Jesus Knows Misunderstanding

Text: Luke:23:1-12

Are you old enough to remember a band known as The Animals singing, "I'm just a soul whose intentions are good--O, Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood!" Being in a position in which others just don't get it with regard to who and what we are is not a comfortable feeling. When those "others" hold our fate in their hands, the feeling is truly despairing.

Is that what Jesus was experiencing as he was unceremoniously shuttled from the Jewish council to Pilate, to Herod, then back again to Pilate? And at the end of the day, having the latter person without any greater clue to Jesus' identity than he had at the beginning surely did not make things easier. Then again, how could he have understood? Pilate's concern was political stability; Jesus had been delivered to him because of an alleged insurrectionist intent, fostered by a claim to be a king. On one hand, the charge was true; yet Pilate saw enough to know that this was not any kind of kingship that might pose the sort of political threat any Roman governor needed to fear.

Then there was Herod, who ruled over a mere third of the territory his father had once claimed. He, too, was fascinated by what he had heard of Jesus; he wanted a magic show. He, likewise, saw no political trouble brewing from Jesus. When no show was forthcoming, he joined his lowlife mockery of a militia in taunting the misconstrued Son of Man.

Our lives can be turned upside down for short or long periods of time when the perception of who we are does not match what we know to be true of ourselves. It happens in school, at work, in public life, even in our churches. Most of the time we have enough opportunity to have the truth emerge; sometimes we do not and fail to realize certain goals and possibilities because of it. For younger people in our culture, for whom identity formation is a real issue, the results of being misunderstood can be devastating. Once again, the one who bore our sorrows has been to this lonely, tenuous place in life. When we fail to see the humanity of Jesus in the days immediately prior to his death, we fail to find the one who longs to walk beside us in all circumstances with a knowing, comforting, and even sustaining way. Regardless of what others mistakenly think they know about us.