Coney Hill Baptist Church

Demonstrating God’s Love Together

Barabbas A Prisoner Freed

Mark 15:6-15

⁶Now it was the custom at the Feast to release a prisoner whom the people requested. ⁷A man called Barabbas was in prison with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the uprising. ⁸The crowd came up and asked Pilate to do for them what he usually did.

⁹"Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?" asked Pilate, ¹⁰knowing it was out of envy that the chief priests had handed Jesus over to him. ¹¹But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have Pilate release Barabbas instead.

¹²"What shall I do, then, with the one you call the king of the Jews?" Pilate asked them.

¹³"Crucify him!" they shouted.

¹⁴"Why? What crime has he committed?" asked Pilate.
But they shouted all the louder, "Crucify him!"

¹⁵Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.

Intro:

Barabbas is a genuine character ‘on the edge’, only a bit part in the overall story, but a significant one. Like a familiar item inserted alongside an unusual composition, to help us appreciate the scale, he helps us to understand the big picture. We can see something of the scale of Jesus by looking at Barabbas.

The text doesn’t tell us much but we can make some educated guesses about Barabbas. He wasn’t a common criminal but a political activist, a leading figure in an insurrection. Well known and, in some quarters at least, popular. Most probably a Zealot from the north, possibly not far from Nazareth. He was a religious man who believed violence was justified as a means of overthrowing Roman occupation of his homeland.

One other interesting thing about Barabbas, suggested by some of the early manuscripts, is that his name was Jesus! Barabbas is a kind of surname, meaning son of Abba – Jesus is a different form of a name, more like a first name, and it was quite common. Maybe these two men were distinguished from each other in the text by the different parts of their name, because they shared a first name. the choice here may have been Jesus Barabbas and Jesus Barjoseph.

A Personal Story….

Mark gives us this account to ram home just how real and personal Jesus’ death was. It wasn’t just an historic event, a thing of high politics and profound religion, it mattered - personally. Because of him another man was set free – really. In a very real sense he took his place, it’s a personalised picture of the gospel as a whole – inviting us to put ourselves in the place of the freed man.

An Ever-present Choice…

It’s tempting to scoff at the crowds who chose Barabbas over Jesus but would we have been so different? We weren’t there on that day, but every day we get to make a similar choice. Who will we follow?

If we choose to fight back, always assert ourselves, using whatever power and strength we have to get our own way – then we follow the path of Jesus Barabbas. It’s a very popular path, the path of the popular and the powerful, the successful and the strong – the path that shouts the loudest and, often, gets its voice heard. Even in the story here, politically speaking, it was the path that appeared to triumph – Barabbas walked free, the cause of the Zealots grew and became more and more popular, the crowds increasingly asserted themselves until just a generation later Rome sent an extra legion of soldiers and laid Jerusalem flat. The way of Barabbas always ends with someone bigger, someone stronger, putting their foot down.

On the other hand, there is the way of Jesus Barjoseph. Who never opened his mouth against his accusers. Who told his friends to put their swords away when he was arrested at night, who, earlier in his career, when he had been taken to the highest point of the city and offered the world, turned it down. Who, we are told, did not consider even equality with God something to be grasped, but was happy to humble himself, and take on the job of a servant.

So you see how we are offered this choice every day? It’s not a choice of strength against weakness, or speaking up over remaining silent, or of taking action as opposed to staying still. It’s about following the way of Jesus Barjoseph, the way of God, whatever the cost.

Conc.

These ideas have been explored in a book, which sums it up. Written by Tony Campolo in the aftermath of September 11^th in the USA its called ‘Which Jesus? Choosing Between Love and Power”

Office Address:

Coney Hill Road

West Wickham

Kent

BR4 9BU