Claudia

“In my distress I prayed to the Lord,

and the Lord answered me and set me free.

The Lord is for me, so I will have no fear.

What can mere people do to me?

Yes, the Lord is for me; he will help me.

I will look in triumph at those who hate me.

It is better to take refuge in the Lord

than to trust in people.

It is better to take refuge in the Lord

than to trust princes.

Psalm 118:5-9, NLT

When I was in grade school I went with my dad to pick up a bull he bought from someone in the

community. I was standing by the open gate to the corral with a couple of boys from the other family

while our dads discussed a strategy for isolating and loading the bull. As we stood by the gate the herd

came from the pasture and walked right out the open gate. We kids tried to warn our dads, but they

weren’t listening to us. Eventually they looked around and asked us where the herd was. We just

pointed to the field across the road. My, they took off in a hurry.

In the Gospel of Matthew we see a very brief story of a woman who spoke bravely on behalf of Jesus to

her husband, Pontius Pilate. The woman is not named but in the centuries since this brief incident she is

called Claudia.

The inclusion of this brief story does more to profile Pilate and the Jewish high priest, Caiphas, than it

does to identify Pilate’s wife as an unsung hero who may have changed the course of history. This story

illustrates the character of Pilate as a man with a hardened heart who wants to avoid an uprising in the

small occupied country where he has been assigned. Caiphas is the manipulative power monger who

fractured the population with lies. What is attributed to Pilate’s wife is likely a representation of the

small number of powerless people who may have understood the truth but were not heard.

How much progress have we made in the last two-thousand years? Do we hear the voices of minorities,

the poor, the ill and the children? If this story were written today would the wife of Pilate be a hero with

a name? Or would she be warned and given an explanation and then silenced?

 

Dear Lord, guide my heart and my tongue so that I may hear truth and speak it without fear. Build my

trust in you alone, Lord. Amen

 

written by Denise Mainquist