Mark 15:29-32, CEB - People walking by insulted him, shaking their heads and saying, “Ha! So you were going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, were you? Save yourself and come down from that cross!”
In
the same way, the chief priests were making fun of him among themselves,
together with the legal experts. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t
save himself. Let the Christ, the king of Israel, come down from the cross.
Then we’ll see and believe.” Even those who had been crucified with Jesus
insulted him.
Meditating on this passage allowed
me to notice a surprising detail I had always missed before now. The chief priests begin their mocking of
Jesus, by saying, “He saved others. . . “ They freely admit that Jesus saved
others. They knew and acknowledged Jesus
had saved others, yet they were determined to see Him killed nonetheless. This makes the irony in their next statement
pretty thick:
“Let the Christ, the king of
Israel, come down from the cross. Then we’ll see and believe.”
They just
acknowledged they had already seen and believed. In their attempts to mock Jesus, they
inadvertently condemn themselves.
It is particularly curious anyway,
the disposition of people comfortable with publicly mocking a man hanging on a
cross taking their last breaths. As I
try to take my own frequent advice and put myself in the place of the villains in
the story, I imagine that in order to do such a thing, I would have had to nurture
and develop an intense hate for someone.
To revel in another human being’s horrific demise, I imagine that I
would have to see them as something other than another human being. And as soon as I realize that truth, I
realize that I am capable of such awfulness. This is because I know I have been
guilty at times of dehumanizing my foes.
Doing so is a defense mechanism, a
way of convincing myself of my rightness in feeling so hateful towards
another. This defense persists admirably
until I see clearly in these narratives of Jesus on the cross that Jesus never
allowed Himself such mechanisms. Jesus
had more reason to foster hate for these people standing around Him gawking at
His suffering than I ever I have in all of my half-century of life. He had been beaten and battered until He
could no longer stand. He had a crown of
thorns shoved into his skull. He is
hanging on one of the most tortuous execution devices ever devised. And having innocently endured all of that, He
is now being mocked and teased by people who have just admitted His amazing deeds,
yet want Him dead anyway. Putting myself
briefly in Jesus’s place, I cannot imagine not intensely hating the people
doing this.
Yet Jesus never indulged the
hatred. In Mark’s account, he simply
absorbs the animosity and remains silent.
He persists in loving all, even those who hate in return. We often proclaim the cross as the God-designed
victory over death. Of course it is
that, but it is also the victory of love over hate. Mark’s message to the heavily persecuted
church that he wrote this gospel for is that Christ’s victory over hate can be
theirs as well. Obviously, that powerful
message is for us as well.
Question: Is there any resentment built up in your
heart that perhaps you need to let go of in order to choose the path of Christ
instead?
Prayer: Jesus, we praise You for the perfect love You
showed in Your life and in Your death. We
confess we fall short of loving the way You do.
Empower us by Your Spirit to let go of our resentments and be free of
the toxicity that poisons our soul.
Amen.
Prayer
Focus: Pray for people you are tempted
to harbor resentments toward today.
Song: He Never Said a Mumbalin’ Word - Tesfa
Wondemagegnehu
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