An old story tells us that Pilate and Herod sat on one occasion in Pilate’s palace. Both were surrounded by their Jewish subjects, drunk with power and enjoying the luxury, eating the delicious food, sweet grapes, and other exotic fruit on the table that their slaves never got to enjoy. They were filled with indifference, without love or piety for the oppressed Jews who waited on them submissively. They enjoyed the plenitude of the glory of their Roman power. Herod asked Pilate, “What are you going to do with the Nazarene, Jesus?” Pilate replied with a smile and a tone of cynical reassurance, “The soldiers are already on their way to arrest him.” With marked irony, he continued, “Can you imagine that imbecile Jesus told me that I should love my enemies?” Both men looked at each other in the face with serious expressions for a moment before bursting into mocking laughter. Pilate said curiously, “I asked myself if, from now until 2,000 years in the future, who history would remember or respect more—that Jesus of Nazareth, who asked for others to love their enemies, or to both of us, who mercilessly destroy our enemies.”
They both laughed again.
Today, history clearly records his answer. It records their conversation with the same cynical laughter that they used to mock Jesus of Nazareth and his brothers, 2,000 years ago. This instructs us that there doesn’t exist another muscle with greater strength in the human being than love, mercy, and compassion for others. Our great Teacher preached this lesson while He was with us in body and soul, all the while Herod and Pilate laughed in mockery of His divine wisdom. There is no doubt in my mind that Jesus learned that from His Father, the Supreme Architect of the Universe. Probably both Pilate and Herod finally got the true answer to their question from their places in Hell, enlightened too late of their self-deception as they sit in very hot seats with sour faces during those same two millennia. Time has shown us to be the factor that determines everything at the end of our lives and the shining proof with his magnificent magic that makes clear, long after we are gone, whether our journey thourh this world was for good or evil.
