Just Another Cross

Mark 15:6-15, 25-32

April 14, 2017 (Good Friday) • Mount Pleasant UMC

It was a horrible way to die. It was intended to be. It was a punishment meant to terrify people, to keep them in line lest they find themselves next in line. One writer of the time said that if you knew there was a chance you might be arrested and put to death by crucifixion, it would be better to commit suicide. Another called it the “extreme and ultimate punishment of slaves” and the “cruelest and most disgusting penalty.” A third writer called it “the most pitiable of deaths” (Hamilton, 24 Hours That Changed the World, pg. 96). It was so horrible that, early on in the Christian faith, no one represented this faith by placing a cross around their necks or in their places of worship, just as no one would do with an electric chair today. In fact, crosses were not represented in Christian art until everyone who had ever seen a real crucifixion was long gone.

The main purpose of a crucifixion was as a deterrent for future crime (NIDTB, Vol. 1, pgs. 806-807), and so in order to be effective, crucifixions were generally held along main roads, on tops of hills or at city gates so that as many people as possible could clearly see what happened to those who got on the wrong side of Rome. And while Rome did not invent crucifixion, they certainly perfected it, making it a mode of death aimed primarily at producing the maximum agony for the longest possible time. Contrary to what you see in many of the movies, the condemned did not carry the whole cross through the city from the judgment hall to the site of execution. The vertical beam was left at the site; the criminal would only carry the horizontal cross beam, called the patibula and weighing about seventy-five pounds (Wright, Mark for Everyone, pg. 212; Hamilton, Journey to the Cross, pg. 103). There, they would have their wrists nailed to the beam, and their feet nailed to the vertical pole, and then they would be left to hang in the sun, listening to the jeers and taunts of the crowd. There were many people who loved a good execution.

On a spring afternoon somewhere around the year 30 A.D., a crucifixion took place outside of Jerusalem—three of them, in fact. And while we don’t know the names of the ones on the outsides, the middle cross has continued to fascinate, repel and intrigue human beings for centuries. But there was nothing special about the cross itself. It was just one of many crosses the Romans had. Crucifixion was common in those days, even in Galilee where Jesus was raised. Somewhere around the age of 12 or 13, Jesus probably witnessed at least the results of a mass execution after a rebellion led by a man named Judas of Galilee; in that uprising, 2,000 people were executed along a main road. They would crucify thousands more when the Jews rebelled against Rome again forty years after Jesus’ death. In fact, at that time, they crucified so many that the soldiers got bored and began to experiment with different positions—hanging people upside down, for instance. They crucified so many during that time that they ran out of wood (Wright 207). But on this day in the year 30, outside a city well known for rebellion and causing trouble, the one in the middle was just another job, just another crucifixion, just another cross.

A lot of people, though, had a stake in the death of the one in the middle. For them, it was not just another cross. For them, it was personal and essential that he must die. One of those people was Herod, the “tetrarch” of Galilee. Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, had hoped to be named king after his father’s death, but instead he was only given a quarter of his dad’s kingdom and made a petty functionary, a man with a title but very little power. He had heard of Jesus before this week, but had not had the chance to see him, so when Pilate sends Jesus to him, Herod asks him to perform some sort of miracle. Jesus refuses, and Herod, who could have stopped the execution, instead mocks Jesus, ridicules him, and sends him back to Pilate without comment (Luke 23:8-12; cf. Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, pgs. 322-324). For Herod, Jesus was an irritant, a man who stirred up trouble in his little kingdom. It would be good to get rid of him. Actually, Herod probably cared little either way, but he wouldn’t stand in the way of Jesus being killed.

On the other hand, Pilate, the Roman governor, had sent Jesus to Herod in hopes that Herod would do something so he wouldn’t have to. I mean, if you can get someone else to do your dirty work, why not? The religious leaders had approached Pilate early in the morning, interrupting his plans for a day of organized leisure, and asked him to put Jesus to death. He tried many different ways to put them off, but they kept pressing the matter, and Pilate was a savvy enough politician to know that he was already on the brink with his superiors. Any more trouble in his area and he might find himself without a job, or without a head. Pilate represented the Roman Empire, the Pax Romana, the Roman Peace, and it was his job to keep the peace, a task that wasn’t always easy in such a hotbed as Judea. (It is still a difficult place to keep the peace!) Jesus was fast becoming a threat to that peace, though Pilate believed him to be innocent. Then the moment came when he tried to release Jesus, and the crowds told him, “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar” (John 19:12). Pilate knew he was cornered. He couldn’t risk this rabble complaining to Caesar about him again.

You see, Rome needed Palestine, for a very basic reason. The Empire was vast, and they needed food. In those days, the Middle East was sort of the bread basket of the Roman Empire. Grain was grown in Egypt and in Galilee. Anything that threatened to upset the political situation or the production schedule had to be dealt with quickly. Caesar needed grain; he needed food to feed his empire. On some level, Jesus died to make sure people had enough to eat, to protect the fragile peace that existed in Palestine (Ortberg, Who Is This Man?, pg. 169).

