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http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2015:1-41&version=NIV
The final day of Jesus' earthly life...unjustly, unfairly, horribly mistreated by those He came to save. So faithful and trusting in His Heavenly Father, that ultimate personal suffering would not deter Him from His mission, to ransom you and me and lead us into God's Kingdom that has begun in Jesus and is offered to us now in part, and fully in the age to come...freedom, peace, justice, all that we most need.
Good Friday...Roman nails and wood became the altar on which our sins are washed clean...the sacrifice, the one unblemished firstborn, whose life is laid down in utter confidence in God's plan to redeem all things.
v. 15 So Pilate, wanting to gratify the crowd, released Barabbas to them; and he delivered Jesus, after he had scourged Him, to be crucified. Scourged. Just one simple word right there toward the end of verse 15. I imagine it gets read over fairly quickly with little thought to the word and what it means.
ReplyDeleteHave you ever gotten a spanking? How about with a belt? For a child it's something like 20 seconds of sheer terror. Wondering if it will ever stop. Shame and humiliation and guilt and fear. And anger and resentment and emptiness and fear. Mostly fear.
Mel Gibson does a fairly good job of portraying this event. Imagine 20 minutes of caning. Not just your back side, but your front side and your side-sides. Your head and your face and your calves and our feet until every single muscle in your body screams out in unimaginable pain, to the point that you can hardly stand up.
And then the scourge. Yes, THEN the scourge. bits of bone or shell and heavy metal balls attached to leather straps, on the end of a whip. Anything that would tear out flesh in hunks and streaks or cause deep contusions. In Mel Gibson's Passion, it portrayed the soldiers that performed this heinous act as being exhausted from their efforts. Who knows how long it must have gone on for. If you would like to know more about scourging, check out http://the-crucifixion.org/scourging.htm.
Just one simple word doesn't quite do justice to the sacrifice Jesus made for us. It seems so easy to let Good Friday just pass by, but I can't. No wonder he was sweating blood in the garden.
I have read and prayed, but I have no words for today.
ReplyDeleteIt is finished.
ReplyDeleteNot quite...
ReplyDeleteI have never before thought of Jesus in the sense of a person, like us.. but from the readings before this, I have. So, to read this now it means so much more to me. Because now the way Jesus was treated is so much more relateable to me. I am weeping, to think of the pain the utter agony, and the fear, that Jesus must have felt that day. I feel terrible to imagine the suffering he must have experienced. And He did so willingly.. for me. For all of us. It humbles me, and gives me pause to think about my life... am I really living a life that is worthy of the struggles that our Lord went through? Truthfully, I'm not sure.... Thank you Jesus, I'm sorry for what you went through and will work harder to make my life a worthy reflection of this day!!
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