McMurry S. Richey - "Pilate's Wash Basin and Christ's" (April 15, 1962)

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-	(static)	0:03
-	Even in our relaxed Protestantism	0:09
	sitting a bit loosely to seriousness of Lenten discipleship,	0:12
	our spring calendar marked perhaps,	0:18
	more heavily for holiday beach jaunts or	0:21
	somber midterms	0:25
	and looming deadlines.	0:27
	Even in our casualness,	0:30
	the glory of this music,	0:33
	and these words of scripture,	0:36
	and these fervent prayers,	0:38
	have brought us round the turn of calendar	0:41
	into decisive Holy Week.	0:44
	With it's poignant events,	0:47
	literally crucial	0:51
	for our Lord	0:54
	and our faith	0:56
	and our life.	0:58
	And in rounding that turn of gospel story,	1:01
	we may almost stumble	1:05
	over two hardly noticeable	1:07
	domestic items.	1:10
	Two wash basins,	1:13
	for the fresh water.	1:16
	Before stepping around them,	1:18
	let us see what they might mirror for us.	1:21
	Like so many commonplaces of scripture,	1:25
	they may be revelatory of our very existence,	1:28
	in it's depths,	1:32
	and in it's height.	1:34
	One of these wash basins is purely hypothetical	1:37
	I must admit.	1:40
	All we read is that Pilate	1:42
	took water and washed	1:44
	his hands before the crowd.	1:46
	As if by such dramatic gesture	1:49
	to proclaim his innocence of	1:51
	Jesus' ordeal and death.	1:53
	But surely we may suppose a basin for that water.	1:56
	And even a fine one	2:01
	for Roman pride.	2:04
	Unless indeed, we may suspect,	2:07
	with some scholars	2:10
	that that whole hand-washing story	2:12
	is not authentic.	2:17
	It may, some say,	2:19
	have grown out of the concern of the persecuted early church	2:22
	to absolve itself	2:27
	of apparent disloyalty to Rome,	2:29
	and therefore to shift the responsibility for the sentence	2:33
	of death from Pilate	2:38
	to the religious leaders.	2:41
	It may be that Pilate was even more responsible then,	2:44
	than appears.	2:50
	And we may ask what that means too.	2:53
	The early church had good reason also,	2:57
	to tell of another wash basin.	3:01
	The gospel of John	3:04
	want to emphasize the divine Sonship	3:05
	and exalted Lordship of Jesus.	3:09
	Makes its point also about his suffering servanthood,	3:13
	and about continuing discipleship in his following.	3:19
	Makes it all the more vividly in it's last supper story.	3:24
	Jesus,	3:30
	we read knowing that his hour was near,	3:31
	having loved his own who were in the world,	3:35
	loved them to the end.	3:38
	Even Judas.	3:41
	Whom he knew to be disloyal.	3:43
	So, Jesus, knowing that the father had given all things into	3:47
	his hands and that he had come from God and was going to	3:51
	God, rose from supper,	3:55
	laid aside his garments,	3:58
	and girded himself with a towel.	4:01
	Then he poured water into a basin, and began to wash the	4:03
	disciples feet, and to wipe them with a towel with which he	4:07
	was girded.	4:11
	Peter said to him, "You shall never wash my feet."	4:13
	Jesus answered, " If I do not wash you,	4:17
	you have no part in me."	4:20
	Simon, Peter said to him, "Lord, not my feet only,	4:23
	but also my hands and my head."	4:27
	When he had washed their feet, and taken his garments,	4:32
	and resumed his place, he said to them,	4:36
	"Do you know what I have done to you?	4:39
	You call me teacher and Lord.	4:42
	And you're right for, so I am.	4:46
	If I then, your Lord and teacher have washed your feet,	4:49
	you also ought to wash one another's feet,	4:53
	for I have given you an example that you also should do as I	4:57
	have done to you."	5:02
	Now let us see what these wash basins may mirror.	5:06
	One shows us Pilate	5:12
	in all his Panaflee of power.	5:14
	Procurator for mighty role.	5:18
