Ecce Homo

Pilate in the gospels is portrayed as heartless and opportunist who did not mind saving his own skin at the expense of letting an innocent man die on the cross. But it would be injustice if we branded him heartless, just because he understood Jesus was innocent, and it may be hard for us to fathom the inner conflict he was going through to the extent he wanted to escape from condemning Jesus to death. His washing the hands as a mark of disowning the guilt of spilling innocent blood speaks volumes about the man that Pilate was.

But I would like to see in the man, who found Jesus as an excellent pawn to settle scores with Caesar and with Jesus, another quality which stands out in the episode of Jesus’ condemnation. The governor was able to see in Jesus, the perfect image of humanity. His pithy words to describe Jesus as “homo” (man in Latin) have opened up several layers of interpretation. The Son of God and Son of Man now stands before Pilate and the Roman soldiers as a man with no additional attributes, and Jesus is quite comfortable with the situation.

Ecce Homo – behold the man! Every person born in the world is an incomplete product of God’s creativity. There is no one who is the fullness of humanity, endowed and lavished upon him/her. Jesus is an exception. In him we see all the human aspirations finding fulfillment. We try our best to move towards the fulfillment, but without success, to be human, wholly and utterly, is no mean thing, this may be the hardest thing for us, to strip ourselves naked and find ourselves enrobed with the clouds and limitless oceans. That is the marvel of being truly human, and who else could be the perfect human person, but Jesus.

Jesus does not seem to dislike his identity as a man to the least. If he were in a lighter mood, he might have asked Pilate, how he managed to recognize him. The perfect man, who had come to throw the mantle of honor and majesty on the fallen humanity is silently acknowledging his role as the perfect man, and Pilate was just presenting this man to us to emulate, when he said, Ecce Homo. I look at the man with a crown of thorns and a purple robe. This is the man who resembles the first of God’s creation, Adam; it is in him that I can find my perfect resemblance, image and likeness of God.

As I behold the ‘new’ king, who is bleeding, and bearing the violence the world had inflicted on him, and look at my body, which has the potentiality to bear his own likeness. And still how far am I from his nature and intent? Today I too need to be scourged and bear the crown of thorns on my head, and the purple robe on my bleeding body, to bear the likeness of the ‘man’ who is prepared to bridge the gap between the heaven and the earth. Here is an invitation for me to become truly human, for that is where I can encounter my true identity, with the God who had become a man like me!

Keeping Awake

Jesus’ earnest appeal to his beloved disciples to “Remain here and keep watch with me” (Mt 26:38/41) fell on deaf ears. They were perhaps too exhausted, not only physically but also psychologically, especially after the Last Supper, where Jesus foretold the fate that awaited him. I leave it to biblical scholars to provide an exegesis of the text, but I found the quoted words have a lot to whisper in my ears, even after two centuries. I would like to paraphrase the words of Jesus as “keep awake with me”; in fact, that is precisely the meaning of the quoted phrase. Jesus invited his disciples, who were too exhausted to keep awake.

How hard and challenging is it to keep awake, especially when we know that everyone else is fast asleep; it is hard to keep awake when the body is too frail and weak (the flesh is weak, to quote Jesus, Mt 26:41), and is too exhausted. It is a challenge to keep awake when we find no ray of hope in the distant future. Jesus however seems to be pleading with the disciples precisely because he needed them close to him, when he himself was going through excruciating pain and agony in the garden. The disciples perhaps could not understand what their master was going through and could have assessed the situation too lightly.

Looking at the words of Jesus from a psychological point of view, it is so comfortable to fall asleep, so that we need not face the harsh reality. The ostrich is said to sink its head inside a mound of sand and imagine the whole world to be in dark. We would like to live in our worlds of make belief, where everything revolves round our own interests, needs and demands. The harsh reality that we may have to witness could be something too cruel and harsh for me to witness, and therefore there is a lot more consolation in either closing our eyes, or at least pretending to be fully in sleep.

Jesus does not mind doing the unpleasant job, even if others might laugh at him. Perhaps on other occasions, the disciples managed to keep awake, but now Jesus finds them drawn by the magic spell of the Lotus Eaters. It is possible that Jesus invites the disciples to keep their eyes open and recognize what was happening in front of their very eyes. It may appear that the disciples were refrained from recognizing Jesus as the weak and frail human person, their eyes as if blinded, because they could not see the Messiah sweating blood.

To be awake, psychologically, is a big challenge today. We live in a world where to be awake is to invite trouble, because the world would want everyone to be asleep, or at least pretend to be asleep, so that they do not see, hear, feel, and touch the reality looming before them. To be insensitive to human pain, suffering and misery is considered a virtue, lest we be drawn into an endless questioning and challenging the worldly forces. It is here that we hear the call of Jesus to keep awake with him!