Saturday, August 22, 2009

MkITN XV, Verses 16 - 47

16. Then the soldiers led Him away to the courtyard inside the palace, known as the Praetorium, and they called together the entire battalion of soldiers.

17. And there they dressed Him in a purple robe that someone found, and wove together a crown of long, spiky thorns, and forced it down over His scalp and forehead.

18. Then, in an attempt to completely humiliate Him, they began to mock-worship Him, saying, sardonically, “Hail, King of the Jews!”

19. As they said this, they smacked Him repeatedly all over His head with a staff made of a bamboo-like reed, and continually spat in His face until it was drenched and dripping with their hot saliva. All the while they kept blasphemously bowing their knees in homage to Him.

20. And when they finally grew tired of abusing Him, and of making sport of Him…when they had run out of profanities, and had no more obscene gestures to make towards Him… they yanked the purple robe off of Him and covered up His bloody nakedness with His own clothes. Then they drug Him out of the city to crucify Him.

21. At one point, when His strength failed and He collapsed under the weight of the heavy cross-beam He was carrying, they forced a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus, who was coming in from the country, to carry it for Him.

22. And they led Him to Golgotha (which in Latin is called Calvary), meaning ‘The Place of a Skull’, because of the strange rock formation on the side of the hill there that eerily resembled the face of a human skeleton.

23. In a brief and rare moment of compassion they attempted to give Him a painkiller consisting of wine mingled with myrrh, but He refused it.

24. So then they just did it…as if being prompted and animated by a force greater than any of them, individually or collectively, they crucified Him. And as hunters seeking a trophy from the kill, they divided His garments and distributed them among themselves, throwing lots for them to decide who should take what.

25. It was about nine o'clock in the morning when they finally did the deed.

26. Now it was customary to place an inscription of accusation over the head of each crucified prisoner…but since Jesus was personally innocent of any crime, individually…and yet guilty by association of every crime, universally…the one they hung above His head just simply and poignantly read, “The King of the Jews.”
27. And with Him they crucified two convicted thieves, one on His right side and one on His left.

28. With this the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “He was just a number among the other transgressors.”

29. Since the crosses were lined up along the street there in front of Golgotha, He was very accessible to the moving traffic. And the people who walked by kept cursing Him and swearing at Him, using the worst and vilest kind of language imaginable. They shook their heads and made faces at Him, saying, “Just look at You! You who bragged that You would destroy the temple and build it back in three days…

30. If You’re such a powerful big shot, why don’t You show us what you’ve got? Rescue Yourself, and jump down from that cross!

31. Even the chief priests, with the Scribes, joined in the mass mockery, saying, “What do we have here? Someone who rescued others from death, but can’t even lift a finger to rescue Himself!

32. Let’s all watch to see if the Christ…the Messiah… the King of Israel…can come down now from His pitiful cross. If He can do that we’ll all fall down and worship Him, and believe that He is who He says He is!" Even those who were crucified on either side of Him swore at Him and railed on Him with hurtful insults, and all manner of verbal abuse, until it seemed as if the entire creation was cursing Him in unison.

33. When it was about midday, a mysterious and ominous darkness began to settle in over the entire surrounding area, and remained there until about three o'clock in the afternoon.

























34. At about this time Jesus cried with a loud voice in His native Aramaic, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which means, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

35. And some of those standing by heard it and completely misunderstood, saying, “Listen to that! He is calling for the prophet Elijah to come and help Him!

36. Then one man ran, and, filling a sponge with a mixture of sour wine vinegar and water, put it on a staff made of another bamboo-like reed and gave it to Him to drink, saying, “Wait…wait! This is gonna be good! Let’s see whether or not His friend Elijah does come to take Him down!”

37. And with that Jesus uttered a loud cry from the depths of His being, and exhaled His earth-life.
38. And at this exact instant, the curtain of the Holy of Holies in the Temple…the veil which symbolically divided all things holy from all things ordinary…was somehow torn in two from top to bottom, creating a new reality concerning where the presence of God could officially abide.

39. When the centurion who stood facing Jesus saw, up-close and personal, how elegantly He breathed out His own physical life in the midst of His own unbearable torture, he said, “Now I see it…really, this Man was God's Son!"

40. Now some women were also nearby, looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, the younger, and of Joses, and Salome.

41. These women were a part of Jesus’ large female following, and were in the habit of accompanying and ministering to Him when He was in Galilee. Aside from them there were also many other women who had come up with Him to Jerusalem.

