Most people in Australia don’t spend much time thinking about Jesus – that’s for ‘religious types’ to do. Unless people are forced to think about Jesus, he doesn’t enter their minds at all. In the gospel of John, the Roman governor Pontius Pilate was kind of like this too.
He had a rocky relationship with the Jewish people he officially ruled over. And now they want him to sentence someone to death who they can’t even list a charge for or present evidence against (John 18:30
). This man Jesus seems like an unusual guy, but it is clearly a religious matter, nothing to do with him. But when he can’t simply make Jesus go away, he looks a little deeper and becomes more disturbed. He doesn’t think Jesus is a political threat, but there is something not normal about this man. For Jesus’ part, he never denies being a king, and claims to have come to show the truth, what reality is really like.
Jesus is a divisive figure. You cannot sit on the fence, you are either for Jesus or against him. If you already trust Jesus, you need to show this with passion and not have Jesus as some side interest in your life. But if like Pilate you are unsure about Jesus, you need to look into it further – the reality might surprise you.
(Based on All Nations Sunday teaching, 28 March 2010 
).