Pontius Pilate was an important and powerful man. If you were in Judea from the years 26-36 a.d., he had the power of life and death over you. He was the agent of Caesar, and he commanded Roman legions and controlled how you lived and whether you lived. He was the most powerful man in the country.

And they bring before him this other man whose face still has finger marks on it from where the palace guard slapped him for talking back to the high priest. This man is helpless. His own followers have betrayed and deserted him. The religious leaders have accused him of treason by saying that he claims to be a king, a threat to Caesar. And now he stands alone, powerless, vulnerable — before Caesar’s powerful agent.

You would expect Pilate to be completely in charge, and Jesus to be submissive, trying to save his life. But not so. Because Pilate is a man who does not know himself. He is a man who does not have a sense of what is true, of what is really worth valuing. He is an anxious ruler, the product of a very anxious time.

In 1994 I heard a talk by Rabbi Edwin Friedman, the author of Generation To Generation, a very good book which was required reading at my seminary. Dr. Friedman was talking about leadership, and the characteristics of an anxious system, whether it be a family, a church, a school, a conquered nation, or a conquering nation. Dr. Friedman discussed five characteristics of anxious systems. He said that they (1) seek certainty; (2) they react from the gut, rather than giving well thought out responses; (3) they require everyone to fall in line and agree, so dissenters are seen as a threat; (4) they blame, and (5) they seek a quick fix. Be certain; go with your gut; tolerate no dissent; blame; and go for the quick fix — those are the marks of an anxious person, family, church, or nation.

Such anxious systems tend to raise up leaders who don’t have a sense of themselves. Who don’t know who they are. And Pilate is such a leader, molded by life in a very anxious place. There is a Chinese saying: “May you live in interesting times.” It is a curse. And Pilate and Jesus live in interesting times. Judea is a tinderbox. The air is charged with the tension caused by the Roman occupation. The region is alive with guerrilla bandits, and if a real leader were to step forward and proclaim himself the “king of the Jews,” there could be a bloody revolt in an instant.

To make matters worse, Pilate has already screwed up several times, and his job hangs by a thread.

So, when the powerful Pilate questions the powerless Jesus, it is Pilate who is worried. And Jesus—who knows himself, who knows what he values, who knows that he does not live for the approval of the followers who abandoned him, or the leaders who betrayed him, or Pilate, who knows that the truth is that he lives for God—that powerless Jesus takes charge. Not only does he refuse to answer Pilate’s questions, but he questions Pilate instead, and tells Pilate that Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world, that he will not fight, that he does not wield power the same way Pilate wields power.

Pilate seems a little dazed. The best he can do is to say, “So you are a king?” And Jesus responds, “You say that I am a king. For this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

Pilate is convinced that Jesus is not leading a rebellion against Rome. He is not guilty of the charges brought against him. Pilate will say publicly three times that Jesus is innocent. But he needs a quick fix. He needs someone to blame. This dissenter cannot be tolerated, so he dismisses Jesus by saying “What is truth?” And then he exerts his power by sending Jesus to be whipped and beaten and killed. The reaction of an anxious man living in interesting times.

We live, I am afraid, in interesting and anxious times. Ours is a society racked by worry and doubt. Sometimes we are paralyzed by fear, and sometimes we act out of fear. Internationally, we attached a country that President Bush has acknowledged had nothing to do with the attack on us. But hey, Saddam was a bad man, and we needed someone to blame so we could have a quick fix. War born of anxiety.

At home, violence seems so prevalent and senseless. You can’t miss the horrors on the news. Another anxiety producer is the realization that in many ways, our lives depend on corporations, and we have learned recently that much of our trust that they would act out of basic rules of good faith has been misplaced, as scandal after scandal rocks the news and ruins well-earned retirement plans.

And we are anxious about health care, and education, and the economy, and race relations, and gender issues, and marriage, and families, working mothers, and over-scheduled children, and drug addiction, and the alarming number of Americans in prison.

And, of course, issues around sexuality. My, my, haven’t we been anxious about that? And, on a related topic, changes in the Church. Many people long for the Church to be a harbor, a safe-haven from any change or accompanying anxiety. It never promised to be, never has been, and, as long as the Holy Spirit is blowing through it and the world is so full of pain and injustice, never will be. But that’s not easy, and it makes a lot of people quite anxious.

There are lots of issues that scare us. And the media feeds our anxiety and profits from it. It’s like they surround us with mirrors, reflecting our concerns back to us, so that nothing has a chance to dissipate, and we become more and more anxious.

It is, in almost every way, a new world. And our times, like those of Jesus and Pilate, are indeed interesting, and often anxious.

So what should we do about all these anxiety producing issues? I certainly don’t know. I certainly don’t know what techniques and strategies we will or should use to respond to our many issues. I wish I did.

But it seems to me that the more important, the more fundamental question is not, “What are we going to do,” but is, “Who are we going to be?” What kind of people are we going to be in our own interesting and anxious times? Will we be like Pilate — striving for certainty at all costs, reacting from our guts, tolerating no dissent, blaming, and seeking a quick fix, facing God and asking, “What is truth?”

That’s an option, and one that all of us take on occasion. No one is immune to anxiety. But as the powerful Pilate faced the helpless Jesus, who was the most powerful leader? Two thousand years later, no knee anywhere in the world bends, no head anywhere in the world bows, no life anywhere in the world is changed — at the name of Pilate.

The other man in the story has a different way of being. He knows truth. He is not blown around by the winds of events and he is not pulled by the currents of anxiety. This other man in the story, the helpless man who will die, he is a leader who responds lovingly to us. If he wanted a quick fix, we’d all be in a lot of trouble, but he is patient through the ages. And in anxious and interesting times, he knows and gives the peace of God, which passes all understanding.

In our worrisome times, when we don’t always know what to do, when we long for that peace, I invite you to eat at his table.