Why We Choose Barabbas (Luke 23:13-25)
A Palm Sunday Sermon
Dear reader, Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week, the final days of Jesus’ earthly ministry leading to the cross and, ultimately, the empty tomb. In this Palm Sunday sermon, I’m drawing the line from Leviticus and the prophets to Jesus’s ministry and the cross by teachings about scapegoating.
You may notice that I don’t spend a lot of time talking about Barabbas. In my view, the question of why we choose Barabbas is always lingering and I can provide the answer to the congregants without saying, “So, that’s why . . . “
Enjoy and may God bless our reading and preaching. —Jason
Introduction
This passage from Luke might surprise you on Palm Sunday, or on any Sunday, really. It’s not often read during Holy Week, not even on Good Friday. But this is a pivotal moment Jesus predicted again and again.
During Holy Week, we ask: What’s happening on the cross? What are we supposed to see in all this suffering?
Last week, I spoke about forgiveness. Today, I want to draw another line to the cross so your Holy Week, Good Friday, and Easter won’t just be rituals, but invitations to wake up to something very real.
Let me start with a question: is this good news or bad? “God will help you see the truth?”
Sometimes we’re blind to why we do what we do. We carry unexamined motives. We project our pain. But God has a way of opening our eyes. And though the truth can hurt, it’s better than stumbling in the dark.
The word apocalypse means “a revealing, an unveiling.” Just like in the last book of the Bible God pulls back the curtain and insists that good will vanquish evil, so too on the cross, as God pulls back the curtain and shows us the truth about the world – and ourselves.
The Cross is an Apocalypse
The cross is an apocalypse – not because it ends the world, but because it exposes what is often hidden from our sight.
It unveils the ugly truth. We see the fickleness of Jesus’ disciples, the brutality of the State, the hypocrisy of religious worshippers, the gross power of mob rule, and we see the Innocent Victim – Jesus.
We have a word for this human tendency to pile our blame on one vulnerable person: scapegoating.
Scapegoating is what we do when we avoid responsibility by shifting the burden of our fear, our shame, our anger and anxiety onto someone else. We find a target, and we convince ourselves: They are the problem.
It’s a cycle. Tensions rise. Anxiety spreads. We don’t know what to do with the unease inside us, so we start passing it around
It’s contagious.
It spreads through families, friend groups, churches, and entire nations. People grow suspicious, defensive. They begin to think in scarcity - - there’s not enough safety, not enough power, and not enough jobs, not enough resources.
The group accuses that person of doing something terrible—breaking rules. The group accused them of not being one of them. The sentence usually involves the word “true.” You are not a true/real ____ (Christian, American, Patriot, Human, Male, Female). In our text, “You are not a real prophet.” You have crossed the line.
And in a kind of blindness, a trance almost, they decide: “This person is the problem.”
And then someone suggests – often without saying it directly or aloud—we’d all feel better if that person were gone.
And here’s the painful part that should cause us to shutter - that person is usually innocent. They are misunderstood, dehumanized, mocked, and publicly shamed.
And so, the response? We blame, gang up, exile, punish and silence them – the innocent. We say problem solved.
But it’s not, because the real issue—the one inside us—hasn’t been addressed or healed.
This pattern repeats again and again because the issue isn’t resolved so we will always find another scapegoat to avoid responsibility.
Scapegoating in Scripture
What the Jewish and Christian Scriptures do is they flip this and expose the lie of scapegoating and say, you are in the constant habit of taking your sins out on an innocent victim. You deceive yourself. You do not need violence to resolve your inner conflicts. You do not have to scapegoat someone. Just address the issues inside yourself and live in peace.
In Leviticus 16 we have the first mention of scapegoating in literature. EVER. On that day, one day a year, the Day of Atonement, the priest is presented with two goats. Through the casting of lots, at random, one of the goats is selected as the scapegoat.
The priest lays his hands upon the goat and confesses all the problems and all the sins of the people. get reeds and thorns and hit the goat so it will go into the wilderness. The goat is exiled as the people make clear, “You are unwanted. You don’t belong here with us.”
The picture emerges from this – Oh, the scapegoat is innocent. We’re the guilty ones. We think that by projecting our sins and failings on the scapegoat, we will be relieved of responsibility for owning what is truly ours.
If you do this, you go away thinking – Ah, I’m innocent and you will go back to the very same life and way of thinking that led you to scapegoat the vulnerable one. You must take ownership of what’s inside.
The prophets pick up on this and they defend who? They never defend the in-group, the strong crowd. The prophets always defend the groups who are more likely to be scapegoated, the vulnerable – the widow, the economically poor, and those who live among them who are from different cultures and countries.
