Saved from what?

Four things you’re gonna notice about every religion in the world:

• They try to explain who God is, and what he’s like: Caring nurturer, or wrathful disciplinarian? Disconnected first cause, or deterministic micromanager? The sum total of everything in the universe, or totally removed from everything? The object of all our faith and devotion, or not relevant? The only thing that’s real, or doesn’t even exist? Where does he fit between these extremes?—or is he paradoxically both?
• They try to explain what happens after we die: Afterlife, new life, another life, or annihilation?
• Morality: How ought humans live?—in light of who God is, or in light of what happens after we die.
• How ought we compensate our clergy for all the valuable insights they’ve given us? Money? Free stuff? Sex?

Yeah, that fourth thing is a bit cynical, but the issue is there, y’know. Even in the benign religions.

But why do people pursue religions in the first place? Simple: It’s salvation. They wanna get saved.

Saved from what? Well, that varies.

Yeah, my fellow Christians are gonna tell you we need to be saved from sin and death. As will I, ’cause we do. That is what Christ Jesus offers. But it’s not necessarily what people are thinking of when they first look into Christianity. Or look into any other religion: Buddhism, Islam, Wicca, Mammonism. Or, because they don’t wanna be told what to believe, cobble together their own belief system so they can be “spiritual not religious.”

Most want to be saved from their circumstances. Their lives suck. They’re addicted to alcohol, food, sex, or narcotics; their relationships are out of control; their finances are insane. Some live in awful countries, with warlords who threaten their livelihoods and lives. And even when all those things are fine, there’s something in ’em which is just dissatisfied with life, and they can’t put their finger on it. So they figure God has the answer. Since this desire is so common, you’ll notice most Christian evangelists talk about being saved from this instead of sin and death. (Hey, a lousy life is no doubt the result of sin, right?) Turn to God and he’ll get your life right, and give you peace no matter what’s going on.

Many of ’em are looking to be saved from doubt. They wanna know why the universe works the way it does: Why do bad things happen to good people? They wanna know who or what God is. They wanna know what happens after death—not because they’re worried about death itself, for they figure whatever happens, happens. It just bugs ’em they don’t have simple answers to these questions. Or at least answers they’re comfortable with.

Many want to be saved from worry. Because they are worried about death: They don’t wanna cease to exist, or don’t wanna find themselves in a black cavernous chaotic nothingness, or are afraid of finding themselves in hell, and worry hell’s gonna look like the very worst horror movies. And again, many Christian evangelists zero in on these fears, and preach almost exclusively about getting saved from hellfire.

But back to sin and death.

Christianity focuses only on Jesus saving us from sin and death. Yeah, he could save us from circumstances, worries, and doubts too. And maybe he will. But what he’ll definitely do is save us from sin and death.

Oh you want proof texts? Yeah, let’s do proof texts. Sin first:

Matthew 1.21 KJV

And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.

 

1 Corinthians 15.3 KJV

For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;

 

1 Timothy 1.15 KJV

This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.

Now death.

Luke 9.56 KJV

For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. And they went to another village.

 

John 3.16 KJV

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

 

John 10.28 KJV

And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.

 

1 Corinthians 15.22 KJV

For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

The two are of course related. Sin produces death. Ro 3.23 We sin; it gradually but definitely kills us. And others: Humans murder innocent people, like infants and fetuses, all the time. One human pollutes and another gets poisoned; one human cuts corners and another gets killed from shoddy craftsmanship. Jesus is a perfect example of a totally innocent victim: He never sinned, so his own sins didn’t kill him. But the Judeans’ and Romans’ sins absolutely did—and by extension humanity’s sins did too, ’cause Jesus would never have to come into the world to show us the Father Jn 1.18 if our sins didn’t distort our ideas of God so very much.

