In my last post on the emerging Kingdom from Mark 15:1-15, I wrote about how the heart so often displays its condition. In this second post on the same passage I want to look at how the empire – through its representative Pilate – managed to bolt-on something to the Passover celebration that would lead men astray.

Verse 6 tells us that Pilate had added a new custom to the Passover festival by agreeing to set free a prisoner upon the people’s request. Apparently this was a custom that Rome followed in other parts of the Empire and that Pilate brought with him when he was made governor of Palestine. In verse 8 we see the crowd insisting that this custom was followed and asked for Barabbas’ freedom.

This surely is an example of how empire can pervert true faith by adding to it something that was not part of the original. Let me explain. The Passover was one of the great festivals of Judaism; a time of celebrating the setting free of the Jewish captives from Egypt (an empire itself in those days) when God miraculously intervened in many ways for the sake of his people, having heard their cries of desperation. The purpose of the festival was not only to celebrate the past, of course, but also to remind the people that it was to God they should turn when times were tough. For many centuries the people of Israel – to a lesser or greater extent – kept the festival as it should have been. Remember, it was through the nation of Israel that God would bring about the emerging Kingdom for the whole world in the person of Jesus. Often we see dead religion when we see first century Judaism, but they were God’s chosen people to bring about his plan of restoring the creation.

But then along comes Rome; and through Pilate it adds to the festival something that was never part of God’s original plan. And this bolt-on in part mirrors the Passover, in that a captive is to be set free through the intervention of a King figure (i.e. the Emperor through his representative) following the intercession of the people. The result of this, at first glance, benign bolt-on is that people come to the Emperor for justice rather than to God.

Thus empire subverted and perverted true faith. It’s something we need to be aware of today, since much of the Western church has been moulded since the joining together of church and state following Emperor Constantine’s ‘conversion’ in 312AD.