Ampleforth Abbey

Next morning, the guards bring Jesus out and tidy him up a little, wiping the spittle and filth of him, because they don’t want to risk people feeling sorry for him or having him look too pathetic when they bring him in front of the Roman Governor. They take him to the Antonia fortress and there demand to have an audience with Pilate. It’s still early in the morning, but the governor is used to holding court at that hour. They demand to have an audience with Pilate. Now the Jews believed that they defiled themselves if they entered a gentile building and wouldn’t be able to celebrate the Passover feast, so Pilate has to come out to them.

 But before he comes out, Pilate takes a look at the prisoner he’s about to try. His practised eye can make out the swellings on his face from the beatings the night before. In spite of himself he can’t help but feel admiration for the figure that the man struck. And he avoids his eyes – because Jesus has a way of looking at you that makes you feel you are being X-rayed!

 Pilate decides to be awkward. He knows exactly why they’ve brought Jesus to him- he had commissioned a platoon to bring him in the first place. “What charge do you bring against this man?” They’re taken aback! “We wouldn’t have brought him to you if he wasn’t guilty, if he hadn’t been a malefactor. He’s been causing trouble all over the place. He forbids paying taxes to Caesar. He’s caused trouble all the way from here to Galilee.”

At the mention of Galilee, Pilate (whose experience tells him that this will obviously be a difficult care) decides that he might be able to get off the hook. “Oh, Galilee – that’s not my jurisdiction. That’s Herod’s. Take him to Herod.” And so Jesus is led out across the city to the west, where Herod’s palace is. The time is about 10.100 am on the Friday morning.

Herod (that “crafty fox” as the Lord once called him) doesn’t attempt to question Jesus; he just makes fun of him. He’d heard a lot about this wonder worker, this magician. Let’s see if he can conjure up some tricks for us. And when Jesus won’t even answer him (and there’s something terrifying about that silence of Jesus) Herod soon gets bored and send Jesus back to Pilate again. So Jesus finds himself in front of the Roman Governor once again.

“So you are a king then?”

“Your own lips have said it,” answers Jesus. “For this I was born; for this I came into this world, to bear witness to the truth.”

“Truth? What is that?” answers Pilate

And going out to the Jewish leaders he says, “I can find nothing worthy of death. I’ll have him flogged and set him free.”

“If you do that, you’re no friend of Caesar’s.”

Pilate realises the threat and is afraid. He doesn’t want to lose his job – or his head!

Meanwhile, a crowd has begun to gather outside. The Jewish religious leaders and Pilate know why they have come – and from that moment they try to win the crowd over to their side. You see, the crowd has come to ask for what was called the Paschal Amnesty. Each year, for the festival of Passover, it was the custom of the Romans to release a prisoner who was under sentence of death, and the people had the right to choose whom it should be.

So Pilate decides to restrict the choice to just two men: one is Jesus – and the other is a man so unpleasant, so violent, that he thinks that the people will obviously choose Jesus in place of him. The alternative is a man called Barabbas, who was a thug, who’d been arrested for murder.

So, turning to the crowd, Pilate asks, “Which of these two men do you want me to release for you? Barabbas? Or Jesus, who is called the Christ?”

 Just at that moment, there is an interruption. A messenger has arrived for Pilate from his wife, Claudia Procula. So Pilate leans back to listen to the messenger. The message is: “have nothing to do with this just man, for I dreamed last night that I suffered much on that man’s account.”

 Now, whilst Pilate’s attention is distracted, the agents of the chief priests disperse quickly through the crowd. “When he asks you who you want, remember it’s Barabbas we want. Got it? Barabbas! Good man Barabbas!...”

So when Pilate turns back to the crowd and says, “Well, which of the two shall I release for you?” the cry is: “Barabbas, Barabbas!” and the crowd takes up the cry.

“But what shall I do with Jesus?”

“Crucify him! Crucify him!” and they keep on shouting “crucify him!”

Haven’t we heard echoes of that in the mindless crowds shouting “Out! Out!” to whatever they don’t want?

But Pilate is convinced that Jesus is innocent, so he makes one last attempt to save him, he turns to an aide and says, “Have him scourged!” So Jesus is led out, down into the parade ground, where the whole cohort is assembled to witness the punishment.

Two men step forward out of the ranks armed with what was called a flagrum – a bit like a policeman’s truncheon, at the end of which were long strips of leather and at the end of each was a small piece of bone or lead shaped like a miniature dumbel. We might call it a cat-o-nine-tails.