So Pilate had one more “trick” up his sleeve, one more attempt to free Jesus. Mark tells us there was a custom during the Passover festival in which Rome would release one of their prisoners as an “act of goodwill.” It was sort of like a presidential pardon, except that the people got to choose who would be released. Now, there is no record of how this went down in other years; we only know of this custom because of the Gospels. But Pilate decided to use it against the people. It was, after all, their choice. He would let them have Jesus of Nazareth, a teacher and healer and would-be Messiah, or he would let them have another man by the name of Jesus. Barabbas is his last name; it means “son of the father.” Matthew tells us his first name was Jesus (27:16). Unlike Jesus of Nazareth, though, Jesus Barabbas was a violent revolutionary, determined to do whatever he needed to do, including murder, to free Palestine from the Romans. Some might have called him a patriot or a freedom fighter, but in reality, he was a terrorist, not afraid to repay violence with violence (Ortberg 168; Wright 209). In Pilate’s mind, the choice was clear. Who would you rather have roaming around free? A murderer or a teacher? A violent man or one who said, “Blessed are the peacemakers”? The choice was clear, or so Pilate thought—until the crowd cried out, “Give us Barabbas!”

You see, Jesus Barabbas we understand. Give us the violent Jesus. Give us the one who takes things into his own hands. Give us the one who does whatever it takes to make sure we win. Jesus Barabbas we understand. This other Jesus makes us too uncomfortable—so what do we do with him? What do we do with the peaceful Jesus? Put him on the cross. Repay his peace with violence. Repay his teaching with death. And so Pilate gives in and orders Jesus to be nailed to one of the crosses, the one meant for Barabbas. Barabbas, whom the state has said deserves to die, is set free. And Jesus, who deserves to be set free, is murdered.

The ones who started all this, though, were the religious leaders, the ones who were the guardians of truth and the preachers of holiness. They made sure Jesus was arrested. They paid one of his disciples, Judas, to take them to him. They put him on trial, illegally, in the middle of the night. They took him to Pilate and demanded the death sentence. And as if that wasn’t enough, they are there at the cross, taunting and ridiculing him. Mark tells us they used his death as a chance to point out how un-Messiah-like he was. “He saved others,” they said, “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” (15:31-32). Threatened by Jesus’ teaching, put off by his challenges to their interpretation of the Scriptures, angered by the people’s love for Jesus, they set their sights early on bringing about his death. He would not conform to their image of the Messiah. He would not be who they thought he ought to be, and he dared to speak of God as if God were close, near, a daddy even. No one could speak about God in that way. And so they looked for ways to get rid of him, and when they finally succeed in seeing him on a cross, it’s still not enough. It’s not enough to see him physically suffer, to see his life draining away. They have to make fun of him, demanding that he come down from the cross to prove he is who he says he is. And, of course, the irony is that it's on the cross where he’s doing his saving work. Were he to come down from the cross, he could not accomplish what God the Father sent him to do. To the bitter end, they miss what God is doing in Jesus.

So Herod, Pilate and the religious leaders all have their agendas on this day, agendas centered around this cross in the middle. But there’s someone else with an agenda this day, someone whose agenda trumps all of the others. Jesus comes to Calvary with an agenda, and that is the salvation of every single person on planet Earth. Jesus dies on the cross for Herod, for Pilate, for the religious leaders, for Caesar, for Barabbas and Judas, for the disciples, and for every person gathered at the foot of the cross that day. And he died for every person who came after them, all the way down to you and me. In some way we can’t quite explain or fully understand, what Jesus is doing there on the cross is taking the punishment for our sin, for our brokenness, and offering healing for the wounds that break the world. Jesus’ agenda on this Good Friday is one of love, giving his life for the sake of others. Paul put it this way: “At just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:6-8).

As a father, I know there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for my children. I would give my life if it would save theirs. Most parents I know feel the same, and that feeling, that passion is only an echo of God’s great passion for his children, for you and me. It’s only a small glimpse, a hint. There isn’t anything God wouldn’t do to save us, to rescue us, to show us his love. To the Romans, that cross Jesus was on may have been just another cross. It may have been just another day at the office for the soldiers who nailed his hands and feet to the wood. But to us, and to all who have chosen to follow him throughout the centuries, those two beams can never be just another cross, for that instrument of death became the hope of the world. That tool of torture became the means by which I am saved, and you are saved, by which my sin is washed away, and your sin is washed away. At the heart of the cross is the love of Christ, and the only thing that can keep that love from invading your life is you. If you look at those pieces of wood and see just another cross, just an historical oddity, you’ve missed the point.

Who is this man, the one hanging on the middle cross? He is the one who loves you and me more than we can ever imagine, and who would do anything to win your heart back. He is the Lord, the crucified one, the returning savior. If you were to ask him, “How much do you love me?” he would stretch both arms out and say, “This much. Enough that I would go to the cross to show you how much I love you.” Have you accepted his love? Are you willing to let him save you once again? He chose the cross, he died for me and you, and for all the world, and the world has never been the same since. It wasn’t just another cross; it was a cross of love.