Untitled Sermon (3)
What favour did he want at Herod’s hand? He had not come to be set free; he had come to die, and therefore his face is set like a flint, and, with heroic courage, he answers him not a word.
So they put it about his blessed person, and again heap contumely upon him. Was it not strange—this decking him in a gorgeous robe of dazzling white? The mediæval writers delight to dwell on the fact that Herod arrayed our Lord in white and afterwards Pilate clothed him in red. Is he not the Lily of the valley and the Rose of Sharon? Is he not matchlessly white for innocence, and then gloriously red in his atoning blood? Thus, in their very mockery, they are unconsciously setting forth to us both his spotless holiness and his majestic royalty. When they had insulted to their full, they sent him back to Pilate, kicking him from foot to foot at their pleasure, as if he were a football for their sport. Then our Lord made his fourth sorrowful march through the streets of the city over which he had wept.
What woe to be forced to be silent with all these mockers about him, and yet to be pitying them all!
The gospel is the mortal enemy both of the sceptical Sadducee and the superstitious Pharisee, and so they lay aside their differences to assail it.
The Jewish governors of this period used Caesarea Maritime, the seacoast city built by Herod the Great, as their primary residence. They preferred the mild Mediterranean climate of Caesarea to the hot and dusty Jerusalem, and the cultural climate of Roman and Hellenistic influence to the hyperpartisan religious atmosphere of the temple city. The governors would travel to Jerusalem at important times such as Passover, to be present in case the large numbers of Jewish pilgrims presented any challenge to Roman authority.