	Surrounded with guards and soldiers, to maintain power,	5:20
	and enforce his will.	5:26
	Armed might he did not hesitate to use,	5:28
	against people he neither cared for nor understood.	5:33
	Indeed, his eventual removal, we know,	5:38
	came from	5:42
	a flagrant abuse	5:44
	of his power	5:48
	in suppressing a Samaritan religious uprising.	5:49
	In a world that understands naked power,	5:53
	Pilate had enforceable authority.	5:57
	It was he,	6:02
	who sentenced Jesus,	6:04
	to the cross,	6:07
	and sent his men to carry through the sentence.	6:09
	One cannot so cheaply absolve himself of responsibility,	6:12
	with that wash basin.	6:18
	Yet, in all his might,	6:21
	Pilate as we see him in that mirroring basin,	6:23
	is manifestly uneasy.	6:28
	Uneasy over confrontation	6:31
	with this regal person,	6:33
	in manifest innocence.	6:36
	Uneasy over his wife's ominous dream.	6:39
	Uneasy over the threats of the religious leaders.	6:44
	Uneasy over popular pressures.	6:49
	Uneasy over Rome's final check on his administration.	6:52
	Is such precarious might	6:58
	power after all?	7:02
	When it's maintained over people's fears,	7:06
	and when fear is engendered,	7:10
	even in the heart of the supposedly powerful,	7:12
	looking again into that mirroring basin,	7:17
	do we see not only Pilate,	7:22
	but all the people who were around that day.	7:25
	The worldly priests,	7:30
	the pious Pharisees,	7:32
	the common people,	7:36
	even the disciples,	7:38
	so eager for chief seats in the kingdom,	7:40
	disputing,	7:43
	over power.	7:45
	And is that my face too?	7:48
	And alongside it yours?	7:52
	And your next neighbors?	7:55
	Are we all cloaking fears	7:58
	beneath our coercive power and position?	8:00
	Uneasily hoping others will respect or even fear	8:05
	our authority	8:09
	or might?	8:11
	Let us look quickly at the other wash basin,	8:13
	for a different reflection.	8:16
	Jesus' basin mirrors him in servant role.	8:20
	Kneeling before his own disciples.	8:25
	Washing the dust of the road from their dirty feet.	8:29
	In contrast to Pilate's outward power,	8:34
	this appears abject weakness,	8:38
	or is this a greater, truer power after all?	8:43
	Evoking not others fears,	8:48
	but their allegiance and their love.	8:52
	Even leaving them free to love little,	8:56
	or impulsively,	9:01
	or waveringly,	9:03
	or unfaithfully.	9:05
	Even free, as they all eventually were,	9:08
	to betray,	9:12
	or desert,	9:14
	or deny,	9:16
	yet strong in the love of God.	9:18
	He loved them to the end, and trusted God to redeem them,	9:22
	for the continuance of his mission.	9:28
	In answer to his disciples arguments,	9:32
	disputes over position and preferment.	9:35
	He rebuked their Pagan notion that greatness	9:39
	lay in domination,	9:43
	and demonstrated not only with the wash basin and the towel,	9:46
	but with his whole life and death that loving service,	9:50
	is a highest calling.	9:55
	As for fear,	9:58
	is there fear in this seeming weakness?	10:01
	Do you see anything craven in the one who singly and	10:06
	indignantly purged the temple of its profiteers?	10:11
	Who repeatedly confuted scheming opponents,	10:16
	trying to trap him in controversy?	10:19
	Who made frontal attacks on those	10:24
	blind leaders of the blind?	10:26
	The religious leaders,	10:29
	more concerned for their tradition and their institution	10:30
	than for truth,	10:35
	and justice,	10:37
	and mercy,	10:38
	for the poor and needy?	10:39
	Who left himself exposed and unprotected while he	10:42
	persistently set his face forward to fulfill his serving	10:45
	mission?	10:50
	As Edwin Arlington Robinson has Nicodemus say to Caiaphas,	10:52
	"Not all Jerusalem, creeping in one skin,	10:58
	could make a monster for that man to fear."	11:01
	What greater power and courage can be found than that of	11:06
