Pilate's wife

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”. Matthew 27:19

This verse is the only place in the Gospels where we read about Pontius Pilate’s wife. It represents her unique claim to fame.

As she witnesses her husband having to deal with the prisoner Jesus – “that innocent man”, as she calls him – she experiences a bad night. We can picture her startled out of sleep, frightened, in the middle of a dream. As she sits up and tries to get her thoughts in order two truths about Jesus take shape in her mind: first, he is “innocent” (the word could also be translated “just” or “righteous”); and second, her husband is being worked on by corrupt people to do harm.

She is alarmed enough to send him a message, even though he is “sitting on the judge’s seat”, carrying out his routine duties as the Roman governor of Judea. “Have nothing to do with him!” is her plea.

Do you ever have vivid dreams? The sleep experts tell us that most if not all of us do have dreams, though we may not remember them. But there’s no getting away from the fact that when we do they can affect us powerfully, and if they take the form of a nightmare they can seriously shake us; they can seem more real than, well, reality itself. I rarely dream – but my wife tells me of a night when I woke up shouting out with fear. (My dream, as I recalled it, was about a church member who I found particularly awkward; guess, please, if you like, what the significance of that was…)

A question arises: Should we attach any significance to dreams or other forms of unplanned mental activity? The Bible is full of it, of course: the books of Daniel and Revelation are pretty much sequences of dreams put down in writing. And we also read of such dramatic experiences as that of Jacob, God’s wayward servant, alone in the open country, dreaming of “a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God ascending and descending on it” (Genesis 28). In the New Testament we find Paul and his companions, unsure of God’s guidance on their missionary work, having “a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us’” (Acts 16).

But that was then, and now is now, and we need to be careful.

Things have changed over the centuries, not least because we now have scripture in full to turn to; an undue credulity is to be avoided. But I like to think that the experience of Pilate’s wife – a dream speaking truth – was in fact a gift of God. Assuming that she knew nothing of God, how else might God communicate with her than by such means?

When we as Christians are unsure of God’s way ahead for us we will pray and read the Bible, of course (perhaps with fasting, let’s not forget that), but the answer to our prayers doesn’t itself come through direct scripture, more often through the inner working of the Holy Spirit in our minds: we experience a sense of peace, perhaps, or an unusually strong impression, or a striking coincidence. Why then not a dream or vision? Test it, of course: talk it over with a trusted friend; take time to let it sink in; soak it in prayer. But if we are serious about hearing God’s voice and receiving his guidance, why not be open to all possibilities?

God is a God who speaks, and the fact is that he has his ways of communicating with people who otherwise might not know anything of him.

About Pilate’s wife we know virtually nothing. I have assumed she knew nothing about Jesus. But who is to say? Her message to her husband suggests she had her finger on the pulse of life in Jerusalem; that she wasn’t a wife who held herself aloof from what was going on. We know from elsewhere in the Gospels that Jesus had many female followers. We know too that large crowds of people, both male and female, gathered to hear him speak and witness his miracles. Today, male politicians’ wives can barely move without cameras clicking and the curse of unwanted  publicity. But would anybody know if this particular woman chose to mingle with the crowds?

Legend has it that both Pilate and his wife became Christians; indeed, I read that to this day they are revered as saints by the Coptic (Egyptian) church. Probably untrue; but again, who knows? Was she, perhaps, a “secret disciple”? There must have been many such around in those dramatic, early days – uninstructed, yes, but people who had fallen under the spell of Jesus.

And, for all we know, there may be millions such in our world today: people who have only the vaguest idea of doctrine and church practices, but who have a simple love of Jesus. We may be in for a bit of a surprise when we reach our heavenly home. We may even look at somebody we thought we knew on earth and be tempted to say “What are you doing here?”. (And perhaps they will look at us and say back “And what are you doing here?”)

Enough! I’m letting my imagination run riot! But for a good reason, I hope… we simply cannot know what may be going on in someone else’s heart – so don’t make shallow assumptions!

A final question nags at me. People sometimes say, If only Pilate had taken his wife’s advice and “had nothing to do with” Jesus! But wait a minute… Isn’t that exactly what he did? Wasn’t the public washing of his hands exactly an attempt to distance himself from Jesus?

And the tragedy of Pilate, surely, is that it was a failed attempt? What Pilate should have done was to stand up against the mob, to look them right in the eye, to say in a loud firm voice, “This man Jesus is innocent so I set him free!” and take the consequences?

Yes, of course, of course. But who am I, weak and feeble, to say? (Or, if I may ask the question, who are you?)

Father, thank you for the enigmatic story of Pilate’s wife. Thank you for the multiple ways you have of speaking to people who have no Bible and never go to church. Please help me to tread that thin line between naïve credulity on the one hand and unjustified judgments on the other. Amen.