Holy Week: Friday

Ecce Homo, BEHOLD THE MAN
Antonio Ciseri, 1871
Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Florence

All night long Jesus had been before Annas, Caiphas, the Sanhedrin. In the early morning he was brought for his third trial before Pilate.

“Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it you have done?”
Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”
“You are a king, then!” said Pilate.
Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
“What is truth?” retorted Pilate. With this he went out again to the Jews gathered there and said, “I find no basis for a charge against him." John 18: 35-38

If anyone ever asks you why Jesus came, now you know the answer. If anyone ever asks you what truth is, now you know. Truth is a Person. Jesus Christ, the Truth of God.

Pilate was dogged by the Jews and swayed by the crowd. Interestingly enough, he was warned by his wife, who by the way, is depicted in the right foreground of Ciseri's painting. She had come into the Praetorium to see if her husband heeded her warning and been fair to the just man.
While Pilate was sitting on the judge’s seat, his wife sent him this message: “Don’t have anything to do with that innocent man, for I have suffered a great deal today in a dream because of him.”
But the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus executed. Matt 27: 19-20
She is beginning to slowly withdraw, leaning on her servant for support, knowing that the scene in front of her was all wrong. An innocent man beaten and tortured, wrongly sentenced to die.

But it was not all wrong. It was all Right. All His Righteousness for all my filthy rags. The Truth of God.