Jesus’s solution to the problem is not to merely give us a nice afterlife. It’s the kingdom of God—in which he’s the king. It’s to transform us through his Holy Spirit so we can be citizens of this kingdom. It’s to follow him by behaving as citizens of this kingdom; to do as he teaches. And if we’re pursuing God’s kingdom, our circumstances and worries and doubts tend to sort themselves out:

Matthew 6.33 KJV

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

“These things” being the worries of food and clothing—petty worries for the middle class, but serious needs for the impoverished people to whom Jesus preached. No, Jesus isn’t blowing off our serious needs, and telling us, “Forget about that; concentrate just on being religious.” He’s trying to restructure our priorities correctly. Most of our other worries are likewise the product of sin. So let’s root out the underlying cancer first. And Jesus is here to help.

The Mizpah covenant.

Genesis 31.48-49.

When I was a kid, and people hadn’t yet figured out how to use the internet for shopping, my family got the Sears catalog. Basically it was a 500-page, full-color, softcover book. It’d contain every single thing Sears sold—particularly stuff you couldn’t find in its stores, but thanks to the catalog you could order it by phone. Then wait 4 weeks for it to be delivered. Yep, a month. Sometimes longer. (Anyone who’s nostalgic for “the good old days” is a moron.)

A typical mizpah coin.

When bored I’d browse the things. Usually the toys. But next to the toy section was the jewelry section, and among the baubles Sears offered were mizpah coins. Maybe you’ve seen them too… or maybe half of one. They’re meant for couples. The coin is split in two, and one partner gets one half, the other t’other. You have to put them together to read the entire verse:

Genesis 31.48-49 KJV

48 And Laban said, This heap is a witness between me and thee this day. Therefore was the name of it called Galeed; 49 and Mizpah; for he said, The LORD watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another.

Aww, how romantic. May God watch over us when we’re apart.

Except in context, it’s not at all romantic. Laban and Jacob didn’t make a pile of stones and swear this oath because they were gonna miss one another, and want each other to be safe. It was because they didn’t trust one another. For good reason: Both those guys were lying, scheming weasels.

If you have the context of this verse in mind, giving it to your significant other kinda means you don’t trust your significant other. Which is why you gotta invoke the LORD. He’s gotta watch over your partner, because for all you know, your partner’s banging their way through every bar in the state. And, like Jacob or Laban, totally lying to you about everything, and they have no idea why it burns when you urinate. Probably something you did.

The funny thing about most people is it often doesn’t matter if they know the context: They’ll still totally quote it out of context anyway. I’ve known preachers who taught, in great detail, on the seriously dysfunctional relationships Jacob had with his family. They know all about why Laban and Jacob made their mizpah pile. And yet they and their spouses wear mizpah coins… because that’s not what they mean with their mizpah coins. Well if that’s not what you mean, stop referencing bible!

But enough ranting. Let’s get to the actual context.

Untrustworthy men; totally trustworthy God.

Jacob is the second son of Isaac ben Abraham, whom the LORD later renamed Israel. Yep, the Israelis are descended from him; the 13 tribes are named for his 11 sons and two grandsons. He’s kind of a big deal.

Customarily the eldest son would inherit the patriarchy from his father, but Genesis tells two stories of Jacob scheming to get the birthright away from his slightly-elder twin brother Esau. First he traded Esau lentil stew for his birthright. Ge 25.29-34 Next—and far less honestly—Jacob disguised himself as Esau so his near-blind father would grant him Esau’s irrevocable birthright-type blessing. Ge 27 This pissed Esau off to the point he meant to murder Jacob, and to keep him alive, Jacob’s mother got her husband to send Jacob to her family in Paddán-Arám, ostensibly to find a Hebrew wife. (Esau had two Canaanite wives, and the family did not get along with ’em.)

