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THE VIA CRUCIS / STATION 6
JESUS IS SCOURGED

Mark 15: 16-20 (The Message)The soldiers took Jesus into the palace (called Praetorium) and called together the entire brigade. They dressed him up in purple and put a crown plaited from a thorn bush on his head. Then they began their mockery: “Bravo, King of the Jews!” They banged on his head with a club, spit on him, and knelt down in mock worship. After they had had their fun, they took off the purple cape and put his own clothes back on him. Then they marched out to nail him to the cross.

Isaiah 53:2-6 (The Message) The servant grew up before God—a scrawny seedling, a scrubby plant in a parched field. There was nothing attractive about him, nothing to cause us to take a second look. He was looked down on and passed over, a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand. One look at him and people turned away. We looked down on him, thought he was scum. But the fact is, it was our pains he carried—our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us.  We thought he brought it on himself, that God was punishing him for his own failures. But it was our sins that did that to him, that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins! He took the punishment, and that made us whole. Through his bruises we get healed. We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost. We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way.
And God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong, on him, on him.

Every station of the Via Crucis is a hard place to go, at each stop we are forced to look on the worst of humanity, the selfishness, the corruption, the cruelty, the deceit, the mockery of truth, the defilement of all that is good and the expression of all that is evil. We see the black hearts of men and women in power and the hopelessness of those without a voice. We see the abuse of power, greed, hate, murder, and all the sordid machinery of oppression marching Jesus toward the Cross, so that Love would be crushed for all time.

As we witness these horrors, please understand that all these abuses that Jesus suffered, He willingly accepted for us. He entered humanity for this reason. He chose to face all this evil. Jesus took this on, because as He took each painful step, as he received every unjust blow of the fist and whip, He knew, He knew, He Knew……that He and He alone was made for this. He took on every cut, every bruise, every tortuous blow not only that we would be healed, but for our eternal health.

Here’s one more thing we need to understand, the suffering Jesus took on was not all about earning some sort of “fire insurance” for us to look forward to at the end of our earthly journey. To think this is to misunderstand the nature of God himself, for God’s love has greater aims. Jesus came to be The Way, The Truth and The Life, yesterday, today and forever. Jesus took on our sin, our rebellion, our hate, and all evil itself because He and only He can defeat evil, and furthermore, He and only He can transform us and make us into who and what He created us to be. Jesus said it this way:

John 12:44-46 (The Message) Jesus summed it all up when he cried out, “Whoever believes in me, believes not just in me but in the One who sent me. Whoever looks at me is looking, in fact, at the One who sent me. I am Light that has come into the world so that all who believe in me won’t have to stay any longer in the dark. 47-50 “If anyone hears what I am saying and doesn’t take it seriously, I don’t reject him. I didn’t come to reject the world; I came to save the world. But you need to know that whoever puts me off, refusing to take in what I’m saying, is willfully choosing rejection. The Word, the Word-made-flesh that I have spoken and that I am, that Word and no other is the last word.

There is still a Judgment to come, there is still a final reckoning to be had, just go read John’s Revelation. However, Jesus took on all the reasons for why Judgment is coming and He offers us a Way to be transformed, to reach Eternity, where we will fear neither Judgment nor condemnation. We will see it all clearly then, we will see that we have come Home.

Peace. Phil Parsons

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From Rodger:

I’ve always tried to teach experientially.  That may well be why for so many years I was “assigned” the middle school boys Sunday school classes.  It was either let me do some oftentimes crazy antics with these 5th and 6th grade creatures that defied all logic for the church school staff and committee… or let the other youth worker (who is now a bishop in his particular church – go figure!) read the Sunday sports section of the newspaper to them; such a redeeming endeavor talking about the Vols game the day before to kids who not only would probably never attend college but pretty much could care less about Tennessee athletics!

The Sunday we studied the story of David and Goliath and I brought in leather thongs, pouches, and rocks to make slings might have been one of the worst ideas ever.  When we headed outside into the courtyard to test fire our “Goliath Killers” we only got through three of nine kids before we took out a fellowship hall window… OOPS!

But the one I remember most?  That would be the day we actually made a Roman style scourge.  A whip of multiple strands that we tied bent nails, broken shells (we didn’t have any bones handy), and wood splinters into, then headed out into the large multi-purpose room where I’d put a life sized paper mache’ torso to “whip.”  The first kid stepped up, raised his scourge and went after the “victim” and his home made whip tore the entire torso in half.  We all stared, stunned at the violence we’d just witnessed.  Before I could call a halt to these proceedings, the next kid in line got a bit carried away, jumped up to have his go at the now destroyed paper mache’ torso lying on the floor, and when he reared back and put all his energy into his sourge’s back stroke, he caught me right across the shoulder and arm, ripping my sweater, shirt and skin open faster than anyone would have thought possible.  (I later thanked God and my lucky stars that he’d gotten ME instead of one of his classmates – but that was after a visit to the Emergency room at Fort Sanders Hospital, something along the lines of 8 or 9 stitches, a tetanus shot and dealing with the loss of my absolute favorite sweater that would never be worn again!

The lesson I’d never expected to teach and I’ll bet they never expected to learn?  How violent those lashes that you may (or may not) have watched in the video above were.  Make no mistake:  There is nothing neat, sweet, or politically correct with what Jesus endured on our behalf.