“Let us then not be ashamed of the cross of our Savior, but rather glory in it… For it was not a mere man who died for us, but the Son of God, God made man.” – St. Cyril of Jerusalem
Mark 15:1-20: First thing in the morning, the chief priests together with the elders and scribes, in short the whole Sanhedrin, had their plan ready. They had Jesus bound and took him away and handed him over to Pilate. Pilate questioned him, ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ ‘It is you who say it,’ he answered. And the chief priests brought many accusations against him. Pilate questioned him again, ‘Have you no reply at all? See how many accusations they are bringing against you!’ But, to Pilate’s amazement, Jesus made no further reply. At festival time Pilate used to release a prisoner for them, anyone they asked for. Now a man called Barabbas was then in prison with the rioters who had committed murder during the uprising. When the crowd went up and began to ask Pilate the customary favour, Pilate answered them, ‘Do you want me to release for you the king of the Jews?’ For he realised it was out of jealousy that the chief priests had handed Jesus over. The chief priests, however, had incited the crowd to demand that he should release Barabbas for them instead. Then Pilate spoke again. ‘But in that case,’ he said to them, ‘what am I to do with the man you call king of the Jews?’ They shouted back, ‘Crucify him!’ ‘Why?’ Pilate asked them. ‘What harm has he done?’ But they shouted all the louder, ‘Crucify him!’ So Pilate, anxious to placate the crowd, released Barabbas for them and, having ordered Jesus to be scourged, handed him over to be crucified.
The soldiers led him away to the inner part of the palace, that is, the Praetorium, and called the whole cohort together. They dressed him up in purple, twisted some thorns into a crown and put it on him. And they began saluting him, ‘Hail, king of the Jews!’ They struck his head with a reed and spat on him; and they went down on their knees to do him homage. And when they had finished making fun of him, they took off the purple and dressed him in his own clothes. They led him out to crucify him.
Christ the Lord Why do so many people refuse to accept Christ’s rule in their lives? In Christ’s Kingdom, only Christ can be king. In Christ’s Kingdom, everything depends on him, and our lives take on meaning only insofar as we are collaborating with him, under his orders, in the fulfillment of his will. His is the Kingdom of salvation, but he is the Savior, not us. Our own achievements avail us nothing apart from him. And that is hard for the arrogant to accept.
The streak of diabolical pride that we all inherited with original sin prefers to build up one’s own kingdom, by one’s own efforts, on one’s own terms. This was the attraction of Barabbas. He was no petty, groveling thief. He was a violent criminal, most likely a member of the band of Sicarii, known for the concealed daggers they carried around with them. This was one of numerous insurrectionist groups that wanted to throw off the Roman yoke once and for all, using lawlessness, intimidation, and violence. In other words, they used their own strength, willpower, and wits exclusively, regardless of God’s plan or will. We too always have a tendency to want to do things our own way. We may even say we want to build up Christ’s Kingdom, but if we are not willing to obey God’s law and Christ’s Vicar, we can be sure we are falling into this blinding and destructive error of personal judgment.
When we choose Christ and his Lordship, we choose to humble ourselves and obey. Self-reliance may appear more glorious and worthy, but self-forgetfulness is true greatness. In the end, that is the only path to authentic, lasting fulfillment. Jesus himself stressed it: “Anyone who exalts himself up will be humbled, and anyone who humbles himself will be exalted” (Matthew 23:12).
Christ the Teacher Two parties are responsible, immediately and historically, for Christ’s condemnation (although theologically and more profoundly, every sinner is responsible): the Jewish leaders and Pilate. They each make the wrong decision. They each exemplify two selfish tendencies that often lead us as well to make wrong decisions.