In Paddán-Arám, Jacob fell immediately, and hard, for his first cousin Rachel bat Laban. (Eww.) He had no wealth to speak of, so Laban got him to agree to seven years of labor in exchange for Rachel. A typical dowry in the ancient middle east was 30 sheqels of silver, and a typical labor was a sheqel a month, so properly that’s about four years of labor, not seven; but Jacob was too lovestruck to haggle. But then Laban swapped out Rachel for his other daughter Leah on their wedding night, and by the time Jacob discovered the switch it was too late; they’d had sex, so they were married. If Jacob wanted Rachel as a second wife, it was gonna cost him another seven years. Laban got 14 years labor out of Jacob; 10 years more than Jacob should’ve reasonably expected. Ge 29 Obviously Jacob met a superior con artist.

After that, Jacob worked for wages. Which Laban kept changing; likely decreasing, ’cause “expenses.” So Jacob came up with a scheme where he finally came out ahead: Laban gave him all the striped and speckled goats, and the brown sheep, as wages. Jacob did some weird folk-medicine thing with sticks which got his own animals to breed more. Ge 30 Once Laban’s sons objected that Jacob was getting too prosperous, the LORD informed Jacob that maybe now was the time to go back to Canaan. So he did… but because he didn’t inform Laban, much less get his permission as his patriarch, Laban came after him. Ge 31 After all, Laban’s attitude was, “These daughters are my daughters, and these children are my children, and these cattle are my cattle, and all that thou seest is mine.” Ge 31.43 KJV He didn’t see Jacob as his nephew or son-in-law; just a subject he could exploit.

But the LORD told Laban to leave Jacob be, Ge 31.24 and Laban did heed the LORD, if no one else. He wouldn’t just leave Jacob alone though; he wanted a covenant which stipulated Jacob would care for his daughters, and marry no one else, Ge 31.50 and that neither would invade or attack the other. Ge 31.52 They put up memorial stones, offered a sacrifice, ate together, and that was that.

Laban called the stones יְגַר שַׂהֲדוּתָא/yegár šahadúta, Aramaic for “witness pile [of rocks],” and by Jacob גַּלְעֵד/galéd, Hebrew for the very same thing—“witness pile.” The word מִצְפָּה/michpá (KJV “Mizpah”), “watchtower,” is another thing the place is called, from Laban’s oath, “The LORD watch between me and thee.” Ge 31.49 There’s where we get the name for those broken coins—and no, nobody breaks a coin in half anywhere in the Jacob/Laban story. Not even in Jewish mythology.

There’s the context. Using Mizpah as a name for cemeteries, for jewelry, for oaths or any other promises to stay together, with the LORD watching over us to keep us safe: It has nothing to do with Jacob and Laban’s relationship. That’s about a control-freak father-in-law wanting some form of petty victory when it turned out he wasn’t getting his way that day. And I would hope our romantic relationships aren’t as messed up as Jacob and Laban’s relationship; yikes.

The opposite of love.

When Christians talk about love, naturally we’re gonna bring up the subject of the opposite of love.

But on this subject, we’re not entirely agreed. The scriptures contrast a lot of things with love. Obviously hate.

Ecclesiastes 3.8 KJV

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

 

Amos 5.15 KJV

Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that the LORD God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph.

 

Malachi 1.2-3 KJV

2 I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob, 3 and I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.

 

Matthew 5.43 KJV

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

 

Luke 16.13 KJV

No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

Here’s where teachers like me are obligated to point out when middle easterners contrast love with hate, they don’t always literally mean hate. Frequently they just mean “don't love as much as the other person or thing.” When the LORD said he loves Jacob but hates Esau, Ro 9.13 no he doesn’t hate-hate Esau, but favors Jacob more. He chose Jacob, and passed over Esau. The LORD still blessed Esau, made a nation out of him, even had close relationships with Edomites like Job; his “hatred” still looks a whole lot like great and gracious love! But the LORD had much greater expectations on Jacob and the Israelites, and offered ’em particular blessings as a result. Plus Jesus was born an Israelite.

Other Christians take note of this particular verse in 1 John—

1 John 4.18 NKJV

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.

