Shouting Stones: Pilate's Wife

What's to be done? How do we avoid such insanity? Just saying we want to isn't going to do it.

Curious about Pilate's wife. She didn't buy into it. At least not hook, line, and sinker. She had just enough independence to challenge the tide of insanity. Three people in Matthew's gospel were able to do that. Three characters in Matthew's story allowed sanity to break into their consciousness as they drew close to the face of terror. The astrologers listened to a dream and went home without talking to Herod. Joseph listened to a dream that sent the holy family scurrying to Egypt, and then back again when the coast was clear. Lastly, Pilate's wife.

We know very little about Pilate's wife; so little in fact that people feel compelled to make stuff up. I hear she and her man are saints in the Orthodox church—I'm leaving that one alone. But we know one thing about her. She attended to her dreams. She listened for a voice that did not originate in the corrupted heart of tyrants; she listened for the voice driving creation itself. She remained just one step away from corporate insanity.

Is that the key? Is that all it takes? I wish. Truth is, we can't do anything about it. This is one of those things that is going to be worked out in the tides of evolutionary history. But we can attend to those tides. We can step toward the creative voice of God that governs their flow, and step away from corporate insanity.

But I hear the modernist world telling me that this voice is a figment of my imagination. Insanity I say. How do I know? I dreamed it. Haven't you?