The Crowd Chose: Mark 15:1-15

Very early in the morning, the chief priests, with the elders, teachers of the law, and the whole Sanhedrin, made their plans. They bound Jesus, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate.

The Roman governor looked at the prisoner—beaten, bound, silent—and asked the only question that mattered politically: "Are you the king of the Jews?"

"You have said so," Jesus replied.

The chief priests accused him of many things. Pilate expected defense, explanation, counter-arguments. "Aren't you going to answer? See how many things they are accusing you of."

But Jesus still made no reply. Pilate was amazed.

Now it was his custom at the Festival to release a prisoner the people requested. A man called Barabbas was in prison with the rebels who had committed murder in an uprising. The crowd came up and asked Pilate to do for them what he usually did.

"Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?" Pilate asked, knowing it was out of self-interest that the chief priests had handed Jesus over.

But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have Pilate release Barabbas instead.

"What shall I do, then, with the one you call the king of the Jews?"

"Crucify him!" they shouted.

"Why? What crime has he committed?"

But they shouted all the louder: "Crucify him!"

The crowd that had shouted Hosanna days before now screamed for blood. The pilgrim anthem had become a death sentence.

Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged—the Roman scourge, leather strips embedded with bone and metal, tearing flesh to ribbons—and handed him over to be crucified.

Barabbas walked free. A murderer released. The innocent condemned in his place.

The exchange would echo through eternity. The guilty going free because the innocent took their punishment. Every human being would find themselves in Barabbas—released because someone else hung in their place.