St John’s Cathedral Oban
Good Friday Watch
Murdoch MacKenzie
22nd April 2011
MARK 15:1-20 Trial and Mockery ‘After mocking him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him.’ ‘Oh, who am I that for my sake my Lord should take frail flesh and die?’ How on earth can we understand all of this? Jerusalem in the time of Jesus was rather like North Africa today, a place of unrest and revolution. On Wednesday this week in Misrata seven Libyan civilians, a Ukrainian doctor and a British photojournalist were killed. Tim Hetherington who once put his own body between a man with a gun and the person who was about to be killed.
So we should realise that Jesus was not killed in a cathedral on a cross between two candlesticks but on a rubbish tip outside the city wall of Jerusalem, between two thieves. His mockery and his trial were for real. He was bound, he was flogged, crowned with piercing thorns, struck on the head with a reed, spat upon, stripped and led out to be crucified. ‘Oh, who am I that for my sake my Lord should take frail flesh and die?’
‘There is a green hill far away’. But it is not so far away after all. It’s right there on our television screens every night.
In the time of Jesus the Jews had no power to carry out the death sentence. Such a sentence had to be passed by the Roman governor and carried out by the Roman authorities. It was for that reason that the Jews brought Jesus before Pilate. But when they brought him before the Sanhedrin they charged him with blasphemy, that he had dared to call himself the Son of God. But before Pilate that charge was never mentioned. To Pilate such a charge would simply have seemed a matter of Jewish religion and superstition. So, instead, they told Pilate that he was trying to stop people paying taxes to Caesar and saying that he himself was the king. Here was a political and not a religious reason for arresting him.
So Pilate asked him: ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ Jesus simply answered ‘You say so’. So later on above Jesus on the cross in Hebrew, in Latin and in Greek were written the words ‘Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews’. The man, born to be king, was dying as a king in a place so cosmopolitan, so much at the cross-roads of the ancient world, that it had to be written in three languages. And when the Chief Priests of the Jews asked Pilate not to write ‘The King of the Jews’ but ‘This man said, I am the King of the Jews’ Pilate answered in the immortal words: ‘What I have written I have written’.
Jesus kept quiet. And so there was a choice the crowd had to make. As today in Libya, there is a choice, in the midst of insurrection. But who was the real revolutionary? Jesus or Barabbas? Barabbas whose name means literally ‘son of the father’. Barabbas was one of the Sicarii or ‘dagger men’ who were infamous for their stealth in political assassination. So the crowd had a choice between two fundamentally different kinds of revolutionary practice, violence or non-violence. The kingdom vision heralded by Jesus or the restorationist vision represented by Barabbas the guerrilla fighter. Meanwhile the chief priests are frantically lobbying for the status quo. As long as the masses succumb to the wily machinations of the ruling classes, their continued domination is guaranteed. The word in Greek for the crowd asking Pilate to release a prisoner is the same word as was used by Salome in Mark 6:24 when she asked her mother about the head of John the Baptist.
The crowd is possessed shouting out: ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ And Pilate asks the key question: ‘Why, what evil has he done?’ But they shouted all the more: ‘Crucify him!’ So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas for them; and after flogging Jesus he handed him over to be crucified.
The word in Greek and in Latin for ‘satisfy’ is a legal term for releasing the lesser revolutionary and handing the true dissident over to the customary post-verdict flagellation.
The chief priests recognised that a violent man like Barabbas was of little threat to them as long as they connived with Pilate and Caesar. Jesus, on the other hand, preached about a kingdom which would undermine their whole social order. A kingdom which was and is about love and forgiveness even for a thief on the cross. There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin. He only could unlock the gate of heaven and let us in.
They rise, and needs will have
My dear Lord done away;
A murderer they save, the Prince of Life they slay.
Yet cheerful he to suffering goes,
That he his foes from thence might free.
Oh, who am I, that for my sake
My Lord should take frail flesh and die?
