WADING RIVER CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH

SERMONS IN PRINT

Peter Vibert 2/26/06

Mark 15:1-32 “The King”

The Sanhedrin council, whom the Romans allowed to manage the religious life of occupied Israel, had made their decision. Jesus of Nazareth was a blasphemer, and deserved to die. They could probably have had him stoned to death, but instead chose the more public route of handing him over to the Roman procurator. A public death by crucifixion would suit their purposes better.

1) The King of the Jews

There was a problem, however; the Romans would not execute someone for breaking Jewish religious laws. So a new charge had to be invented: a political one that would call for Roman action. Jesus was now accused before Pontius Pilate of claiming to be “The King of the Jews.” When Pilate demurred, after questioning Jesus, we learn from the account in John’s Gospel that the priests told Pilate “anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.” Pilate was already in trouble in Rome for his poor government – there had been too many revolts in this troublesome little province. The ploy worked, and Pilate agreed to crucify a man he knew to be innocent of insurrection.

“King of the Jews” was a political title that the Romans had granted years before to Herod the Great, father of the current Herod Antipas. It was largely meaningless, but was a reward to the Herod family for their cooperation. There was no historic precedent for it – the kings of Israel’s history had been “king of Israel,” or “king of Judah” after the division of the northern and southern kingdoms. The people had been called Hebrews in the days of the patriarchs, Israelites after the Exodus, but only the residents of Judah – now the Roman province of Judea - had been called Jews until it become a general name after the Babylonian exile. The added irony was that the Herods, “Kings of the Jews,” were not even Jews but Idumeans, from the old region of Edom (named after Esau) that had been among Israel’s enemies for generations.

“Are you the king of the Jews?” Pilate asks Jesus. He has been fed the idea by the priests, and Jesus’ reply is ambiguous. “Yes, it is as you say,” (NIV) sounds more positive than it is in Greek. “You have said so,”(tNIV) or “Those are your words” comes closer to it, as many recent translations agree. Just as Jesus refused to get into a debate with the Sanhedrin and their witnesses, Jesus responds little to Pilate, provoking anger in him as Jesus had provoked in the High Priest.

According to the historians, Pilate was a cruel and vicious man, and his actions here are in character, even if some of the doubts he expresses are surprising. “I can find nothing wrong with him,” we read in John’s account. “If he were not a criminal, we would not have brought him to you,” respond the priests. It’s the old game – he must be guilty, because we say he is! “If you let him go, you are no friend of Caesar’s” say the priests. Pilate shows his ambivalence once more as the priests incite a call for the freedom of Barabbas, an insurrectionist. “What then shall I do with the king of the Jews?” “Crucify him!” The outcome is now settled.

2) Hail, King!

So Pilate hands over a man he believes is not guilty to be flogged. If you saw the movie The Passion of the Christ, you know the brutality of flogging. Leather thongs studded with metal and bone could lacerate the victim to such a degree that death sometimes occurred.

Then comes the mocking. Jesus is dressed in royal purple, a crown of thorn is pressed down on his head and beaten upon. The soldiers, with the kind of brutality some people delight in when they have an apparently weak captive and are under no discipline from their superiors, not only beat Jesus but set out to humiliate him by spitting, mocking, and kneeling before him in homage. “Hail, King of the Jews!” – a parody of their normal “Hail, Caesar.” I suppose if they had had cameras available, they would have recorded their actions.

But by now the deep irony of the whole passion of Jesus is clear. The true “king” is now being saluted by mockers. He has been anointed by a strange woman, welcomed into the city by the crowds, identified as Messiah by the High Priest, exhibited as “the King of the Jews” by Pilate, and is now “honored” by Roman soldiers who laugh as they bow before him.

To complete the honor, they will now “lift him up” on a cross, where everyone can see him, and place the title “The King of the Jews” above his head. To get to his place of honor, Jesus must tread the Via Dolorosa, the path of sorrows, too weak even to carry his own crossbar the whole distance. It is carried for him by Simon from Cyrene - the region of North Africa we now call Libya – and the tradition that he was black is very plausible.

Crucifixion was reserved by the Romans for slaves and the worst of criminals; Roman citizens were exempt from it. The person was usually naked, roped or nailed to a crossbar, their feet secured to the pole. Death came from suffocation, when after hours or days the victim could no longer hold himself up enough to breathe. Exposure and loss of blood from flogging contributed to a slow and painful death. Thousands of people were crucified for insurrection, usually alongside public roads, to impress on the people the price of confronting Roman rule.