—and conclude, not wrongly, that fear and love kinda oppose one another. And no, this idea isn’t only found in only one verse; Paul kinda hinted at it in a letter to Timothy:

2 Timothy 1.7 KJV

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

Hence Christians take this idea and really pound it into the ground. When other Christians state love and hate are opposite, these know-it-alls love to point out, “Actually no; it’s love versus fear.” And sometimes quote the proof text. And sometimes talk about their personal experiences which prove love and fear are opposite.

Yeah, you probably guessed I have an alternative answer. And if you ever studied logic, you already know what it is. The exact opposite of love, is not-love. The absence of love. It’s when love simply isn’t there. We don’t have it.

The absence of love can look like all sorts of things, including hate and fear. And selfishness, callousness, anger, violence; y’might think up a few more. But it doesn’t have to look like anything. If love simply isn’t there, it won’t really look like anything anyway. Pick any inanimate object, like a pencil on your table: Does it love? Only if you imagine really hard that it has a soul, and thoughts, and feelings; that it loves to draw, and hates getting sharpened. Which is all projection, of course.

Likewise a rock doesn’t love. A chair doesn’t love. Statues don’t; dollar bills don’t. Even “smart” objects don’t: Your phone doesn’t love, your car doesn’t love, your Roomba doesn’t love. Even when you program these things to tell you so, or get ’em to do things that our fellow humans do to demonstrate love, we recognize love’s gotta have an intelligence behind it. Artificial intelligence ain’t there yet.

So when a human lacks love, that person’s not necessarily gonna look hostile, negative, or dangerous. At our most benign, humans are gonna look as inert as a pencil. They won’t love you… and won’t hate you either. Won’t anything. You’re not a factor in their considerations. That’s all.

If you want a one-word synonym for not-love, the best I can think of would be apathy. But apathy implies they know about you, yet don’t love you; more often they don’t know about you, or simply haven’t thought of you. Or it hasn’t crossed their mind to love you: Point this out to them, and they might! Point is, not-love is even more nonmalignant than apathy. No harm’s meant. No offense.

But not-love still creates problems.

Yep, not-love is in the bible.

First time I explained to a youth group how the opposite of love is not-love, one of the kids objected, “But love versus fear is in the bible, and your thing isn’t in the bible.” Ah, but it is. People quote it all the time, too:

1 Corinthians 13.1-3 NKJV

1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.

When we act without love, even when we supernaturally act without love, we’re irrelevant, we’re useless, we accomplish nothing, and we’re being jerks.

I’ve seen it firsthand aplenty. When people are working in a ministry, but have no love for the people they’re ministering to, they become massive jerks. They exhibit no patience, no kindness; it’s just “Move it along; I’ve got lots of people to serve and you’re holding me up.” It’s not about people; it’s just numbers. It’s not about getting people to appreciate, or get interested in, God’s kingdom; it’s about all the jewels you were told you’d get in your crown at the End. It’s all about racking up good karma for Jesus, not loving your neighbor… and it shows. And it sucks.

To those being “ministered to,” who get herded like cattle instead of helped and loved: They were expecting love. They got brusqueness, impatience, sarcasm, and mockery. Sure felt like hatred.

’Cause when love is absent, everything else, especially all the negative, self-centered, fleshly stuff, is still there. There’s no love to mitigate, nullify, or take the place of those things. People really feel the difference. It’s why Christians are meant to be identified as Christ-followers by, at the very least, our love for one another. Jn 13.35 But we suck at demonstrating that, and people definitely remember Christians who weren’t quite so loving to them.

Doing the opposite of hate and fear doesn’t count.

I’ve heard many a Christian claim they do so love their neighbors… because they certainly don’t hate them. See, if hatred and love are opposites, they figure if they lack hate, by default they gotta have love. And other Christians try the very same thing with fear: They’re not afraid, so it must be love, right?

