of theologians right back to the 300s have been pulling this apart as a really beautiful analogy. It sounds beautiful, but it doesn't seem to be actually true. As far as we can tell, that's not really a thing. It's a nice story.
What we do know about Barabbas is that he was a murderer and a rebel. And I think we can probably assume he was one of the worst prisoners on hand, because if you read the Gospel of Matthew, we can tell that Pilate was trying to get Jesus off the hook — so he's trying to put the worst-case scenario before the crowd. Choose between Barabbas or choose Jesus. And the crowd, urged on by the religious authorities — a small crowd that had gathered — started to insist that Jesus be done away with and Barabbas released instead.
At this point, Pilate's running out of options. He presses again for Jesus' release, the crowd gets more enraged, and they begin to demand a crucifixion. We're told Pilate appealed for a third time, pressing upon them the innocence of Jesus, and he even offered to have Jesus punished for nothing in particular, just to try and sate the crowd, to get rid of their bloodlust. But the crowd kept urgently demanding with loud shouts that Jesus be crucified.
And what happened? Pilate caved. Barabbas is released and Jesus was condemned.
What It Was Like to Be Barabbas
Earlier this week — you know Tauranga? I was in Tauranga for a conference. You know Tauranga is usually really nice? It rained the entire time. Horrible. So I was sitting there feeling miserable in the rain, thinking about this story, and it struck me: what was it like for Barabbas sitting in the Roman jail that morning?
He hears this kind of hubbub. It's a mob, and it's not just people — you can hear the soldiers getting a bit fired up, a sergeant yelling out orders, a bit of back and forth. It goes quiet, then starts to build again. You know something's going on. Then you start to hear someone screaming at the top of their lungs, "Crucify him! Crucify him!" And you go, "Uh-oh. It's me." And you know your time's come.
And then the guard comes. You hear them coming along the stone corridor. They open your door, throw back the bolt, pull you out. You're probably terrified, probably start trying to fight them off. And they go, "Stop it." And they cut your chains off. And you go, "What?" And rather than putting a cross across your shoulders, they push you out into the daylight. And all you see out there is a stranger stumbling off under your cross — the one you were supposed to be carrying. And you don't know what's going on. All you know is that you were supposed to be condemned to death, and now you've got life, and that man is there in your place.
The Guilty Man Who Goes Free
Now, here's the thing. Barabbas was a guilty man. As Kiwis, we don't like the idea of corporal punishment, and most of us don't like the idea of a death penalty. So we kind of go, "Oh, the crucifixion — what a terrible thing." Yes, terrible. But in their society, Barabbas actually deserved it. He had done a series of terrible things, caused a lot of hurt and a lot of hardship. He was guilty, and he deserved what was coming to him — and yet he goes free. And Jesus bore the guilt, the shame, the disgrace, and ultimately the death that Barabbas deserved.
People often say, "Jesus died for me." Barabbas literally could say that. Jesus literally took his spot on the cross — and all because everyone in our story, all these factions who hate each other, hated Jesus more than they hated each other, and reunited in their desire to destroy him, to eliminate him, to get rid of him despite all the good he'd ever done.
And here's the irony. Even while they mocked him and beat him and tortured him and did all these terrible things, Jesus had the ability to call down supernatural power and get out of the whole predicament — and yet he didn't.
Not a Passive Victim
But he also didn't just take it like a sook. You know Swedish Jesus? You see him in the paintings — he's always got perfect hair and perfect teeth, Tom Cruise-style teeth, and he's always got the sash. He always looks a bit Swedish and just a bit perfect. He looks like an absolute sook. He's supposed to be a carpenter and his hands are softer than mine, and I'm a vicar. And yet here we know that he didn't just take it passively. He actively chose what's called the cup of suffering.
We touched on this last week — how as the authorities crept up on him in the dark, Jesus was praying, "Father, if you're willing, remove this cup from me, yet not my will but yours be done." And as we discovered last week through the Old Testament, the cup symbolizes God's wrath poured out on human sin. Because from a Christian perspective, God is holy — that means God is perfect and pure. God can't turn a blind eye to sin and evil, even the tiny little stuff, without ceasing to be God. And so there's this chasm between us and our Creator that leaves no peace from our past, gives us no purpose for our present, and gives us no eternal hope for our future.
So when Jesus prays in Gethsemane, he wasn't just dreading the crucifixion that he knew was coming. He was staring into the reality of bearing God's judgment for the sin and the evil of the world — and yet he still chose to drink it. Why? So that we wouldn't have to. And in that moment, Jesus essentially gazed into the depths of hell.
