John 19

I see love incarnate in suffering flesh, a body bearing a body in pain for love.

When I say the creeds, Pilate’s name stands as a warning back to myself.

On the cross, Jesus needed actual water. No one gave him any.

God is the encounter we can't control.

Peter doesn’t want to suffer. Who does?

The Brazilian activist was killed by the same world that killed Jesus—a world that can’t bear love.

Who were the people who watched Jesus' crucifixion?

They stand witness, watching in agony at his agony. 

John 18:1–19:42

Small deceptions work like a narcotic, making us feel nicely respectable. Especially in church.

There are many reasons to deny Jesus, and we all have one. 

The Gospel of John uses the word "truth" more than any other book in the Bible and way more than the other Gospels combined. Not only that, but many of the most-quoted verses in John, the ones that have shaped Christian discourse over the centuries, have been concerned with the question of truth.

The callousness of Pontius Pilate was legendary: if you could choose your judge, you did not want him. Jesus cannot choose.