Back to logic: The opposite of hate is not-hate. The opposite of fear is not-fear. An inanimate object doesn’t hate, doesn’t fear; it’s inert. And while it’s good that we don’t hate and fear others, simply not hating and not fearing makes us just as inert as a boulder on the ground. Once again, we have apathy. Which, I remind you, is just a blank slate… one where our fleshly works are all the more obvious.

Okay, you’re not doing evil! But we still gotta do good. Do something.

And love actually does stuff. Love has patience, behaves kindly; doesn’t act with uncontrolled emotion, point out how great it is, inflate itself, ignore others’ considerations, provoke ill behavior, plot evil, delight in wrongdoing, etcetera. 1Co 13.4-5 The apostles defined love with lots of verbs, describing what it does, and describing what we oughta do. We don’t just love by default when we don’t hate and don’t fear: We gotta do love. Put some effort into it!

Love one another. Love your neighbor. Love your enemies. Love everybody, basically; same as God loves the world. Jn 3.16 It’s a big job, so start small. But get started.

Memorized any good prayers lately?

ROTE PRAYER roʊt pr(eɪ)ər noun. A prayer we’ve memorized.

How’d you learn your phone number?

Assuming you have; lots of us just trust our phones to remember ’em for us. When I first got my phone number, anytime someone asked for it, I had to look it up. Eventually I got what I thought was a good idea: Convert it to letters! If I couldn’t remember 268-3276, I could sure as heck remember ANT-FARM. (Which is not my actual number; I use it as an example.) Problem is, whenever you sign up for the Starbucks app and tell ’em your phone number is ANT-FARM, they object and demand digits, so now you gotta go through the mental process of “Okay, A is 1…” ’cause you forgot no phone numbers start with 1, ’cause in the early days of telephones they saved 1 for long distance numbers. But here I am digressing again.

A blessed few of us have really good memories, and don’t have to resort to silly mental tricks to get phone numbers in our brains. Most of us just go with blunt-force rote memorization: We recite the number over and over and over and OVER till it’s embedded in our memory like a shank in a prison snitch. (Awful simile, but you’ll remember it, won’tcha?)

Okay, so how’d you learn to pray?

Assuming you have; many don’t. As for those Christians who do, many of us resort to rote prayers. We learned ’em when we were kids, or we say them so often in church they just kinda stuck in our minds. We learned them by repeating them till they stuck. And when it comes time to pray, that’s what we pray. Like the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father who art in heaven…” and so forth. And it’s totally okay to pray such things, ’cause Jesus said so. “When you pray, say this.” Lk 11.2

Lots of us Christians do rote prayer… and lots of us Christians refuse to do rote prayer. ’Cause they got it into their heads rote prayer isn’t authentic prayer. “The only real prayer,” such people insist, “is extemporaneous prayer: Use your own words, speak from your heart, and say it to God. Don’t use somebody else’s words. Those aren’t your words. God wants to hear your words.”

Yes he does. But that’s not why we pray rote prayers.

It’s a submission thing. (Unless you’re not into that.)

The first time I heard somebody rant against rote prayer, she was basically mocking mainline churches. She grew up a mainliner, left ’em to become Fundamentalist, and had become one of those conspiracy-theory Fundies who think every church but hers is devilish. She didn’t wanna legitimize anything they did as worship. Rote prayer especially.

To her mind, the reason people pray rote prayers isn’t to learn from the prayers of Jesus or other Christians; isn’t to learn to pray, isn’t to conform our will to that of others. Rote prayers are entirely so you can pretend to pray. They’re not really prayer; they’re just some holy-sounding words you can recite but not truly mean. Just say your lines, feign prayer, and it’ll count as prayer, and you’ll be holy for going through the motions. It’s pure hypocrisy.

“That,” she’d explain, “is what mainliners do instead of worship.” It’s all dead religion. And it’s not just mainliners; Catholics and Orthodox and Episcopalians and most of the other churches do it too. They’re all hypocrites and going to hell.

