Don't Fear the Tumult

Reading Matthew 26 & 27 the other day my eyes were opened to some good insights that are packed into those 2 chapters.  Focusing on just a few of those insights I'd like to first explore 3 interesting characters whose stories are discussed there: Judas, Peter, and Pilate.

I  grapple with understanding how these 3 men will be judged for their various actions, but I think there are some good lessons to learn.  To recap their various situations:

Judas - One of the Twelve.  As had been prophesied by Jesus, he betrayed Jesus by assisting the chief priests and elders to unlawfully arrest him, all for 30 pieces of silver.

Peter - Also one of the Twelve, and the eventual leader of the church.  Also as prophesied by the Savior, he denied Christ 3 times before the cock crowed, despite his forceful assurances just hours before that he would never do such a thing.

Pilate - The local ruling Roman governor whose responsibility it was to uphold or dismiss the accusations against Jesus.

What's interesting about Judas is that while we all remember him as the worst kind of traitor (indeed, his very name epitomizes the act) it's easy to forget that as a member of the holy order of the Twelve and as part of the Savior's inner circle he must have been incredibly valiant at some point and must have brought about so much good during his roughly 3 years as a special witness of Christ.  (The ultimate tragic example in the parable of the sower of a seed that fell among the thorns and got choked by the cares of the world.)  We know his fate because the Savior said that it would have been better that that man had not been born, but it's especially tragic because very shortly after the act we read that he repented by acknowledging his error and asking to give the money back, and ultimately hung himself for sorrow.  He certainly wasn't pure evil, and I think he is deserving of pity.

What intrigues (and frankly, worries) me about Peter is how quickly his rock-solid testimony could be shaken.  When I think about it in modern-day terms and I apply his situation to myself I can easily see how, for example, if someone told me that I would [oh, I don't know, drink a beer], I would probably tell this person that they don't know me well, and I would never do that; but maybe I would find myself in a totally new circumstance--and not so much out of rebellion but out of convenience and a belief that what I was doing was really just to minimize fuss and drama--and I would cave.  In Peter's case there's the interesting caveat that the Savior actually said, "thou shalt deny me thrice," and maybe it was a critical growth opportunity for Peter on his discipleship trajectory.

Pilate yielding to the crowd

Getting back to that concept of minimizing fuss and drama, I think this is what Pilate's tragic flaw is.  We can tell that Pilate marvels at Christ and recognizes some divinity in him.  His wife even had a dream the night before about Jesus, and tried to convince Pilate to let him go.  But despite Pilate's soft efforts to free Jesus, in the end he's more worried about pleasing the crowd and when he sees that a "tumult was made" he ceremoniously but ineffectually washes his hands of the act.  I tend to want to give him the benefit of the doubt and put the blame on the crowd and chalk it up to unfair circumstances, but ultimately the buck stops with him and he behaved everlastingly ignominiously.  Contrast his leadership with the Savior's who, when he saw that people were making his Father's house "an house of merchandise," drove them out forcefully with a whip and overturned tables.


Both Pilate and Peter (and I guess Judas too) serve as great cautionary tales to not allow ourselves to fear what man can do (D&C 122:9) and to strive to be steadfast and immovable in our testimonies.

One final insight from these two chapters is found in 27:42, where we read about the chief priests and scribes and elders mocking Christ as he hung on the cross, saying, "He saved others; himself he cannot save.  If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him."  To me this serves as a perfect example of mankind's desire to make our own logical deductions based on our limited perspective.  Nowadays someone might argue that God doesn't exist based on all the suffering they see, or traditional marriage is outdated, or any number of "logical" arguments, but it's important to first consider our limited perspective and that "even as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are [God's] ways higher than [man's] ways." (Isa 55:8-9)