 With just a slight flick of the wrist you could draw blood. If you went on you could flay a man alive. Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ brought the horrors of the scourging to life. If you did it hard enough you broke up the bones underneath the skin. It was sometimes called the “halfway death” because many died under the lash and never made it to crucifixion.

And so the two men set to work, from each side working their way down his body from neck to the back of his legs, the strips of leather whipping round to the front of his body also. They wouldn’t have been ordinary Roman soldiers. More than likely they would have been local Arab conscripts. Imagine their delight at having at their disposal a local Jew-boy!

Soon the blood begins to flow everywhere. The third man, in charge of the execution, is watching the rib-cage, and when he sees that the breathing becomes shallow or uneven he says, “Cut him down – or he’ll die.” So the cut him down and he falls into the pool of his own blood.

Still, no word from Pilate yet, so they decide to play a game with Jesus. “Let’s play the king’s game!” The rules of the game are unimportant – but there was a forfeit that the loser had to pay. And so vicious was this forfeit that soldiers were not allowed to play the game, or if they did, they were not allowed to pay the forfeit. Otherwise they’d have been off parade for three days.

So they could only play the game provided that they had someone to take their place, the unfortunate victim, and they always used a prisoner from the cells. “Well, here’s a prisoner! In any case, how appropriate: this man calls himself a king! Let’s play the king’s game with him.

So, an old legionnaire’s cloak is thrown around his shoulders – that’s his Majesty’s coronation robe. An old piece of firewood is shoved into his hand for a sceptre. But for a crown?... A man wearing gauntlets plaits together a shapeless mass of thorn branches. That’s the whole point  it isn’t a neat coronet that we usually see on a crucifix; it is a shapeless dunce’s cap tied underneath his chin with reeds to keep it from falling off.. He looks like an idiot – and that is how he was meant to look.

In addition, there is the pain from the thorns – some an inch and a half long in that part of the world. They stick into the flesh of his scalp, which bleeds profusely. Blood pours into his eyes and ears.

Finally, the waiting is over. Pilate summons them, and Jesus is led out, shuffling. He can no longer walk properly after the scourging, which would have left his skin in tatters, “hanging down in bleeding shreds.” He’s led back out onto the Pavement (or Gabbatha in Hebrew) where a large crowd has gathered.

“Behold the man,” says Pilate, “Ecce Homo,” hoping that this pitiful sight would arouse feelings of remorse or sorrow in the crowd, maybe even pity on this poor man. It did the exact opposite: it arouses their blood lust: “Away with him! Crucify him!”

“Why, what has he done?” But they shout even louder: “Crucify him! Away with him!” Pilate gives in, but first he goes through that ridiculous ceremony of washing his hands, before pronouncing the final sentence: “ibicet crucem! You shall go to the cross!”

And Jesus is led back down to the barracks where two other prisoners under sentence of death have been brought out to accompany him to the place of execution. Here, Jesus is given his cross. Now the “cross” was the cross beam, the short horizontal part – as it’s portrayed in Jesus of Nazareth and The Miracle Maker. The beam went behind the neck, across the shoulders, and the arms were strapped to it at either end.

It was a heavy enough weight, about 100lb, for a healthy man to have to carry, but far too heavy for a man half dead from the scourging, so, of course, Jesus fell down flat on his face. The soldiers pick him up: down he goes again. They pick him up: he falls for a third time.

“This man isn’t going to make it.” The man in charge of the execution spots a tall figure in the crowd. “Here, you! Come here, you can help him carry it!” The man is to afraid to refuse. We know his name: Simon – from  Cyrene. So Simon picks up the burden and follows behind Jesus.

The sorry procession shuffles on – a distance of about 650 yards. For most of us, a few minutes’ walk. For him?... 15 minutes/ Half an hour maybe? Their destination is a rocky outcrop of limestone, just outside the gate of the city, on the road to Joppa, a place known as the Skull (or Golgotha). Here, the soldiers form a cordon around the base of the little hill, and inside are allowed only the condemned men, the executioners and any family or friends of the condemned men.

 There was amongst the crowd a group of women, noble women who had formed a charitable society. They would accompany condemned men to the place of execution, because many of the prisoners had no family or friends in the world. The women would go with the men to offer some sort of moral support. At the last they were allowed to administer a kind of drugged wine, a sort of rough and ready anaesthetic, at least to deaden the pain a little.