Pilate is anxious and frustrated because Jesus remains silent. The one answer Jesus gives (“It is you who say it”) throws the responsibility back onto Pilate – as if Jesus is saying, “You know in your heart that my Kingdom is no threat to you or Caesar; it is a Kingdom of the heart. So you decide what to do.” Pilate recognizes that justice would dictate setting Jesus free, because he has done nothing against the Roman laws. But he knows that if he doesn’t accommodate the Jewish leaders and the crowd, he risks causing a public outcry. That could wind him up in trouble with his superiors and endanger whatever hopes he had for professional advancement. He is ambitious. He cares first about his career; only secondly is he concerned with the reason his career exists in the first place: the promotion of justice and the common good. How frequently ambition rides roughshod over truth and justice, to the tragic detriment of the common good! Even otherwise faithful Christians often compromise their consciences in order to pursue a Machiavellian course of justifying good ends by accepting – actively or passively – evil means.
St. Mark tells us explicitly that the Jewish leaders were acting out of jealousy. They had achieved their position of influence through long and exhausting effort, and they weren’t about to let this upstart rabbi from Nazareth turn their comfortable order of things topsy-turvy. They held the allegiance and admiration of the common people, they held the purse strings of the Temple, and they maintained a certain hold on the Roman authorities. If this Jesus was given free rein, they might lose all that. And so they violate their own laws of justice and then strong-arm Pilate into doing away with him. How destructive a force jealousy can be! We are so attached to our superior position, to the praise we receive, that we lower ourselves to calumny, insults, manipulations, and even violence in order to stay on top. And when we find ourselves on the bottom, the other side of the jealousy coin, envy, leads us to pursue the same despicable tactics to climb a little bit higher.
Ambition, jealousy, envy – the devil made use of these passions to consummate his destruction of the Savior two thousand years ago, and they are still some of his favorite weapons today.
Christ the Friend St. Mark relates only briefly the sufferings of Christ between the moment of condemnation and the picking up of his cross, but we should pause a little and consider them more thoroughly. They, as with all his sufferings, reveal the heart of our most faithful friend.
Pilate had Jesus scourged, and then he followed the Roman ritual of sentencing someone to crucifixion, which meant that Jesus was put into the hands of the guards for a brief period while the cross was readied. This is when the soldiers put on their little play, their game of mock worship. In the scourging and the mockery, Jesus enters more deeply into the two most common arenas of human suffering. He wants to experience everything we experience, even more intensely, so that we never have to suffer alone.
The scourging was the high point of physical suffering. The evangelists refrain from describing it in detail – they didn’t need to; it was such a common public punishment in ancient times that all their readers would have seen more than one scourging with their own eyes. The leather whip that was used to tear into the victim’s bare back was tipped with pieces of sharp bone or rough metal, so that it literally shredded the flesh. It is recorded that men had eyes torn out during a scourging. Others were scourged to death, and it drove some men completely insane. Jesus is no stranger to physical suffering, that constant and debilitating companion of human life. He wanted to assure us that he suffers with us, and that our physical suffering is never in vain if we unite it to his. In his acceptance of physical torture he exercised the sacrificial, loving obedience that undid Adam’s disobedience and redeemed mankind from sin. Through prayer and the Eucharist, our acceptance of physical suffering can repair the sins of disobedience and self-indulgence that still abound and can apply Christ’s grace to our own needy souls and those we pray for.
The soldiers’ mockery involved physical suffering too, but it added a new element. They laughed at Jesus. They made fun of him. They cut him with sarcasm and disdain. They ridiculed him, scorned him, and humiliated him. Have you ever been laughed at? Have you ever been made fun of? Have you ever been spat at? Many times ridicule is even more painful than a physical blow; many times we would prefer the worst physical torments to vicious taunts from those we love. Jesus chose to suffer both. Never, not even in our loneliest, saddest moments, do we have to suffer alone. Jesus has trod this path too ahead of us, because he wants his friendship to be total. We can always find comfort and meaning no matter how anguished and hopeless life appears, because Christ has descended as far as we can go, letting the light of his love shine even there. There too the Savior reigns.