	self-giving, loving service	11:11
	mirrored in that wash basin and	11:14
	stretched eventually on that cross.	11:17
	If we look for other's faces in the mirror,	11:21
	while none appears at first,	11:26
	dimly we begin to see a train of men and women all down the	11:29
	centuries and even around us today,	11:33
	who having caught something of that vision,	11:36
	are involved in love and sacrificial service.	11:40
	If we look back again to Pilate's wash basin,	11:46
	we find,	11:51
	a curious show of virtue,	11:52
	masking pride,	11:56
	arrogance,	11:59
	and cruelty.	12:01
	Pilate seems concerned to be just.	12:03
	To avoid judgment on obviously innocent Jesus.	12:08
	He probes the accusers.	12:14
	He sends Jesus off to Herod.	12:16
	He offers to release Jesus or Barabbas.	12:20
	And according to the story, declares himself innocent of	12:25
	Jesus' blood with this hand washing scene.	12:29
	Yet, ancient testimony,	12:34
	underscores, the idea that Pilate was callous,	12:37
	and ruthless,	12:42
	corrupt,	12:44
	insolent,	12:45
	and salty,	12:46
	cruel,	12:48
	murdering people untried, and condemned,	12:50
	showing grievous inhumanity.	12:54
	What this man who was contemptuous of the Jews	12:59
	he dominated,	13:02
	obtuse and unsympathetic,	13:04
	apparently needed	13:07
	to appear right.	13:09
	Not only before Rome, but even before Judi ah.	13:12
	To hide his injustice	13:17
	in a show of justice.	13:21
	Yet if,	13:26
	as commentator chairman Johnson says,	13:27
	"While Pilate is most to blame for this sentence to	13:32
	crucifixion and would not have given it	13:38
	if he had been just and morally courageous,	13:41
	Jesus'	13:46
	condemnation is in fact a dra dramatic manifestation of the	13:47
	general sin of mankind."	13:51
	Continues Dr. Johnson,	13:54
	"Human beings continually acquiesce in slaying the innocent,	13:56
	to protect their own privileges,	14:02
	or to maintain what they think is the right social order,	14:05
	or because the forthrightness of profits offends	14:09
	their self-righteousness."	14:13
	I hope that you are not so uncomfortable as I am,	14:15
	over this identification, with Pilate.	14:20
	By contrast, the one who stooped over the basin to wash	14:26
	others' feet,	14:30
	had a virtue that needed to make no such claims.	14:32
	Why call me good?	14:37
	He protested when someone addressed him good master.	14:39
	There is none good but God.	14:43
	In humility,	14:47
	not pride.	14:49
	He rode a lowly donkey into the holy city,	14:51
	not a conqueror's charger.	14:55
	Blessed are the meek and the poor in spirit, he taught,	14:58
	and was content to be meek and lowly of heart.	15:03
	Yet this was not a false modesty,	15:08
	or lack of self-confidence,	15:11
	or inferiority feeling,	15:13
	rather a certainty and assurance,	15:16
	a security because God was all in all to him,	15:20
	and he needed no spurious self justification.	15:25
	This is a true humility.	15:31
	Pointing to God, not self,	15:33
	and strong in that ultimate trust.	15:36
	See that strong meekness,	15:41
	cowardly self-contradictory words,	15:45
	yet not.	15:47
	As Jesus stands before Pilate,	15:49
	and before priests,	15:53
	quiet,	15:55
	serene,	15:56
	possessed,	15:58
	not arrogant or boasting or cringing.	15:59
	Suffering indignity, humiliation, and pain,	16:03
	in the power of uncomplaining silence.	16:07
	Without self vindication, or threat of retaliation.	16:11
	But what a Regal aspect in that poise and self-possession.	16:17
	Confronted with such majesty and composure,	16:24
	a high priest loses his composure in maddened reaction.	16:29
	As one of the characters in Maxwell Anderson's family	16:37
	portrait puts it,	16:40
	"Everyone seemed on trial but Jesus."	16:42
	And so Pilate rightly,	16:48
	more rightly than he knew,	16:51
