What we’ve just heard is the drama of Christ’s passion and crucifixion, the great story of his death. “Drama” is an appropriate word, as, like much of John’s Gospel, this telling is almost begging to be dramatized. Characters enter and exit with clear lines of dialogue, the setting shifts between scenes, it’s genuinely like a stage show. And in this telling, in this story, in this drama, I find myself very intrigued by the figure of Pontius Pilate.

I’m not the only one. Christians for many centuries have been interpreting Pilate, his character, his motives, and his ultimate fate. Some have regarded him as a cruel persecutor, an evildoer cursed to bear the great burden of his sin. Others have regarded him as a basically well-intentioned man with his hands tied, neither so evil as to deserve special condemnation, nor so good as to deserve praise. Others have seen, within his proclamation of Christ as King, a budding Christian, one who would later fully convert and be changed by this brush with Jesus.

All of these interpretations have precedent in Church tradition. So why is Pilate so simultaneously interesting and divisive? I suspect it’s because it’s quite easy to read him in this retelling in different ways. Is he a man concerned with justice, trying to judge rightly? Is he a tyrant, a prince of this world conspiring against God’s reign? Is he just a confused foreigner, disturbed in the middle of the night to hear a theological dispute he has no context for understanding, and may even find boring or ridiculous, at least until he hears that this man claims to be the Son of God, a concept perhaps more easily accepted by a Roman polytheist? They’re all valid ways to read the story.

There’s one line in particular that can be read many ways. It is famous. Pilate asks Jesus, “What is truth?” Jesus does not respond to the question. The dialogue continues on, but eventually, Jesus remains silent altogether. “What is truth?” could be coming from a lot of different places. Maybe it’s flippant, a dismissive response to a strange and bothersome man. Maybe it’s angry, what is this truth you’re yammering on about? Maybe it’s an opening for debate, a way to enter into rational argument. And maybe, it’s genuinely curious; maybe Pilate is sufficiently intrigued to think something noteworthy might be going on here.

It’s a rather important question. Jesus sets it up as the keystone of his mission, of the whole Incarnation, “for this I was born, for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.” He argues that we can “belong to the truth,” and that those who do listen to his voice. Maybe Pilate finds this whole thing vexing and silly. Or maybe this question, “What is truth?” is the first baby step on the road to listening to that very voice.

Now, I do not know the soul of Pontius Pilate. I barely know my own soul very dimly. But if there is any chance, any chance, that Pilate is seeking to listen here, then I think we would do well to listen too. Because, whether Pilate expected an answer or not, Christ did give him one. What is truth?

Truth is the silence that endures when the torrent of heaped-up words reaches its end.

Truth is humanity, on the sixth day of the week, given lordship of all the earth, and seeing again on this, the sixth day of the week that such lordship finds its truest expression, not in power over others, but in humility and self-sacrifice, a king enthroned upon a cross.

Truth is Holy Wisdom, she who fashioned the worlds, loving so fully all that she has made that she allows herself to undergo the unmaking of death, knowing she will be vindicated by her deeds.

Truth is a body so gravely wounded that Thomas could not accept as true anything less than the scars of the all-sufficient sacrifice.

Truth is the bread, the flesh, that gathers the scattered grains from across all the cosmos, the wine, the blood, that spills over its brim to flood all days past and yet to come.

Truth is a just man, prepared to die.

What is truth? Behold. Behold. Behold.