Amen
Murdoch MacKenzie
Good Friday Watch
Murdoch MacKenzie
22nd April 2011
MARK 15:1-20 Trial and Mockery ‘After mocking him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him.’ ‘Oh, who am I that for my sake my Lord should take frail flesh and die?’ How on earth can we understand all of this? Jerusalem in the time of Jesus was rather like North Africa today, a place of unrest and revolution. On Wednesday this week in Misrata seven Libyan civilians, a Ukrainian doctor and a British photojournalist were killed. Tim Hetherington who once put his own body between a man with a gun and the person who was about to be killed.
So we should realise that Jesus was not killed in a cathedral on a cross between two candlesticks but on a rubbish tip outside the city wall of Jerusalem, between two thieves. His mockery and his trial were for real. He was bound, he was flogged, crowned with piercing thorns, struck on the head with a reed, spat upon, stripped and led out to be crucified. ‘Oh, who am I that for my sake my Lord should take frail flesh and die?’
‘There is a green hill far away’. But it is not so far away after all. It’s right there on our television screens every night.
In the time of Jesus the Jews had no power to carry out the death sentence. Such a sentence had to be passed by the Roman governor and carried out by the Roman authorities. It was for that reason that the Jews brought Jesus before Pilate. But when they brought him before the Sanhedrin they charged him with blasphemy, that he had dared to call himself the Son of God. But before Pilate that charge was never mentioned. To Pilate such a charge would simply have seemed a matter of Jewish religion and superstition. So, instead, they told Pilate that he was trying to stop people paying taxes to Caesar and saying that he himself was the king. Here was a political and not a religious reason for arresting him.
So Pilate asked him: ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ Jesus simply answered ‘You say so’. So later on above Jesus on the cross in Hebrew, in Latin and in Greek were written the words ‘Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews’. The man, born to be king, was dying as a king in a place so cosmopolitan, so much at the cross-roads of the ancient world, that it had to be written in three languages. And when the Chief Priests of the Jews asked Pilate not to write ‘The King of the Jews’ but ‘This man said, I am the King of the Jews’ Pilate answered in the immortal words: ‘What I have written I have written’.
Jesus kept quiet. And so there was a choice the crowd had to make. As today in Libya, there is a choice, in the midst of insurrection. But who was the real revolutionary? Jesus or Barabbas? Barabbas whose name means literally ‘son of the father’. Barabbas was one of the Sicarii or ‘dagger men’ who were infamous for their stealth in political assassination. So the crowd had a choice between two fundamentally different kinds of revolutionary practice, violence or non-violence. The kingdom vision heralded by Jesus or the restorationist vision represented by Barabbas the guerrilla fighter. Meanwhile the chief priests are frantically lobbying for the status quo. As long as the masses succumb to the wily machinations of the ruling classes, their continued domination is guaranteed. The word in Greek for the crowd asking Pilate to release a prisoner is the same word as was used by Salome in Mark 6:24 when she asked her mother about the head of John the Baptist.
The crowd is possessed shouting out: ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ And Pilate asks the key question: ‘Why, what evil has he done?’ But they shouted all the more: ‘Crucify him!’ So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas for them; and after flogging Jesus he handed him over to be crucified.
The word in Greek and in Latin for ‘satisfy’ is a legal term for releasing the lesser revolutionary and handing the true dissident over to the customary post-verdict flagellation.
The chief priests recognised that a violent man like Barabbas was of little threat to them as long as they connived with Pilate and Caesar. Jesus, on the other hand, preached about a kingdom which would undermine their whole social order. A kingdom which was and is about love and forgiveness even for a thief on the cross. There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin. He only could unlock the gate of heaven and let us in.
They rise, and needs will have
My dear Lord done away;
A murderer they save, the Prince of Life they slay.
Yet cheerful he to suffering goes,
That he his foes from thence might free.
Oh, who am I, that for my sake
My Lord should take frail flesh and die?
Amen
Murdoch MacKenzie
