John 18:28-32: in context

It is early morning, and Jesus has been led from the house of Caiaphas to the Praetorium, the residence of the Roman governor Pilate. And John records a small, damning detail about the men who brought him. They themselves would not enter the Praetorium, he writes, so that they would not be defiled, but could eat the Passover. To step inside a Gentile's house would render them ceremonially unclean and disqualify them from the feast, so they stand carefully outside. They are meticulous about this. Not one of them will cross that threshold and risk defilement.

Sit with the picture, because the irony is enormous and John means us to see it. These same men, at this same hour, are in the middle of engineering the death of an innocent man. They have arranged a night trial, hunted for false witnesses, and are now handing Jesus over to be executed on charges they know are hollow. And their scruple, the thing they are anxious not to get wrong, is a rule about which doorway they may stand in so they can keep the feast clean. They will not risk a ceremonial defilement, while committing the gravest moral evil imaginable. They strain out the gnat of ritual impurity and swallow the camel of judicial murder. The external observance is polished; the conscience underneath it is asleep.

That is a warning aimed straight at religious people, which is to say, at me. It is entirely possible to be scrupulous about the externals of faith, careful about the rules I can see and measure and be seen keeping, while remaining blind to some real and serious wrong in my own conduct. The tidiness of my observance can even become the very thing that hides the rot. Where am I, like these men, fussing over keeping the outward rules spotless while stepping right past a grave wrong I would rather not look at, standing careful outside the doorway while doing evil with both hands?