February 12
Mark 15: The Conqueror of Envy
Genesis 45; Mark 15; Job 11; Romans 15
Jesus’ sham trial before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish council, is over. Now they hand Jesus over to Pilate, the Roman governor. Pilate expresses pitch-perfect sarcasm and disdain when he asks, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus unsettlingly replies: “You have said so.”
Pilate is equally skeptical of the truthfulness of the Sanhedrin, so he gives Jesus another chance to speak. But this time Jesus is silent. After all, he had said to them all he needed to the night before (14:62). Isaiah 53:7 is fulfilled.
As a sign of Roman benevolence, it was Pilate’s custom to release a prisoner during the Passover. Pilate must play it straight, yet he cannot help but register his skepticism of Jesus’ guilt in how he announces him: “Do you want me to release for the King of the Jews?” He knows Jesus is innocent.
Furthermore, Pilate correctly observes just what is driving the entire affair, at least at the level of the fallen humans involved: “For he perceived that it was out of envy...” (10)
The Jewish leaders then prod the crowd, and the mob yells for Barabbas to be released, not Jesus. It was not difficult for the Jews to manipulate them this way. Barabbas was a violent insurrectionist, just the kind of fellow that they were looking for against Rome. So spineless, pragmatic Pilate, “wishing to satisfy the crowd,” delivers up Jesus to be crucified.
Now, this point in the narrative is a checkpoint for you and I, the readers. We moderns are tempted to huff and say, “If I were there, I would not have yelled with the crowd.” Yet the Bible’s stories are recorded a) because they happened, and b) for us to understand what stories we are living right now.
Every generation lives the passion narrative. We too are manipulated by many voices to treat Jesus strictly by human categories and to release ourselves from our tyrants strictly by human means. Behind these voices is an old dragon, who seeks to whip humanity into chaos driven by “mimetic envy” - Rene Girard’s term for how we imitate each others’ self-centered lusts. This produces chaos, as sin always does. If we break the first and tenth commandments, we will break the rest.
Then at the moment people start to ask, “Hey, where does all this envious chaos come from?”, the devil manipulates the crowd to satiate itself on a sacrificial lamb. The “problem” - for the dragon - is that this Sacrificial Lamb takes all our sin and guilt upon himself and replaces it with forgiveness and therefore peace with God. By his cross he absorbs all the energy for our envy and chaos, breaking the mimetic cycle.