Her teaching didn’t set right with me. ’Cause the Lord’s Prayer. It’s a rote prayer, y’know. One we were taught in Sunday school, ’cause Jesus taught it. One we were taught to recite. And taught, correctly, that it’s so we can learn to pray; and when we pray it we need to mean it. And once we apply that instruction to every rote prayer, we realize the whole point of rote prayer.

When we pray rote prayers properly, what we actually do is conform our will to those prayers. Yeah, they’re someone else’s words. But for it to be an authentic prayer, and not hypocrisy, we gotta mean their words. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we have to mean Jesus’s words. When we pray one of King David’s prayers out of Psalms, we have to mean his words. When we pray some other Christian’s prayers out of a hymnal or prayer book, we oughta mean their words. When we sing a hymn or worship song in church, we oughta mean those words. It’s all the same practice.

If we can’t say them and mean them, don’t say them! We should at the very least try to mean them; try to wrap our brains around ’em, understand what they mean, and believe what they say. (And ask the Holy Spirit for help when necessary.) Either way, strive for authenticity. Be real with God. Say it and mean it.

If you asked that anti-mainliner what she believed about the Lord’s Prayer, it’s entirely likely she’d say all the same things I just said. All the same things the Sunday school teachers taught. When you recite it, mean it. She wasn’t merely repeating it mindlessly, nor using it to pretend to pray. But good luck convincing her other churches pray it the same way she does. Some people simply can’t see beyond their prejudices.

The power of rote prayers.

When we recite a rote prayer, and mean it (’cause don’t bother to recite it otherwise), they’re extremely powerful.

When Jesus taught us to pray, “Hallowed be thy name” and so forth, Lk 11.2 KJV it’s because that’s his will. That’s God’s will. Jesus told us to pray God would honor his name, make his kingdom come, have his will done, and give us daily bread and forgiveness and grace from testing. And God wants to honor his name, make his kingdom come, have his will done, and give us stuff. We’re conforming and submitting to God’s will. We’re learning to think like God does.

Often we’ll get to the part of “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,” Mt 6.12 and to be honest forgiveness is a tricky one. Some of us haven’t forgiven our debtors. We still have grudges. We’re still annoyed at fellow Christians. And neighbors, and especially enemies. We know we need to forgive; Jesus told us to; we just aren’t there yet. Some of us are trying to get there, and some aren’t. When we pray it and don’t mean it, we come under conviction: “Oh yeah; Jesus wants me to forgive.” Ideally it spurs us to work on this.

True, some Christians will just recite the words and work on nothing, ’cause to them the Lord’s Prayer is dead religion. The rest of us will submit to them, because to us the Lord’s Prayer is living religion.

Same with other rote prayers: We conform our own will to the words. It’s powerful stuff. When we’re just talking with God, casually or formally, it might never occur to us in mid-prayer, “I forgot this” or “I should do that” or “God wants me to pray for these things.” He might remind us to—if we’re listening to him, and sometimes we’re not. Just like sometimes we aren’t really listening to the rote prayers. But again: When we do, when we conform to what we’re praying, it’s powerful stuff.

It’s why the very last thing we wanna do is recite rote prayers mindlessly. That’s a mockery of faith. But the heartfelt, mindful, meant rote prayer is an act of surrendering our very thoughts and words—our all—to God.

Yeah, we can pray extemporaneously, for all the stuff we wanna talk to God about. Go ahead and do that too. But Jesus doesn’t want us to forget the stuff in his prayer. His prayer reflects God’s heart. Our off-the-cuff prayers reflect our hearts—which need work. If we pray nothing but the extemporaneous stuff, we shouldn’t expect to see a lot of heart-repair done too quickly. On the other hand if we do pray the Lord’s Prayer…

And same with other rote prayers. Most of the more popular prayers are a bunch of bible quotes. Some are wholly taken from the scriptures. So when we pray them, we’re likewise praying for stuff God already wants us to pray. Doesn’t it make sense to pray for things we already know God wants us to have and think?

