Barabbas was a thief, and Barabbas was a murderer. This they knew, yet they still shouted, “Give us Barabbas!” That the man they were condemning in his stead was completely innocent never entered their minds. Yes it is true that Jesus Christ was a great spiritual leader, but Barabbas was a man of action, and that is what they wanted. Someone who would fight to restore their independence from Rome. So what if he was a murderer and a thief?, as long as the Romans were the ones he was murdering or stealing from.
Barabbas was an insurrectionist; he was their Che Guevara, ready to fight the oppressors using any and all means. Some say he was Sicari, and Sicari were dangerous folk. They hated Rome and everything associated with it. Zealots they were called because zealots they were, filled with righteous indignation and carrying long, sharp daggers concealed beneath their clothes. The Sicari were assasins, not to be messed with. For them, the righteousness of their ends justified the brutality of their means.
Sadly not all Zealots were equal, and some were not as pure in their motivations and intents as their religious pronouncements would allow. Barabbas was not just a killer, but also a thief. And whereas Judaism would allow for killing in the name of God, stealing not so much. “Thou shalt not steal.” (Ex. 20:15) The commandment is pretty clear. And lest we ever forget, the two men crucified with Jesus were both thieves. No mention is made of any other crime that they may have committed; for stealing was good enough to hang them. Indeed, it was not so very long ago that cattle rustlers and horse thieves were hung for theft in America.
So the people urged on by their rulers shouted for Barabbas, even though they knew their hero was a morally flawed champion. And Jesus, who had no flaw, they delivered over to Pilate to be crucified.
“But they cried out, ‘Away with him, away with him, crucify him!’ Pilate says unto them, ‘Shall I crucify your King?’ The chief priests answered, ‘We have no king but Caesar!’. Then delivered he him therefore unto them to be crucified. And they took Jesus, and led him away.” John 19: 15-16
Thus Barabbas was released while Jesus Christ was led away to be crucified. And Barabbas lived to fight another day. As a matter of curious irony, or maybe just cosmic poetic justice, the very group Barabbas was rumored to be a member of, the Zealots, sparked a revolt against Rome less than forty years later in 66AD that would result in the sacking of Jerusalem and the burning of the Temple in 70 AD. The very stones that Herod had used to construct the Temple in Jerusalem were carted away to Rome to build Titus’ triumphal arch.
And the people got what they asked for, and it cost them everything in the long run. They had already lost their country, but as long as they still had their Temple, they still had hope, for they still had God. But once they lost their Temple, they lost their God, and they became a people adrift, shorn from their mooring. To add insult to injury, Vespasian even renamed the land “Palestina”, no longer Judea; and the Jewish people were officially dispossessed from their ancestral heritage. All brought on by a revolt set off by a group of zealots, who thought they were acting in the country’s best interest, but in reality had doomed them all.
Who are the zealots in our day and age, and could they spark a revolt that could doom us all? Jesus said, “you shall know them by their fruits” (Mat. 7:16) Barabbas was a murderer and a thief, but he was also a revolutionary, and that made his murders and thefts justifiable. It is funny how much one can justify under the name of “revolution”, eg. murder, theft, rape, torture, etc., all for the greater good. As if the noble ends could ever justify the wicked means. So who are the revolutionaries among us, the ones who destroy our way of life and tear down that which we have built up?, for that is essentially what a revolutionary does…revolts. People are swayed by revolutionaries, because they promise that with them, things will be different, that their lives would be forever “changed”. It’s a simple message with a profound punch, for it preys on the hopeful expectations of the ignorant. “Barabbas will fight for us.” “Barabbas will set us free!” “Give us Barabbas!!!”
And Barabbas they got, having rejected God. And once they made their decision, their days became numbered, and the clock started ticking down. So in a sense, they had an election. and in that election they chose the person they believed would benefit them the most, regardless of his moral shortcomings. They did not care about his criminal associations. They just wanted a leader who would rage against the machine and lead their revolution. Give us Barabbas! So they elected Bar’abbas. The question is: will we shout “Give us Barack” to rage against the machine and lead the revolution, even if it leads to our estrangement from God and our eventual destruction? The zealots placed their political and economic considerations above their spiritual obligations, and the nation paid a terrible price.
“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” Or so thought the Zealots.