The Beauty of the Christian Faith
And that is where the beauty of the Christian faith pops up. Because in the darkness, when no one's watching, he could have left. He could have gone back to Nazareth. He could have gone back to heaven. He could have disappeared. He could have spared himself all that agony, the injustice, and the shame. But he didn't. In that moment, he chose love. He chose to endure the terrible suffering, the mocking, the beatings, the injustice, the disempowerment, the being stripped naked.
It's in light of all this that a man called Paul — quite an influential person in the church — once wrote that God proves his love for us in that while we are still sinners, Jesus Christ died for us. Because in a way, we are all just as deserving of judgment as Barabbas. We all know we're not perfect. Even your mother knows you're not perfect. And as bad as other people might be, we aren't above judgment or condemnation, are we? It's not a fun thing to say out loud. We've all said things, we've all done things, we've all thought things that fall short of who we're meant to be. And if we're honest, we know we wouldn't even stand up to our own standards all the time, let alone a holy God's standards.
Grace and the Offer of a Clean Slate
And this is where the beauty and the scandal of the good news of Jesus comes in. Because Jesus doesn't just take Barabbas' place in this story. He takes yours, and he takes mine. He steps, as it were, into the courtroom of heaven and says, "Let that person go. I will take the blame. I will carry the weight." And because of that, because of him, you can walk free just as Barabbas did — not because you're innocent or because you deserve it, but because someone else has taken your guilt upon themselves.
And this is where that thing called grace — the unmerited favour of God — cuts against the grain of our culture. Because in a world where one wrong action can leave you cancelled forever, where judgment comes swiftly and mercy is incredibly rare, Jesus offers an acceptance and love that the world just does not understand. A love that sees all your crap, all your sin, your shame, and your failures, and still bears it willingly. Why? Because that is who he is.
In a world where one mistake can cost you everything, where people are written off and shouted down and cancelled for having the wrong opinion, Jesus offers something very different. He sees the worst in each and every one of us, and he doesn't walk away. He absorbs the pain, carries the shame, and offers something we can't earn and don't deserve — a clean slate. A new start. A restored connection with our Creator and Redeemer, the God who made us.
The Invitation
And so the question I have for you this morning is: what are you going to do about that? What are you going to do with that story?
You might be here and it's all kind of vaguely new to you. You're not sure what you believe, or even whether you believe anything at all. Or maybe you've been a Christian your whole life and it just gets a bit dull after a while — the whole spiritual thing loses its power. Or maybe you're completely unchurched and have never really known the Jesus thing, but there's something in you that wonders if this could be true.
I just want to say to you: don't ignore the feeling. Don't brush it off. Take time to ask questions, to wrestle with the story. Do so authentically and truthfully. Ask hard questions. He can take it. But at some point, you're going to have to decide — what are you going to do with this Jesus?
Because if this story is true — and millions of people today, billions actually, think it is, and it has changed the course of human history — it empowered those twelve disciples. After they saw Jesus die and they scattered, it empowered them to band together and go forward into the world and tell people about what had happened, to the point that they were willing to be sacrificed, brutally and horrifically murdered. Some of them boiled alive in oil. Others set alight and crucified upside down. Horrific stuff — because they genuinely believed the story was true.
And if it is true, then it's not just good advice. It's good news. It means that you are more flawed than you could ever dare imagine, but you're also more loved than you ever dared hope. And that kind of love is not just something to intellectually understand or think about and tick a box on. It's something to experience personally, through what we call the power of the Holy Spirit. I know that might sound a bit weird, especially if you're not really a church person, but the Holy Spirit is simply God's way of making his presence known to people today. And the cool thing is the Holy Spirit does not force himself upon you, but he does invite you to experience him for real.
So maybe there's an invitation here for you today — to consider, to open your hands, to open your heart, and to say, "All right, Jesus, if you really did this for me, help me see it. Help me to believe it. Help me to respond."
And this is not just for those who aren't really church people. This is even for those of us who have grown up in church and been around for donkey's years. Because this story of Barabbas is not just his story. It is our story too. Guilty, yet offered freedom.
As Paul said, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God — and yet while we are still sinners, Christ died for us.
So the question to leave you with this morning is: what are you going to do with this? You don't have it all worked out. Maybe not today. Maybe today is the day, however, that you just stop ignoring the nudge and start to ask some serious questions. Maybe you want to talk with someone. Maybe you want to pray with someone. We're going to have prayer available during the next part of our worship service. If you're too embarrassed to do it afterwards, just come and hang out at the front and someone will come and pray with you — and I guarantee they're not weird. They're really nice. Or you can just sit there quietly and say, "Jesus, if you're real, I want to know if that's true."
Because here's the thing: if this story is true, then it changes everything. Not just giving you a nice political thing or a nice moral compass to hang your hat on. It changes the very fabric of reality itself.