“But they’re someone else’s words.” Relax; this isn’t plagiarism. God is fully aware we didn’t compose these prayers. But when they express how we feel, or says the very same things we wanna tell God, it’s totally fine with him if that’s what we pray. And totally fine with our fellow Christians: We have a long history of rote prayers. The Psalms are rote prayers, y’know.

Put a few of ’em into your brain and start praying them.

The crowd shouts for Barabbas.

Mark 15.6-11, Matthew 27.15-21, Luke 23.17-25, John 18.39-40.

We actually have nothing in the Roman records about this custom the Roman governors had of releasing a prisoner every Passover. Doesn’t mean they didn’t do it; just means they kept it off the books. Which is understandable. Fleshly people tend to think of mercy and forgiveness as weakness, not strength; of compassion and generosity as something that other people will take advantage of, not benevolence. “If you give a mouse a cookie” and all that.

Anyway we have four historical records which indicate the Romans totally did free a prisoner every Passover: The gospels. Apparently Pontius Pilate had on hand an guy named Jesus bar Avvá, who’d been arrested during “the riot.” We don’t know which riot, and Christians like to speculate it was one of the more famous ones, but it had to have been fairly recent: Romans didn’t keep people in prison for long. They either held them for trial, flogged and released them, or crucified them.

Pontius wanted to free Jesus. But, probably ’cause Jesus is totally guilty of calling himself Messiah, Pontius didn’t wanna free him on his own authority. It might get back to Caesar Tiberius that he freed a self-proclaimed king. So he wanted an excuse, or to pass the buck to Herod. Likely that’s why he went with the whole free-a-convict-for-Passover thing: “Hey, why not Jesus?”

Well because they didn’t want Jesus; or at least that was the sentiment of the crowd the head priests brought in. Pontius gave them the option of Jesus the Nazarene, or Jesus bar Avvá. They went with bar-Avvá.

Mark 15.6-11 KWL

6 During the feast Pilatus would release one prisoner to them; whomever they asked.

7 There was one called bar-Avvá among the insurrectionists, imprisoned during the riot for committing murder.

8 Rising up, the crowd began to ask, as usual, for Pilatus to do for them.

9 In reply Pilatus told them, “You want me to free for you ‘the Judean king’?”

10 —knowing the head priests turned Jesus in out of envy.

11 The head priests incited the crowd to instead ask that bar-Avvá might be released to them.

 

Matthew 27.15-21 KWL

15 During the feast the prefect was accustomed to release one prisoner to them; whomever they wanted.

16 He then had a famous prisoner, called Jesus bar Avvá.

17 So Pilatus told the people who’d gathered for him, “Whom do you want me to release to you?—Jesus bar Avvá, or Jesus called Messiah?”

18 —knowing the head priests turned Jesus in out of envy.

19 (As he was sitting on the dais, his wife sent him a message:

“Keep away from that righteous man, for I saw many things in a dream about him.”)

20 The head priests and elders convinced the crowd to ask for bar-Avvá, and for Jesus’s destruction.

21 In reply the prefect told them, “Whom of the two do you want me to release to you?” They said, “Bar-Avvá.”

 

Luke 23.17-25 KWL

17 [He had to release one prisoner to them during the feast.]

18 The Judeans shouted out together, “Take this man away and release bar-Avvá to us!”

19 Bar-Avvá was thrown into prison because of a certain riot in the city, and murder.

20 Pilatus addressed them again, wanting to release Jesus,

21 and the crowd shouted back, saying, “Crucify! Crucify him!”

22 Pilatus told them thrice, “Why? Did this man do evil?

Nothing worth death was done by him. So I will punish and release him.”

23 The crowd insisted with loud voices, calling for Jesus to be crucified, and their voices prevailed.

24 Pilatus sentenced Jesus to have done as the crowd requested.

25 He released the one they requested, who was thrown into prison for riot and murder,

and Jesus was surrendered to the people’s will.

