Friday, 6 April 2012

Who Is Responsible? - Holy Week Reflection 5

I don’t think you need the Bible passage today.  If you want to read it, the passage is Mark 15:22-39; one of the four accounts of the Crucifixion.

Nearly two thousand years ago the second person of the Holy Trinity that is our God, the Word of God made flesh was executed in an obscure province of the Roman Empire.  He was stripped naked and his bare flesh, already torn to shreds by Roman whips and bleeding profusely, was laid again a rough wooden cross.  Huge thick nails were driven through his wrists and ankles, shattering bone and then he was hauled upright to die slowly from suffocation, his every life giving breath causing him agonising pain.  After enduring this torture for hours he died what was considered at the time to be the most shameful death possible.

Who was responsible for torturing the God who created the universe and who loves us more than we can know or imagine?

Was it the soldiers who drove the nails through his hands and feet?  They were only obeying their orders and had no say in who they crucified.

Was it Pilate?  He was the Roman governor who finally sentenced Jesus to death; giving in to the demands of the crowds perhaps because he feared losing his own position if he refused and there was trouble.

Was it Caiaphas and the other Jewish leaders?  They certainly wanted Jesus dead as the saw him as a trouble maker who could bring the Roman authorities down hard upon them and their people.

Was it Judas Iscariot?  His betrayal made it possible for the Jewish authorities to get their hands on Jesus.

No, it was none of the above, at least not entirely.  I am responsible for Jesus’ death on the cross nearly two thousand years ago; but not only I am responsible:  you are responsible too and so is every other human being who has ever sinned by selfishly going their own way rather than God’s way.

Ours were the hands that made the cross of shame.

Ours were the hands that wielded the hammer that drove in the nails.

Ours were the voices that jeered as he hung in agony on the cross; dying that we might live.

No, we were not there; but we are sinful selfish human beings, no different to those who crucified our Lord.  More than that, Jesus hung on that cross, enduring untold agonies, in our place; taking the punishment for sin that is rightly ours.  He suffered that death so that we could have eternal life.  Moreover, had you been the only human being who ever existed Jesus would have done that just for you.

In the light of all that Jesus did for you and gave to you; what will you offer him?

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