When Jesus comes along, who does he defend? That’s right, those vulnerable people who often are or were actively being scapegoated. So it’s no wonder Jesus says, “What you do to the least of these, you do it to me.”
Jesus taught that we live in a world where there are innocent victims and the cross is given to us to show us this, and that we should ask God for the eyes to see it and the hearts to act against it.
What’s more – have you noticed that Jesus spends so much time talking about the issue inside of us, the condition, the state of our heart? He is saying, the problem is not out there with the unclean ones. Your misfortune is not because of them.
Jesus understands that tensions rise within groups. So he says, in the Sermon on the Mount, blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God. Blessed are those who find another way to resolve the inner conflict within and among us without harming the innocent victim. They are doing the work of God.
This brings us to Luke 23.
The Crowd, the Cross, and the Scapegoat
Tensions are high. The land is occupied. There have been uprisings. All leaders – civic (Herod and Pilate) and religious – are anxious about their survival. People are choosing sides. It’s a powder keg.
Jesus is accused of two things:
1. Blasphemy – a religious offense.
2. Treason – political offense.
And the crowd? They’ve absorbed all the stress of their world. If there are more insurrections, Rome is going to crush us. Every time I go to worship, there’s this religious tension. We all worship the same God.
They are all looking for someone to blame.
And what did we have read to us – Pilate brings out two people. One we know is guilty. One we know is innocent. Two goats, so to speak.
One of them will be chosen by chance. “Which of these two should I release?
Pilate says, “Who gets released to you and which one of these is going to get beaten with reeds and hurt with thorns?”
Give us Barabbas. So it is that Jesus will be the scapegoat whose death makes everyone feel better and keeps them from taking responsibility.
The scapegoat is punished. He is beaten with reeds. They hurt him with thorns – a crown of thorns. They project upon him what they are guilty of. They condemn him and dehumanize him. They exile him – he dies on a hill outside the city.
And while on the cross Jesus quotes Psalm 22 which gives the viewpoint of the human scapegoat, the innocent victim, “Why is this happening, God? I’m innocent. Why am I abandoned by everyone? Will you, God, abandon me too?”
Jesus knows it. He sees what we don’t. Yet, in this graceful place he says, on the cross, notice he says, “Forgive them. They don’t even know what they are doing.” He sees it, names it, and forgives it.
The Cross Reveals
The cross is an apocalypse – it reveals. The cross:
· Reveals our silence in the face of the unjust treatment of others.
· Reveals how easily we go along with the crowd.
· Reveals how often we exile the innocent.
· Reveals how we’ve often mistaken violence and harm for justice.
· Reveals how blind we’ve been.
But the cross doesn’t just show us ourselves. It reveals the heart of God.
And this is what stuns me: God is not unwilling to be the scapegoat. God enters that place—not to perpetuate the lie of scapegoating, but to expose it.
To break the cycle.
So the cross is not just about absorbing sin. It’s given to us to change us. To open our eyes. To offer a way forward that doesn’t hurt the innocent.
Conclusion
In the Jewish Talmud’s account of Yom Kippur, which is the Day of Atonement mentioned in Leviticus 16, a red thread was tied to the horns of the scapegoat. If the people’s sins were truly forgiven, tradition said, the thread would turn white (Yom Kippur; Talmud Yoma 67b).
The prophet Isaiah picks up on this in chapter 1 of his book. He says, speaking on behalf of God, “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.”
God is willing to be the one who really takes our sins and carries them away, but God wants us to see the truth – this belongs to you. You did this. That’s what repentance is – it’s becoming conscious of our actions and motives and not blaming someone or something outside of ourselves.
And how far does God take our sins? The Psalmist in chapter 103 says, “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is God’s love for those who respect the Lord; as far as the east is from the west, so far has God removed our transgressions from us.”
So, on this Palm Sunday, we see something profound. Jesus enters Jerusalem, not to save anyone from something out there, but to reveal and forgive what’s in here.
Welcome the scapegoat!
Let him enter the town, riding on the donkey. Let him enter and receive the crowds laying down the palms and lifting their praise.
Sing Hosanna to the scapegoat.
Jesus enters the gates not to be crowned with gold or praise, but to be crowned with the thorns.
Oh, worship the scapegoat. Let him this day enter the gates of your hearts, for he has come, not to save us from others, but to save us from ourselves.
Don’t scapegoat others. You only have one scapegoat. And he is enough.
Love the scapegoat. Defend the scapegoat. Protect the least of these.
Welcome the scapegoat and welcome Jesus Christ your Lord!
Here he comes now!
Let him enter and let his love bring peace to the chaos in our hearts and world.
For he can turn our red-hot evil into gloriously white justice for all.