	had that sign put up on the cross.	16:53
	"This is a King of the Jews."	16:57
	What a tragic kingship.	17:02
	His crown cruel thorns, pressed down,	17:04
	his court with unjust trials,	17:09
	his retinue hardened, mocking guards,	17:13
	his royal robe lent him in mockery and taken back,	17:18
	his own tunic gambled for beneath the cross,	17:22
	his title that ironic sign,	17:26
	his throne the cross itself.	17:31
	There is something spiritally authentic in the words of	17:35
	the old spiritual, "He never said a mumbling word."	17:39
	Yet, there were words to come down the centuries,	17:45
	from this serving Lord who took a basin,	17:50
	and a towel, and water, for other's sake.	17:54
	And this week we ponder some of those words.	17:58
	If we look back now to that other basin,	18:04
	one last time for our picture of Pilate,	18:07
	we see his callousness, injustice, and unconcern,	18:11
	summed up in one basic trait of irresponsibility.	18:17
	He was threatened, to be sure, by others' pressures and	18:25
	responsive to those.	18:28
	But he was cowardly, for all his power,	18:31
	and afraid of involvement, of the cost of discerning an	18:35
	appropriate response to the high claim upon him.	18:40
	What disturbs me, is that whether Pilate actually used	18:46
	that water and wash basin or not,	18:52
	to declare himself no longer responsible or involved,	18:56
	we do.	19:02
	That basin may be our symbol,	19:04
	with our limited laws, our measured giving,	19:08
	our withdrawal from deep involvement in the suffering	19:13
	and injustice of our world,	19:17
	our blindness,	19:21
	our sin.	19:23
	I don't need to cite your cases,	19:25
	confess your own, as I do mine.	19:28
	But that other basin,	19:33
	symbolizes another way that both	19:36
	grudgingly exposes ours	19:40
	and generously redeems.	19:43
	In Jesus we see the essence of responsibility,	19:47
	with concerned awareness, and costing love,	19:52
	courageous identification with the unloved.	19:57
	In Jesus' own acknowledgement of his mission in	20:02
	hometown synagogue of Nazareth.	20:04
	Quoting those words from Isaiah we read,	20:07
	"The spirit of the Lord is upon me,	20:11
	because he has appointed me to preach good news to the poor.	20:14
	He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives,	20:19
	and recovering of sight to the blind.	20:24
	To set at liberty those who are oppressed,	20:27
	to proclaim the acceptable year of	20:30
	the Lord."	20:33
	And Edward Markham's quatrain of a generation ago,	20:36
	"Why does he make our hearts so strangely still?	20:41
	Why stands he forth so stately and so tall?	20:46
	Because he has no self to serve,	20:51
	no will that does not seek the welfare of the all."	20:56
	We need no further concrete reminders this morning,	21:02
	of the instances of such responsible love and help,	21:07
	they fill the gospels on almost every page.	21:12
	Indeed we might even be trying to escape our responsibility,	21:17
	by ta talking too much about his.	21:23
	For our preaching and our theology and our churchmanship,	21:28
	and our sentimentalizing over Jesus may,	21:33
	become the subtlest ways yet,	21:37
	of dodging responsibility while like Pilate,	21:41
	making a good show of concern.	21:45
	Jesus had a curt word for such a sentimentalist trying to	21:49
	inflate her own ego by	21:54
	effused blessing of Jesus and his associates.	21:57
	You remember how he turned and said,	22:03
	"Blessed are those who hear the word of God and do it."	22:05
	The symbolic story we read in the gospel of John puts all	22:13
	this in another way and speaks not only to those,	22:17
	but our present band of disciples.	22:22
	Knowing their weaknesses,	22:28
	and Judas' eminent betrayal,	22:32
	Jesus, we are told, loved them to the end.	22:36