 

John 18.39-40 KWL

39 It’s your custom that one prisoner might be released to you on Passover,

so do you want me to release to you ‘the Judean king’?”

40 So they shouted again, saying, “Not him, but bar-Avvá!” (Bar-Avvá was a looter.)

Who’s bar-Avvá?

The gospels don’t give us much on who bar-Avvá is, mainly because they don’t really care.

The word in our bibles is Βαραββᾶς/Varavvás (KJV “Barabbas”), which is a transliteration of the Aramaic בַּר אַבה/bar Avvá, “son of Avvá.” Yes, Avvá was a proper Hebrew name back then, but loads of Christians like to make much of the fact the word also means “father,” and therefore “bar-Avvá” literally means “son of a father.” And hey, isn’t Jesus’s dad our heavenly Father? What an interesting contrast! But nah, it’s not all that interesting.

In some copies of Matthew, bar-Avvá’s given name is Jesus. Mt 16.18 NIV True, “Jesus” isn’t in the earliest copies of Matthew, and the earliest reference is the Codex Vaticanus, written in the early 300s. The reason it was probably dropped from those early copies is because the New Testament copyists tried to avoid referring to anybody other than Christ Jesus as “Jesus.” But tradition preserved bar-Avvá’s given name—and again there’s that interesting contrast between the two Jesuses. One’s a murderer; the other offers to save everyone from death. Jn 3.16

Bar-Avvá was arrested during a recent riot, for murder Mk 15.7 and looting. Jn 18.40 He was imprisoned among the insurrectionists, and that’s led various people to jump to the conclusion he was an insurrectionist; possibly one of the nativists who called themselves “Canaanites,” Mk 3.18, Mt 10.4 KJV or in Greek ζηλωτής/zilotís, “Zealots,” Lk 6.15, Ac 1.13 who wanted the Romans gone, and were willing to kill to get it. Bar-Avvá did commit murder after all; maybe he murdered a Roman.

But likely not. Pontius wouldn’t have suggested his name, or even considered him a possibility, if bar-Avvá murdered a Roman. He’d have been crucified the same day. More likely bar-Avvá took advantage of a riot and confusion to murder someone, and probably someone prominent, which is why he was now famous. Or maybe he was already prominent—a celebrity’s kid, or otherwise had prominent connections, which might explain why the Romans hadn’t yet crucified him.

Of course the Jesus movies like to depict him as a hardened criminal, a highwayman and bandit, a tough guy who was thrilled the crowd was shouting for him instead of that pacifist Nazarene sissy. Or maybe he took a look at Jesus and was magically struck with conviction—“why, this man is clearly innocent, even though I’ve never met him before and someone beat the tar out of him and all my cultural biases should be telling me the universe is punishing him”—or however the screenwriters like to play with the character. Me, I’m more interested in historical accuracy. Human nature dictates bar-Avvá really didn’t wanna get crucified, and didn’t care who took his place so long that he got to live. Beyond this story, we never hear of him again.

Jesus’s suffering.

Now of course Jesus didn’t wanna get crucified either. But he had accepted his coming death as an inevitability. The chance he might be pardoned, only existed in Pontius’s mind—and in the worries of the senators who wanted Jesus dead. Didn’t exist in Jesus’s. So really all this free-a-convict-for-Passover thingy did was delay the inevitable.

But you know Satan would’ve used it as a temptation: “Look, there’s a chance you might get freed! You won’t have to go through crucifixion! You’ll only get off with a flogging; shouldn’t that be enough?” Assuming the devil understood Jesus was trying to achieve atonement though his death; I don’t know what it knew or didn’t know, but it’s a good bet the devil wanted to frustrate anything Jesus was up to, or at least prolong the misery. If Jesus was determined to die, may as well dangle the possibility he might not.

And no, it’s not fun to hear a crowd reject you in favor of a really undeserving, truly bad guy. No matter the situation.