Communion Message
(Pilate’s wife)
January 15-16, 2000
Pastor Donald Sheley

Now we've made the observation that Paul instructs the church here in Corinth that in the participation of the communion service it was a public proclamation telling again the story of the death of Jesus Christ. It's the story of the cross, and so what we have done over the years we've gone back to the story of the cross, and we have looked at it again seeking for those truths we may have missed earlier. It's much like standing in an art museum and viewing a masterpiece. If you look at it quickly and rush on you miss the exquisite touches of the artist, the detail. But when you stand there and study then you begin to appreciate the genius of the man who painted the picture. I think too quickly we hasten through the story of the cross, listen to the words of Jesus, and then read on. 

Today I'd like to just kind of brush aside the curtain and I want you to see one little exquisite detail that Matthew tells us about the story of the cross. It says, Now at the feast the governor was accustomed to releasing to the multitude one prisoner whom they wished. And at that time they had a notable prisoner called Barabbas. Therefore, when they had gathered together, Pilate said to them, "Whom do you want me to release to you? Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?" For he knew that they had handed Him over because of envy. While he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent to him, saying, "Have nothing to do with that just Man, for I have suffered many things today in a dream because of Him." But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitudes that they should ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus. I've always been fascinated with that one verse about Pilate's wife. Very seldom if never do we talk about her. But Matthew tucked that exquisite little verse in there. A scene so filled with history and so deep with meaning. You see every religion may be tested ethically and practically by its appeal to womanhood. That faith which outclasses every other in its power to meet the needs of woman and uplift her to moral beauty will stand every other test of the truth of God. As much as the women of Israel outdistanced the women of Greece, and that is as much as heaven outdistances earth, so much did Judaism outdistance the pagan religions at Jesus' time. 

When Jesus came with His meekness and His lowliness, His searching and uncompromising hostility to sin, His compassion for weakness and His great cross of love and atonement, womanhood fell down at His feet in surpassing loyalty and Christ placed a crown on her head. And to this day the voice of Christ finds its clear echo in women's hearts, and both gentle and simple are found reaching their noblest and their highest when sitting at the feet of Jesus. It is then precisely what would have been expected that amid the sad scenes of the tragedy of Christ's last day on earth that there should be told us this little story about Pilate's wife. The story shines on the page like a strong gleam of sunshine on a winter's dark day. It's a word of radiant prophecy in the record of a history laden with sorrow. And Matthew tells us very little about her for it is her act he fixes our thoughts and our attentions upon. 

We know that she is the only Roman woman in the gospels, and that she is the only Roman woman of the highest rank whose heart had been touched by Jesus. We know that she was Pilate's wife and lived with him faithfully and loved him. We know her to have been a woman of noble temper and of refined sensitive spirit, full of spiritual longings with a compassion that slipped into her dreams. We know that she knew Jesus. Knew Him well enough to pass a penetrating judgment upon Him, and finally, that she came to a costly moral decision about Him, and in a fine act of self-forgetting courage she carried it out. Pilate’s wife, she lived her life much of it in sorrow and shame. There's no doubt that she had a tender affection for Pilate. The proof of this mutual love lies in the fact that she accompanied Pilate to Jerusalem. You see a Roman governor in the Roman Empire was forbidden by law to take his wife with him to his assigned province. Very much for the same reason as a ship's captain is forbidden to take his wife to sea. That law could have been broken only by a strong personal appeal to the highest power of the Empire, but in that imperial age hastening with swift strides to an unspeakable corruption, husbands were only too willing to be freed from a wife's watchful eye, and wives were as willing to be left to live their own butterfly lives in the godless proliferate Roman Empire. But Pilate's wife was more than eager to face the loneliness of a life among an alien people. 

Love broke even the stern Roman law, but how far had this couple grown apart? The man she chose, the man she said yes to, now has deteriorated into a sorted, cruel, vengeful, murderess man. What a sorrow it was/is for a woman to have a noble faith, but to have a husband who has no respect for the sacred. What a despairing shadow falls upon her spirit as she marks the degradation of his character and discerns his cunning cowardice and his cruel, unscrupulous ambition. That was the sorrow and shame of Pilate's wife. But one day she spent her time there in Jerusalem with her husband, she must have slipped out of that palace and wandered down on the streets, and she met Jesus the Galilean. She must have been moved deeply, so moved that when she went back to her palace she could not forget the man, Jesus. Somehow she thought so much that even He entered her dreams, and she came to this moral reasoning that He was a very special person. She said He's a just Man. 

Now there's something else that's very interesting about this story. It says that while Pilate was sitting on the judgment seat and the crowds are yelling Barabbas his wife does something very daring. She sends him a message. It was a deed of singular daring. It was the last resource of a loving heart making one more appeal, for to send a message with the attempt to sway the mind of the judge while he sat upon the seat of judgment was an offense punishable by death. And so Pilate’s wife took that same moral godly courage that Esther had done in the Old Testament and she put her life at stake and sent this message to her husband. Honey, don't do it. He's a just Man. I've thought of that this week. Here's a lady in a great dilemma. Somehow Jesus had affected her so deeply she put her life on the line for Him, and yet she had a mate who had no reverence for the godly. And I put that in the context of our suppertime, because you see this story comes out of the story of the cross. I think of all of the lovely ladies who carry their faith alone even in an environment where sometimes their mate ridicules them, laughs at them, and rejects their faith. And in this congregation at every service there are dozens of them, ladies who live the loneliness apart from a mate who does not care to understand.

Last night a lovely mother with children tucked under every arm came and talked to me, and I looked upon a woman whose husband has abandoned the family and her, and yet in her faithful faith she comes to the house of God and worships the Lord. Pilate's wife in the silence of her palace without the encouragement of a mate somehow fell in love with Jesus, because she said He is a just Man. Ladies and gentlemen, when I get to heaven I'm going to look for Pilate's wife because I believe she'll be there. I wanted you to know that at suppertime as we share together, some of us are never sensitive to the pain of other people who live their faith in silence, and sometimes ridicule. And I want you when you kneel with me today to pray for those lovely ladies of our family who carry their faith with courage in a home without any encouragement.

Would you kneel with me please? Lord Jesus we kneel here on this beautiful day of worship, and our natural tendency is to be concerned about our relationship with You, and that's the way it really should be. We need Your forgiveness, and we seek that today. We cry out for Your mercy and Your grace, but there are those, a part of our family, who kneel with us this morning whose hearts are heavy. They love You dear Jesus, but their mate rejects You. And they with courage and commencement carry on. Would You strengthen them today? Would you enwrap them with Your love, and Your encouragement, and Your grace? And in their journey, sometimes so lonely, be Thou to them life's dearest friend. They live their life with many burdens, and You told us to carry one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. So we bear them to You in this moment of family prayer. Please help all the ladies of our family. Thank you for these emblems of love, the bread and the cup that tell us how much You love us and may everyone in our family feel that love today. Let's take the bread together, shall we? And then the cup. I thank you dear Lord for this beautiful Christian family, and may it always be that we gather strength and encouragement from one another as we make our journey home together. In Jesus' name, amen. Let's stand and greet one another, shall we?