Hanged on a Tree for Me

Read this account from Mark 15 (CEB). Read it slowly, and meditatively. While you read remember while this day is called Good Friday it wouldn’t be good for another three days…

At daybreak, the chief priests—with the elders, legal experts, and the whole Sanhedrin—formed a plan. They bound Jesus, led him away, and turned him over to Pilate. Pilate questioned him, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus replied, “That’s what you say.” The chief priests were accusing him of many things. Pilate asked him again, “Aren’t you going to answer? What about all these accusations?” But Jesus gave no more answers so that Pilate marveled. During the festival, Pilate released one prisoner to them, whomever they requested. A man named Barabbas was locked up with the rebels who had committed murder during an uprising. The crowd pushed forward and asked Pilate to release someone, as he regularly did. Pilate answered them, “Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?” He knew that the chief priests had handed him over because of jealousy. But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release Barabbas to them instead. Pilate replied, “Then what do you want me to do with the one you call king of the Jews?” They shouted back, “Crucify him!”  Pilate said to them, “Why? What wrong has he done?” They shouted even louder, “Crucify him! Pilate wanted to satisfy the crowd, so he released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus whipped, then handed him over to be crucified.The soldiers led Jesus away into the courtyard of the palace known as the governor’s headquarters,and they called together the whole company of soldiers. They dressed him up in a purple robe and twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on him. They saluted him, “Hey! King of the Jews!” Again and again, they struck his head with a stick. They spit on him and knelt before him to honor him. When they finished mocking him, they stripped him of the purple robe and put his own clothes back on him. Then they led him out to crucify him. Simon, a man from Cyrene, Alexander and Rufus’ father, was coming in from the countryside. They forced him to carry his cross. They brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha, which means Skull Place. They tried to give him wine mixed with myrrh, but he didn’t take it.  They crucified him. They divided up his clothes, drawing lots for them to determine who would take what. It was nine in the morning when they crucified him.  The notice of the formal charge against him was written, “The king of the Jews.” They crucified two outlaws with him, one on his right and one on his left. 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. From noon until three in the afternoon the whole earth was dark. At three, Jesus cried out with a loud shout, “Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani,” which means, “My God, my God, why have you left me?” After hearing him, some standing there said, “Look! He’s calling Elijah!” Someone ran, filled a sponge with sour wine, and put it on a pole. He offered it to Jesus to drink, saying, “Let’s see if Elijah will come to take him down.” But Jesus let out a loud cry and died. The curtain of the sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom. When the centurion, who stood facing Jesus, saw how he died, he said, “This man was certainly God’s Son.” Some women were watching from a distance, including Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James (the younger one) and Joses, and Salome. When Jesus was in Galilee, these women had followed and supported him, along with many other women who had come to Jerusalem with him. Since it was late in the afternoon on Preparation Day, just before the Sabbath, Joseph from Arimathea dared to approach Pilate and ask for Jesus’ body. (Joseph was a prominent council member who also eagerly anticipated the coming of God’s kingdom.) Pilate wondered if Jesus was already dead. He called the centurion and asked him whether Jesus had already died. When he learned from the centurion that Jesus was dead, Pilate gave the dead body to Joseph. He bought a linen cloth, took Jesus down from the cross, wrapped him in the cloth, and laid him in a tomb that had been carved out of rock. He rolled a stone against the entrance to the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was buried.

Crucifixion is one of the cruelest forms of execution ever invented.  Its purpose was not just to put a man to death.  It was to bring extreme public shame and to cause the greatest possible amount of physical suffering. Crucifixion had been in occasional use among the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and others, but it was the Romans who made it a common means of execution.  Men hanging on crosses became a familiar sight in the conquered territories of Rome.

In order to produce the greatest amount of shame and pain, crucifixion was almost always publicly preceded by both lashes and mockery.  Then the condemned man was made to carry the crossbeam along public roads, admist the jeers and insults of the people, to the place of execution. The victim was then stripped of all his clothing and hung completely naked on the cross.  A sign giving his name and sentence was put at the top of the cross and he was the object of continued mocking from people who passed by.

The physical torture of the cross was greatly increased because the process of crucifixion damaged no vital part of the human body.  Death could take days. The victim was attached to the cross , either by tying his hands and feet to it or by the more cruel way of being nailed to it.  Thus he was held immobile, unable to cope with heat or cold and insects.

The pain of his wounds, his thirst and exhaustion, would gradually leave him so weak he could no longer support himself with his legs and he would hang limp.  His body weight pulling against his arms would gradually cut off his air supply and death would finally come by suffocation.  The process could be sped up by breaking the victim’s legs.

The cross was looked upon with such horror and scandal, that it was considered bad manners to even mention it in the presence of respectable people.  To quote Cicero:  “Let even the name of the cross be kept away, not only from the bodies of the citizens of Rome, but also from their thought, sight, and hearing.”

Then one day, a carpenter was crucified and instead of bringing shame, His death conquered the cross.  Early in the Fourth Century, Roman Emperor Constantine banned the practice of crucifixion, in honor of Jesus Christ.

Jesus took the cross, the cruelest of all human implements and made it a universal symbol for the love of God for human beings!  Now you know the best of the story.