LENT 2016 – GOING TO JERUSALEM

Holy Week, Wednesday, March 23

The Soldiers Mock Jesus: Matthew 27: 27 – 31

            It amazes me sometimes what humankind can dream up to inflict pain and torture on each other. Crucifixion was deliberately meant to be a cruel, demeaning, barbaric, painful, humiliating experience. Rome used crucifixion as a method to send a very clear message to the ordinary, common man-in-the street – see what happens when anyone gets out of line and incurs Rome’s displeasure. It was meant to act as a deterrent although there seemed to be a never-ending supply of criminals, bandits, seditionists, and troublemakers to fill their crosses.

            To oversee the crucifixion was probably a routine and regular duty for the soldiers.  I expect it was not the most pleasant of duties, even for them.  It may have been left mostly to the lower ranks. They may have been under orders or, at least, were expected to make this experience as miserable as possible for the condemned prisoner.  These soldiers obliged, rather eagerly if you ask me.

Perhaps, if one so dehumanizes and degrades another human being, the victims cease to be real human beings any longer. It’s not a fellow human being who is nailed to a cross, but just a piece of inhuman filth and waste, hardly even an animal. It’s human cruelty at its worst.

So they made their sport of Jesus - mocking, spitting, jabbing a crown of thorns on his head, beatings, whippings and lots if it. He was a dead man walking anyway; what did it matter? That much physical abuse might have killed a lesser man even before they dragged him away to crucify him.

Our inclination is to look away and run away from this despicable scene. We will come back on Easter Sunday when the bad news is over and Good Friday will be behind us. The Risen Lord is far more palatable than the Crucified One.

This level of inhumanity is just so ugly. We can’t bear to watch.

No one, not even our worst enemies, deserve such treatment.

Why do such bad things happen to good people?

            Why would God put his own flesh and blood through such horror?

            There are no easy, simple, happy answers to these sorts of questions. I wish there were.

            But this I believe. Jesus takes the abuse, and by so doing he represents every human being that is ever beaten down, or terrorized, or is bullied, or is abandoned, or is lost in suffering and pain, or is a victim of violence, injustice or war, or is dehumanized by oppression and tyranny, or is mocked and ostracized because of who he or she is, or is innocent and is treated as guilty or is weighted down by sins.

            Somehow, someway, oddly even, there is a peculiar strength in understanding this scene.

            “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed,” (Isaiah    53:5).