Good Friday (Mark 15)

Good Friday (From Mark 15)

The Soldiers led him out, weary, whipped and bloodied from his beating, the mocking words of their taunt, as they struck the blindfolded man, still ringing in his ears.

“Prophecy who hit you!”

But Pontious Pilates attempt to placate the crowd had failed. He had crumbled to their demand to crucify a man he knew to be innocent and released instead a criminal held for murder and insurrection.

The basis for the charge bought against this Jesus? That he was a rabble rouser.

It now seemed like a joke that he had appeared such a threat to them just minutes ago. His thorny crown was jammed deep into the skin around his skull, slammed in by staff blows from the soldiers, the free flowing blood from his wounds already soaking through the clothes they had hastily thrown back upon him.

He cut a forlorn figure, as he staggered over to the cross that had been waiting for him his whole

life.

There he was forced to bear all the weight of it upon his back, the very thing that would soon bear all of his weight, as he bore the weight of the world, and he staggered and stumbled through the streets, where weeks ago crowds laid palm leaves at his feet, cheering then but, for the most part, jeering now.

Perhaps it was Jesus' sorry state that caused the soldiers to select Simon from the crowds (a man from the African city of Cyrene), on his way home to that place, and to compel him to carry the cross on behalf of the stumbling Messiah. He had just been passing and was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but they made him haul the cross, as the crowd followed, all the way to Golgotha, the place of the skull.

When they arrived at that place Jesus was offered wine mixed with myrrh, supposed to have a narcotic effect to dull the unimaginable pain that he was about to endure.

Jesus refused it.

Then they crucified him there, stretching out his limbs over the cross and hammering nails through his hands and feet as he was laid on top of it, and then hoisting the cross vertically until it violently dropped down, jolting into its slot, Jesus' body weight shifting with it. He was now hanging from those nails.

It was about nine o clock in the morning and the sun was gaining strength.

As he hung there the soldiers, in plain sight, cast lots for his clothes. Whatever their reasons for wanting them, the message was clear to all. He wouldn't be needing them again.

Above the head of the bloodied and stripped-down saviour was written the charge against him

“The King of the Jews”

They also crucified two rebels on either side of him. The people who passed hurled insults at him. They shook their heads in disdain and said,

‘So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself!’

and It wasn't just the crowds who mocked him. The chief priests and the teachers of the law wanted their chance too. Gleefully mocking him among themselves they said

‘He saved others,but he can’t save himself! Let this Messiah, this king of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.’

And to add even more insult to the indignity he was suffering, even those crucified with him initially began to join in with the insults against him.

After three hours, at mid-day, the Sun arriving at its zenith, a darkness came over the whole land for a further three more hours, and then Jesus in spite of his ordeal and the respiratory torture his body was under, cried out in a loud voice.

"Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" (which means ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’)

Some people in the crowd mistakenly thought he was calling for the Prophet Elijah. One man hurried to the foot of the cross with a sponge that he had filled with sour wine, and hoisted it on a stick for Jesus to drink. The wine was offered as a thirst quenching drink, in an attempt to keep him conscious a little longer. Having refused the drugged wine earlier, this wine he took.

The man then revealed his motive when he then said,

“ Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down,”

 

But Elijah did not come.

Instead, there was a loud cry.

They saw the silhouette of the suffering saviour bow his head. Jesus had breathed his last.

In the temple the curtain, at least 45 feet high and 4 inches thick, was torn in two, from top to bottom.

The Centurion who was stood in front of the cross, a veteran of many crucifixions, seeing how Jesus had died said,

“Surely this man was the Son of God!”