42. As evening had already come, and since it was the day of Preparation, or the day before the Sabbath,

43. Joseph of Arimathea, a nobleman of honorable rank, and a respected member of the Sanhedrin…a man who had revelation of the Kingdom of God…dared the consequences, worked up his courage, and went to Pilate to ask for custody of Jesus’ corpse.

44. But Pilate found it hard to believe that He was dead so soon, so he conferred with the centurion and asked him to verify the actuality of Jesus’ death.

45. And when he was assured by the centurion that He was indeed dead, he gave the body to Joseph.




















46. And Joseph bought a fine linen cloth…the kind that was used at that time for swathing dead bodies…and, carefully and gently took the lifeless body down from the cross. Then he rolled it up in the linen cloth and placed it in a tomb which had been recently chiseled out of a rock. Then he rolled the very large stone which had been fashioned to serve as a protective door against the entrance.

47. And Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Joses were both attentively observing where the body was laid to rest.

10 comments:

SCRIBE said...

A sad, excruciating death, all for the resurrection of many. It is almost unbelievable that anyone would desire to take on such an assignment, to leave the Heavenly Realm with HIS FATHER, then choose to enter into the earth as a human child, having to be dependent upon those who reared him and served as HIS Parents, whereas HE already foreknew the end from the beginning. Such a remarkable ordeal to undergo, especially in the ways of attempting to adapt HIMSELF to life in the earth and amongst ordinary people, when HE had before know and assuredly remembered His Previous and Next Life in the Heavens with the Lord Almighty and the angels.

I could not even imagine what that must have been like for Him. Since the beginning, He was privy to ALL WISDOM, yet had to learn obedience through those things that He suffered in the earth. I know not which existence would have been more frustrating, His Life in the earth, or His departure and death from the earth, leaving this dimension in such a horrific way almost too traumatic to fathom. Yet, when all was said and done, HE OVERCAME in Death and was Resurrected; and through HIS RESURRECTION, we too were redeemed and Now Arise to proclaim the Glory of the Lord in the Land of the Living! Despite the colorful life and gruesome death that the Christ experienced in human form, HE WAS STRONG, He is NOW STRONG and ALIVE in / through Us, IT IS INDEED WELL with Him and NOW with US as we choose to walk in the Freedom that has already been purchased in / by/ through HIS BLOOD, and in essence IT IS FINISHED!!!!! Hallelujah! Amen.

Let everything that have breath PRAISE THE LORD, for the New Days of Refreshing and Revitalization have arrived. What a Magnificent Time is this to Give all Glory and Honor to the Lord of Hosts... for HIS SACRIFICE was so much greater than anything and everything we could ever possibly offer. So, praise, worship, and THANKSGIVING unto our Heavenly Father is but our Reasonable Service that we should render with Gladness unto Our LORD whom has already given far more than we could ever afford to repay. Thank You Father, for your Outpouring Grace and Mercy enduring Forever and Ever. Amen.

karl said...

speechless for now (too beautiful what He did)

Donald said...

Whew! That's good!

lhollow27 said...

Let your YES be YES! I loved everything about today. Period. I feel blessed to be alive right now.No job yet and everything else is shaky but I listened to the birds today singing a song. :)

Northern Light said...

vs 47....mother of "Joses", ugh...sorry for the spelling correction. Everyone KNOWS what it was supposed to say and read it correctly, anyhow.

As usual, the paraphrasing is soooo right on, it's so like a knock on the head waking you up from a sleep in class! whew

Peace,
Northern Light

Bishop Jim Swilley said...

You may be joking, but in case you're not, it's Joses...someone different from Jesus...

Northern Light said...

Thanks to Twitter, we're all aligned on this one now. I can come back to my seat and out of the corner or hall or principals office! (NOT that I ever spent such time in any of those places.)

Peace,
NL

Bishop Jim Swilley said...

You weren't in the principal's office...it's just fun to correct a correction...but like I tweeted, doesn't matter, anyway...the letter kills...

Northern Light said...

Especially when we were both "correct" from what we know and have, and then it turns out to be the SAME !

How does THAT happen? So GOD !
Peace,
NL

Unknown said...

V.19...man, Bishop...the gut reaction to MkITN's phrasing of "and they spit on Him" makes me glad its not dinnertime!

Along with the insight of
V.24..."hunters seeking trophies from a kill" and
V.28..."just a number", MkITN does not make it easy to "sanitize" or breeze by some of the cost Jesus paid to go to His cross...and rightly so.

But my favorite phrasing is v.38..."creating a new reality concerning where the presence of God could officially abide."

It has a ring to it...a KJV "authorized" sound...that on one hand brings a wry smile up in my soul and on the other an awareness of the blessings that will come at the reading of those words.