The women are allowed to give some wine to the two other men who with Jesus and they drink it greedily. When they offer it to Jesus, he doesn’t drink it – he only sips so as not to hurt their feelings.. They are then driven out and the only people left inside that cordon are a faithful little band of women and one young man – John.

And then the butchery begins. The soldiers tear his clothing off first, and if any of you has torn a bandage off an open wound you’ll remember how painful it is! Well, his whole body is one open wound! So when they take off his clothing, they open up all the wounds again. They lay him on what’s left of his back on the gravel, and place behind his head the horizontal cross beam. Then two men with a nail about five inches long and a hammer, drive the nail straight through the wrist and into the wood.

It is the wrist, not the palm of the hand, because the weight of the body unsupported would tear straight through the tissue. So the nail is put through the wrist where there is a bone to keep it in place. It is also the place of the median nerve, responsible for the sense of touch in the fingers – and so it would have been excruciatingly painful!

Four men, two at either end, then lift the body up off the ground unsupported, and place the cross beam onto the upright beam, which is already standing in the ground. A third nail is then driven through the instep of booth feet and into the upright beam. That is the crucifixion completed.

That was the diabolical thing about it: for thousands of years men have been trying to devise the most painful ways of killing their fellow men. Most of the painful ways ended in a sudden death. Crucifixion didn’t. Men have been known to have lived up to three days on the cross. We know a lot about crucifixion from Nazi atrocities and Japanese war crimes. You see, if you lift a man off the ground by his extended arms with his feet unsupported, he can breathe in – but he can’t breathe out. In a very short time his lungs would fill up and in no time at all he would choke to death.

But if you put a support under his feet, then by pressing down he can release the pressure in his lungs and breathe. But if the support is a nail driven through both feet, how long do you think anyone could bear the pain of pressing down on that one nail? And so, a man would crawl up and down the cross – at one time trying to release the pressure in his lungs by pressing down on the nail in his feet,  then dropping back down on the nails in his hands to relieve the pain from the nail in his feet. Up and down. As Psalm 21 sys: “I am a worm and no man.”

This could go on and did go on for up to three days! We know that in Our Lord’s case, mercifully, it went on for just three hours. Tetanus begins to set in and the muscles become knotted and twisted; there is a raging thirst from the loss of all that blood. Flies buzz around his face and torture him even more. And there he hung for three hours.

The sky darkens, even though it’s only three in the afternoon, perhaps caused by the sands whipped up by the wind so that it obscures the sun. People watching become uneasy. Even the jibes and mockery stops. Then, after what seems like an eternity to those watching, Jesus does something that might have seemed impossible – he shouts aloud. So impossible is this that the centurion on guard, who has witnessed countless crucifixions, says, “Truly this man was the Son of God”

And the cry was “It is achieved!” Then his head falls forward on his chest... and he is gone.

Suddenly the ground begins to tremble and people disperse. Far away on the other side of the city there is a gasp as the huge curtain that separated the Holy of Holies is ripped from top to bottom. With the death of Jesus the Old Testament was finished and the presence of God among his people had moved. With the tearing of the Temple veil the pathway to God is now open.

Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus quickly go to Pilate and ask permission to bury the body. There is not much time left. As night begins to fall, so the Sabbath begins when all have to be indoors. They take down the body of Jesus from the cross, and for a few moments Mary holds in her arms the body of the one she had held as a baby all those years ago in Bethlehem.

Gently, John reminds her of the time and reluctantly she gives up the body. There is no time to wash or prepare the body properly for burial. It is hastily sprinkled with myrrh and wrapped in a shroud, then laid in a new tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathea. Then the little party slowly departs and makes its way sadly back into the city as night falls...

You’ll notice that I haven’t said anything about the other comments of Jesus from the cross. There are seven in all, including “it is accomplished.” The “Seven Last Words.” The one I have saved to the end gives purpose to this whole talk. As they were nailing him to the cross, Jesus said, “Father, forgive them. They do not know what they are doing.”

It is easy for us to think “how nice of Jesus to forgive his executioners, and those who condemned him to death.” But the martyrs did as much before they died. No, Jesus was praying for everybody. He died for sin. So, all of us who have sinned are responsible for putting Jesus on the cross. Those last words were for you and for me. None of us can look at a crucifix without feeling ashamed. Out whole life, our whole autobiography, is written on that crucifix:

                The wood is the desk.

                                The nail is the pen.

                                                The skin is the parchment.

                                                                And the blood is the ink...