She was married to a Roman governor in trouble with the Emperor.
Judea was a tough place to rule, full of messianic hopes and dreams of independence, but it had also once been a Roman ally and was a key land bridge between Syria and Egypt. Pilate had not placated the leaders of his province, offended the religious, and bluntly it was all a bloody mess.
Pontius Pilate was in trouble and on Thursday night, he was faced with a problem. Some of the leaders had brought him a rabbi that they claimed wanted to be King of the Jews. He had found no truth to the charge, but these same leaders were threatening him with a loss of status. He “knew envy” had provoked the charge, but Pilate could not afford more trouble with the cranky Tiberius.
It was at this moment that his wife, unnamed in Scripture, but known in legend as Procula enters history:
When he was set down on the judgment seat, his wife sent unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him. (Matthew 27: 19)
Procula gave the best unheeded advice in history. Like many a pig-headed husband before him, Pilate ignored that advice and forever became the image of the bloody-minded fool too fearful to do justice and too stubborn to listen to a wise wife. The Eastern Church believes he repented and came to know the Christ he killed . . . though this death turned out to be no more his fault than any of the rest of us sinners . . . Procula had been right all along.
Procula was a spiritual woman who dreamed true dreams and gave wise counsel. She knew things mystically that were not unreasonable, Pilate knew she was right after all, but her insights were not pragmatic. Pilate was, above all else, a pragmatic man.
Can’t you hear him? “Yes, yes, dear, but you don’t understand politics. Tiberius doesn’t care about innocence; he just wants me to placate these Jewish leaders.”
Procula was a woman of the spirit and the spirit is never irrational, but it pays no attention to practical politics. Most corporations, schools, and churches that die, fail because they are too practical to listen to Procula.
What if you are married (as my wife sometimes is) to this sort of fool? What if he cannot admit that he is such a fool? What if mismanages the family business because he is so realistic that he misses reality? Pilate had been smart enough to become Roman governor, but that very cleverness was his historic undoing. He was not good enough to rule.
Too often today, as in Pilate’s time, wit and worldly wisdom are a cheap substitute for truth and the Spirit.
Procula spoke truth to her husband and then was silent. Her historic silence is louder than all the blogging on the Internet.
She was right, deeply and utterly right, and there was nothing more to say. Her husband was wrong and she left him to it. Of all the women of Holy Week, it is Procula who had the hardest job. She had to love and obey (given Roman culture) a man who entered into the very Creed of the Church as the man who made the Christ suffer. (”suffered under Pontius Pilate”)
History would vindicate her, but Easter morning must have been a shock. When the soldiers came and reported that the story was not over, that the just Man of Procula’s dream was risen, just imagine the horror.
This mistake was not dead and gone, He lived.
This error could not be washed away with all the water in a procurator’s basin. Pilate killed Jesus. Her Pilate killed Jesus. Easter meant she had been right and he was wrong. . . but it also meant her husband had killed the God-Man.
If the church is correct that Procula became a Christian, and it seems a psychologically appropriate ending, then it must have been a severe mercy when the Man she could not save, saved her. . . and her husband from their failure.
And that is the way of it for every Procula today. You know the truth, but you cannot see the truth triumph in your own power. You do what you can to save it, but it dies or so it seems.
What is truer?
Friday, when the man you love killed the Man who is Love, ends in endless Easter.
He forgives your failure and your husband’s failure from the Cross.
No Procula fails, because she will dream a dream, forget what is practical, and speak the truth . . . and Jesus Christ will make it right.