	And Peter, like us,	22:42
	preferring a strong rather than abject Lord,	22:44
	is at first offended by Jesus' servile	22:49
	action.	22:54
	"You shall never wash my feet", he protests,	22:56
	but Jesus answers in words that undoubtedly the author	23:01
	means to symbolize the bringing of the disciples into the	23:04
	full fellowship of the church and the continuing mission of	23:10
	Jesus.	23:15
	"If I do not wash you, you have no part in me."	23:16
	And again, "If I, then your Lord and teacher	23:22
	have washed your feet,	23:25
	you also ought to wash one another's feet,	23:27
	for I have given you an example that you also should do as I	23:31
	have done to you."	23:35
	In other words,	23:38
	we disciples need our Lord's cleansing,	23:41
	and then involvement in his serving mission.	23:46
	Recent writer in the Christian Sensory, Ronald Osborne,	23:52
	speaks about how the churches go on singing,	23:57
	"A mighty fortress is our God,	23:59
	stand up, stand up for Jesus,	24:02
	soldiers of the cross arise."	24:04
	Yet have no real sense of conflict,	24:07
	with the culture around,	24:11
	are not at war with any evil.	24:14
	"What troubles of thoughtful," he says, "is an uneasiness	24:18
	concerning the church's lack of relevance,	24:22
	it's tendency toward accommodation,	24:24
	it's preoccupation with it's own housekeeping,	24:27
	the widespread acceptance it enjoys	24:31
	without creating any disturbance.	24:34
	Our real battle," he continues,	24:37
	"is an inner struggle to recover the authentic	24:40
	Christian message and witness.	24:43
	To recover the power of the gospel to challenge,	24:46
	rebuke, and redeem our accepted ways of doing and thinking,	24:50
	and the power of the faith	24:55
	to transform the experience of men,	24:56
	to regenerate the life of the church,	24:59
	and to release forces of renewal into the common life of	25:02
	society."	25:06
	Not long ago on the city bus,	25:09
	I passed a church with a sign outside,	25:12
	church of a heavenly rest.	25:16
	Not yet.	25:21
	Not yet.	25:23
	This is a church of earthly struggle.	25:25
	A responsible mission in a secular world,	25:28
	wrestling with sin and self,	25:32
	serving, agonizing,	25:35
	the church of the wash basin,	25:38
	the water,	25:40
	the towel,	25:42
	and the cross.	25:44
	The essential question on this Palm Sunday is,	25:46
	taking both these symbolic wash basins,	25:50
	which exerts it's claim on you,	25:56
	and on me?	26:01
	Let us pray.	26:04
	(silence)	26:06
	Oh God, Our Father,	26:14
	who has laid Jesus Christ and his mission upon our hearts,	26:15
	enable us to repent of our sins,	26:21
	to be caught up into his service,	26:25
	and to make a vie church,	26:29
	a true servant of mankind,	26:31
	and of thee.	26:34
	And now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,	26:36
	The love of God,	26:40
	the communion of his holy spirit be with you all.	26:42

Item Info

Title:

McMurry S. Richey - "Pilate's Wash Basin and Christ's" (April 15, 1962)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4nz84r62

Date:

April 15, 1962

Speaker:

Richey, McMurry S.

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Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0177
ref5558_o20
uachapelsermaud
duke:628592
dcrau002190
ark:/87924/r4nz84r62
fdd0e893-c6af-48da-8f11-b5979cbe64af

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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McMurry S. Richey - "Pilate's Wash Basin and Christ's" (April 15, 1962)

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1. McMurry S. Richey - "Pilate's Wash Basin" (April 15, 1962)

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McMurry S. Richey - "Pilate's Wash Basin and Christ's" (April 15, 1962)

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