Hail, King of the Jews!

 Pilate answered and said to them again, "What then do you want me to do with Him whom you call the King of the Jews?"  So they cried out again, "Crucify Him!"  Then Pilate said to them, "Why, what evil has He done?"  But they cried out all the more, "Crucify Him!"  So Pilate, wanting to gratify the crowd, released Barabbas to them; and he delivered Jesus, after he had scourged Him, to be crucified. 

Then the soldiers led Him away into the hall called Praetorium, and they called together the whole garrison.  And they clothed Him with purple, and they twisted a crown of thorns, put it on His head, and began to salute Him, "Hail, King of the Jews!"  Then they struck Him on the head with a reed and spat on Him; and bowing the knee, they worshiped Him.  And when they had mocked Him, they took the purple off Him, put His own clothes on Him, and led Him out to crucify Him.

Then they compelled a certain man, Simon a Cyrenian, the father of Alexander and Rufus, as he was coming out of the country and passing by, to bear His cross.

- Mark 15:12-21

Yesterday, we read that after His night trial before the Sanhedrin, immediately, in the morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and the scribes and the whole council; and they bound Jesus, led Him away, and delivered Him to Pilate.  Then Pilate asked Him, "Are You the King of the Jews?"  He answered and said to him, "It is as you say."  And the chief priests accused Him of many things, but He answered nothing.  Then Pilate asked Him again, saying, "Do You answer nothing?  See how many things they testify against You!"  But Jesus still answered nothing, so that Pilate marveled.   Now at the feast he was accustomed to releasing one prisoner to them, whomever they requested.  And there was one named Barabbas, who was chained with his fellow rebels; they had committed murder in the rebellion.  Then the multitude, crying aloud, began to ask him to do just as he had always done for them.  But Pilate answered them, saying, "Do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?"  For he knew that the chief priests had handed Him over because of envy.  But the chief priests stirred up the crowd, so that he should rather release Barabbas to them.

Pilate answered and said to them again, "What then do you want me to do with Him whom you call the King of the Jews?"  So they cried out again, "Crucify Him!"  Then Pilate said to them, "Why, what evil has He done?"  But they cried out all the more, "Crucify Him!"  So Pilate, wanting to gratify the crowd, released Barabbas to them; and he delivered Jesus, after he had scourged Him, to be crucified.   My study bible notes that "the envy of the Jews brought Jesus to Pilate [see yesterday's reading].  The cowardice of Pilate allows envy to have its way.  How pathetic is Pilate:  known in history by billions of people for his complicity, perhaps the greatest coward of all time.  Scourged means flogged with a Roman whip consisting of several leather strips with small pieces of bone and lead at the tips."

Then the soldiers led Him away into the hall called Praetorium, and they called together the whole garrison.  The Praetorium is the residence of the Roman governor, of Pilate.  My study bible says that Pilate may have resided either in Herod's palace or in the Fortress Antonia which was near the temple.

And they clothed Him with purple, and they twisted a crown of thorns, put it on His head, and began to salute Him, "Hail, King of the Jews!"  Then they struck Him on the head with a reed and spat on Him; and bowing the knee, they worshiped Him.  And when they had mocked Him, they took the purple off Him, put His own clothes on Him, and led Him out to crucify Him.   My study bible points out that the mockery of the soldiers includes the salute, "Hail, King of the Jews, a parody of the salute to Caesar.  It is astonishing that the King of kings humbly condescends to be shamefully treated as a criminal."   

Then they compelled a certain man, Simon a Cyrenian, the father of Alexander and Rufus, as he was coming out of the country and passing by, to bear His cross.  A note tells us that "compelled signifies the right of soldiers to press civilians into service.  Cyrenian:  that is, from Cyrene, a city on the coast of Libya, North Africa, where many Jews lived.  Simon has the unique privilege of helping the Son of God, weakened by flogging, to carry His Cross to Golgotha."

My study bible points out that of the soldiers who mock Christ, it is likely that most of them will also reject the reality of His Resurrection and His victory over sin and death, and therefore "one cannot help but grieve" for them.  At the same time, Simon, who is compelled to carry Jesus' Cross, is the father of two men, Rufus and Alexander, who are obviously prominent enough in the early church to be mentioned in Mark's Gospel.  If we look around ourselves, we'll see many times and many ways in the world in which incongruent circumstances seem to work to produce coincidental actions that are unpredictable.  An old friend or acquaintance turns up in a time and place we don't expect them to; the descendent of someone we knew turns up at some pivotal point in our lives.  People's lives intersect in ways which are unpredictable.  But it's the choices we make through life that really matter.  Each opportunity presents itself for a "yes" or "no" to the love of Christ and where it leads us in our relationships to others.  And that's why encounters become powerful and significant.  It's safe to say that no one who touches or whose life intersects with Christ's in some way in unaffected, one way or another.  In each encounter, no matter how brief, there is an opportunity for acceptance or for rejection of something.  So it is with the image of Christ within ourselves and within others; each encounter becomes an opportunity for acceptance or rejection -- what we forget in selfishness is that a rejection of that image is also a rejection of who we truly are, the person our Creator has made us capable of becoming.  The mockery of the soldiers, although in some ways an "official act" as it is understood by the state and the powers that be, serves as an image of cruelty for all of us, an image of bullying, of the powerful against the powerless, of what happens when we are too small to fill the shoes of the person we are meant to be, the image that is planted inside each of us by Creator.  We may be on the receiving end of such treatment by those whom we considered our friends.  We may be tempted to be one of the crowd that gangs in on a defenseless victim.  Or we may somehow be one who is compelled to help the victim.  In some sense, this intersection of people gives us each a story of encounter.  Which of these people truly makes something of themselves?  Which of these individuals is the heroic?  Which of these actually is leading us in the world in Whose image we follow, if we call ourselves Christians?  Let us remember this scene, and how we may be limiting ourselves in life by joining in with a gang, through abuse of the powerless, through a failure to worship Christ at every encounter, to find our way through the world by remembering Him.