Jesus was crucified outside the city walls of Jerusalem at a rocky place called “the Skull” – Golgotha in Hebrew, “kranion” in Greek, “calva” in Latin. It has come down to us as Calvary. It was, says Mark, 9 AM when they hung him there, on the day before the Passover Sabbath. Jesus’ clothes are gambled away by the soldiers, idly fulfilling a prophecy they know nothing of. Two bandits are also crucified that day, one on his right and one on his left – befitting a king. Some sympathetic Jews offer him wine vinegar drugged with myrrh – apparently often given as a merciful sedative – but Jesus refuses it.

3) Jesus Alone

Jesus’ friends have for the most part fled; one or two, together with the women, stay to watch. Jesus is alone. He has said almost nothing through the whole of his trials, his flogging, his crucifixion. He has been mocked by everyone who has had the chance: the soldiers, the crowds, the priests, the passers-by. “If he’s the King, the Christ, let him save himself now – the way he “saved” other people. Then we’ll believe in him!” But of course Jesus does nothing, says almost nothing. A few cryptic words of prayer, a request that John take care of his mother. Left alone, Jesus will utter a cry of desolation that will ring in the ears of his followers forever.

What does it all mean? Why this? Was there no better ending to the story? What do we say to these things? There is a part of us, of course, that knows the proper response is a silent awe. There are no words we can add, or want to add. This is not an event to comb for “significance” and tidy little “life applications.”

But the spectacle of Jesus dying leaves us asking “why?” What was this all for? There is more here, we sense, than the age-old story of innocent people suffering at the hands of the authorities. Of course that happens – far too often in a fallen world – especially at the hands of people who make up their minds in advance that you are guilty, worthless, and expendable. Rulers are rarely “nice guys;” they often have blood on their hands, however much they wash them in public as Pilate did. If you are a leader, doing nothing to restrain evil is as bad as committing it yourself.

But if all we have to learn from Jesus’ crucifixion is how to be stoic in the face of oppression, there are plenty of other brave martyrs to chose from. To say that he is our example, or that he shows how to break the power of evil by non-violent submission, is not enough. Something else is at work here – the something that Jesus knew when he prayed “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; but not what I will but what you will.” He had said, and he reaffirmed in his prayer, that he faced death willingly. It was no mistake. He had predicted it, and explained it, over and over to the Twelve. “The Son of Man came to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Jesus not only took Barabbas’ place so that he could go free: he took the place of all who trust in him; he took upon himself the burden of the sins of all his people. He knew what his people did not, that their subjection to Rome was nothing compared to their oppression by the powers of sin and death, and that he had come to ransom them from a captivity far worse than Roman rule. So for Jesus there was no politicking, no debate with Pilate, no claim to be “a king” in any sense the people would understand. He had come to die for his people.

So he remained silent, and alone – like “a lamb before his shearers,” as Isaiah had prophesied of the “Suffering Servant.” He was “bloody but unbowed,” because he willed to die, knowing that in his suffering he would heal many. So his followers would realize that he was the one who “took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows,” that he was “pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities;” that “the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds, we are healed.”

Great example though he was, great victor over sin and death though he would prove to be, at this moment of being “lifted up” as King, he was and is most of all our substitute, the one who “died for us.” So it is right that we should also be silent before his cross, and take in the wonder of the fact that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” If we are to be restored to right relationship with God, and made part of his project of restoring his world to what he created it to be, then we must embrace this death as our death, this payment as our ransom, this sacrifice as our atonement.

“The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin,” wrote John many years later. Who understood that on the day he was crucified? Who understands it now? We may never grasp fully what happened at Calvary, but the whole NT is alive with the claim that there Jesus made the great sacrifice “once for all” that deals with the guilt and the power of all our sin. “Christ died for all,” says Paul, “and so all have died... he died so that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them.”

Do you know what that means? Have you “stood at the foot of the cross” in wonder? “What wondrous love is this,” the old hymn asks, “that caused the Lord of bliss to bear the dreadful curse for my soul?” If you have never thanked the now risen and living Jesus for ransoming your soul and offering you new life by his death, do it now.

Let us pray...