Towards the end of summer, I had a taste of what it is like trying to pacify a mob. I was at Kansas Bible Camp, and acted out Pontius Pilate’s role during Christ’s trial. In order to disguise the fact that I’m the wrong gender to portray Pilate, I penciled in a quick unibrow on my face with eyeliner around 5:15 in the morning, and soon found myself staring down from a second story balcony, viewing a sea of bleary eyed High Schoolers, most of them with sheets haphazardly wrapped toga-style on top of their jammies. No decent trial should meet at this time of day!
Being Pilate, I had a few lines to shout to the mob. It seemed like I kept coming back to the fact that we were on the verge of killing an innocent man. Why would Barabbas look good in comparison to this man, Christ? The crowd shouted up to me “If this Man were not an evildoer, we would not have delivered Him up to you.” But the tone and look of the crowd did not necessarily reflect bunny-eyed innocence. What is the definition of “evildoer,” anyway? It was a situation so perplexing that I could see how it could make friends out of enemy rulers. Another question that weighed on me: I asked the camper who was portraying Christ, “What is truth?” I wonder if it occurred to the real Pilate that he had posed this question to Truth Himself. During the reenactment I washed my hands in front of the crowd, trying to show either them, or myself, that I was innocent of “this man’s blood;” I wonder if Pilate, in real life, had witnessed a tinge of red in the water, as torchlight flickered and played on the water’s surface.
It is common practice to act out Shakespearean plays in order to better understand what is taking place. I wouldn’t say the literary works are on the same plane, but I think it’s a worthwhile practice to apply to the Bible as well.
