IT HELPS to have a Sunday Gospel that is unambiguous. People need clarity if the scripture is to direct how they live. Perhaps this explains why the lectionary stops before Pilate’s unfathomable question, “What is truth?” (verse 38). But I wish it had not; for the omission constricts our view of Pilate’s reactions to Jesus, and the nature of the unfolding contest.

All through their titanic verbal joust, moral sands seem to shift underfoot. Its outcome, too, feels enigmatic — in part, because John chooses not to present it crudely as a clash between good and evil.

We take Jesus’s power for granted, knowing that his cloak of lowliness masks a reality in which we glory. But we are still conscious of Pilate’s power. He can declare life or death, a power delegated from absolute monarchy. He exercises it surrounded by the trappings of the kingdoms of this world: grand locations, rich clothing, armed enforcement, plentiful resources. It was probably even embodied in the groomed, scraped, and plucked cleanliness that was as important to most Romans as godliness could be to faithful Judaeans.

Pilate embodies Rome. It is not merely a city but an ideal, located in its people’s appreciation of order, tradition, and law, which were tantamount to expressions of the divine. Jesus the Judaean embodies a form of divine virtue — compassion —which Pilate the Roman would struggle to identify as virtuous at all. The reality of Roman virtue is embodied in its etymology: virtus is the quality of being vir, a man. That is one reason that students of Latin learn that it can mean “(manly) courage” as much as ”virtue”. It is a practical, not an abstract, quality.

Pilate does not stand alone in being perplexed at Jesus’s embodiment of divine virtue and truth. Most politicians and social leaders would share that perplexity to a degree, for idealism is not easily reconciled with the human necessity of getting things done. It is ill at ease with compromise, and reluctant to smirch itself with grubby practicalities.

Yet, it is part of the paradox in this encounter that Pilate does perceive something of the truth in the man before him. Certainly, according to Matthew (27.24), he sees enough to make him realise that political necessity is forcing him to punish one person as a sacrifice for the sake of the security (as he would see it) of many. So, he performs a public act of ritual ablution, a self-absolution, which has unmistakeable meaning for everyone who sees it, both Judaean and Roman: he washes his hands before the crowd.

Jesus and Pilate have something in common that helps us to grasp the message of this Gospel: they both believe that there is such a thing as truth. Their battle of words unfolds like artful cross-questioning in a high-stakes legal case. A prosecuting barrister tries to trip the accused into revealing the truth. The accused finds ways of replying to the question which satisfy the court’s expectation that questions be answered, and yet sidesteps responding in terms that might appear to prove wrongdoing and lead to his conviction.

Sometimes, I listen to a politician being interviewed and hear them attempt similar verbal manoeuvring. But, more often than not, their manoeuvres are characterised not by defending the truth, but by parroting learned formulae (one can almost hear the voice of their coach: “Deflect, deflect, deflect!”). Then I become annoyed with that politician, but also with the badgering interviewer’s “When-did-you-stop-beating-your-spouse?” style of questioning. There is a problem here at the heart of our public discourse: a conviction that conflict is a path to truth.

Pilate believes that there is such a thing as truth. Jesus knows that there is. Their dialogue is not hectoring or point-scoring. Each is genuinely honouring his interlocutor, by listening and communicating as best he can. It is not an equal contest, of course. One has all the legal advantage, the other almost all of the moral advantage.

I have somehow managed to write about the Gospel for this Sunday without using the “K-word” or its cognates. Perhaps this is unhelpful, but it may still be justifiable, so long as we put Pilate’s question back where it belongs; for this is a Gospel more about truth than sovereignty. After all, sovereignty is merely a matter of fortune, whereas truth is a journey to a longed-for destination.