As the Roman governor Pontius Pilate—a man infamous in history for his cruelty—condemns Jesus to crucifixion, Barabbas is drawn into the sacred drama. Who was Barabbas? To understand the identity of Barabbas is to bring the tragedy of Good Friday into sharp focus—perhaps sharper than we would like. In understanding Barabbas, films like The Passion of the Christ have done us a disservice. Barabbas was not a deranged serial killer as depicted in Mel Gibson’s movie. Why would a crowd ever clamour for the release of a common murderer? 
If we imagine Barabbas as a homicidal maniac, we will never imagine ourselves among the crowd shouting, “Give us Barabbas!” But we should. Barabbas wasn’t a common criminal, he was a national hero. Barabbas wasn’t a serial killer, he was a political prisoner. Barabbas wasn’t a murderous bandit, he was a revolutionary leader. Barabbas was a Jewish insurgent who had led an insurrection against the Roman occupation and who had killed someone during the uprising—probably a Roman soldier or a Jewish collaborator. Barabbas would have been viewed as a popular hero among much of Jerusalem’s population who longed for liberation from foreign occupation by whatever means. Barabbas wasn’t the Boston strangler. Barabbas was William Wallace or George Washington or Che Guevara. That casts Barabbas in a completely different light! Some ancient New Testament manuscripts give us the revolutionary’s full name as Jesus Barabbas, that is, Jesus Son of the Father. Jesus Barabbas is a rival messiah! 
On Good Friday we are given the choice between two versions of Jesus—Jesus Barabbas or Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus of Nazareth calls us to the way of peace by loving our enemies and the practice of radical forgiveness. Jesus Barabbas is willing to fight our wars and kill our enemies in the name of freedom. Recently a well-known megachurch pastor said, “When I’m looking for a leader I want the meanest, toughest son of a gun I can find.” Whether he understands it or not, this evangelical pastor is saying, “Give us Barabbas!” For many American Christians, the politics of Jesus are dismissed as impractical and so they kick the can down the road saying, “maybe someday we can turn our swords into plowshares, but now is the time for us to build more B-2 bombers and stockpile nukes so we can kill all our enemies.” The crowd that gathers on Good Friday shouting, “Give us Barabbas!,” is far more plausible and numerous than most of us imagine. If we think that killing our enemies is compatible with Christian ethics, we are in effect saying, “Give us Barabbas!” But Lent is the time to rethink everything in the light of Christ. We are not called to scrutinize the Sermon on the Mount through the lens of the Pentagon; we are called to follow Jesus by embodying the kingdom of God here and now, no matter what the rest of the world does.


Music by Simon Wester

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