Sunday, April 14, 2019

Dark Voices Prevailed



"Morning after morning, the Lord God opens my ear that I may hear; and I have not rebelled, have not turned my back. I gave my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who plucked my beard; my face I did not shield from buffets and spitting. The Lord God is my help. Therefore I am not disgraced; I have set my face like flint, knowing that I shall not be put to shame." -[Isaiah 50: 4-7].


Palm Sunday, in a word, hurts my feelings. The reading of the Passion evokes in me such pain and deep sadness.

Even though we all understand that the Resurrection comes in the dawn, nevertheless, the whole ugly, bloody scene of the arrest, the false trial, the nailing onto the Cross, and Christ's suffering, hurt me to the core. The point when Jesus utters, "My God, why have You abandoned me?!" is probably my lowest point.

Each year, I ask if the Crucifixion was a one of a kind event, or if Jesus would be just as likely to be crucified today?

Each year, I tragically conclude that, yes, Jesus would just as readily be crucified today.

Jesus' trial was a sham. He had broken no Roman laws. Even Pilate said, "I find no fault in this man." -[Luke 23:4].  The trial was on the Sabbath, and was arguably illegal. The judges were high priests who determined that Jesus had committed blasphemy but that was not a Roman offense, only a religious one. It was only under Roman law that execution was warranted.

The high priests accused Jesus of the wrong things, with misleading questions: Asking if He was King? But Jesus replied that He would sit at the right hand of His Father, no earthly King, he. The high priests accused Jesus of blasphemy for saying he would crush the temple and raise it up again in three days. But, Jesus was referring to the Truth of His Resurrection from the tomb after three days, something the high priests could not have foreseen.

The Roman governor Pontius Pilate addressed the crowd three times, "What evil has this man done?"

What ensues next is what I call mass psychology - the crowd began to cry out, "Crucify him! Crucify him!" and "Away with this man!"

I see our world today enmeshed in mass psychology, especially on the Internet.  Collective calls for mob justice can build and roll on social media, into a veritable tsunami.

In our upside-down world, a good person or movement is labeled bad. Or, an evil person is revered because he is wealthy or powerful.

Powerful people in Jesus' time saw His goodness as a threat. The Romans held all the political power in a very violent way. It was believed that when the Messiah came, he would be a King or a Judge, as in the Old Testament time. In other words, the Messiah was expected to be a political leader. Jesus walking around preaching that He was the King and brought forth by God was a direct threat to Rome.

Jesus said, "Do not assume that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword." - [Matthew 10:34]. This is not a literal sword, but the sharp divide between those who are powerful and evil vs. those who are good and holy.

Disrupters like Jesus can rarely last long in our world. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "The world doesn't like people like Gandhi, They don't like people like Christ; they don't like people like Lincoln. They killed him. Here was the man of nonviolence falling at the hands of a man with hate, [But] thank God, Good Friday is never the end." -[From The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr].

There are powerful forces today, like Rome, who possess absolute power, and whose power corrupts absolutely. Any differences of opinion, religious beliefs or ethnicities (e.g. Rome vs. Jews vs. Jesus), is hemmed in, curtailed and ultimately crushed.

Rome's Hope was that Jesus was just one Man, and that they could stop the movement by eliminating the Man.  Herod and Pilate conspired to crush Jesus and His movement by crucifying the Man. They believed they were buying stability.  They had no idea that Jesus' crucifixion would spark a conflagration.

Once Rome crucified Jesus, and His Resurrection was told as the miracle that it is; once early Christians traveled far and wide - on Roman roads, after all!- Jesus' story became the Way, the Truth and the Life.

And there was nothing stopping Him - for all of Time.

[Related Postings: " Killing Him Softly", 3/27/18; "Our Own Role in the Passion", 4/10/17; "Why Did Jesus Have to Die?", 8/31/14; "Who Killed Jesus?", 5/7/14.]

(c) Spiritual Devotional 2019. All Rights Reserved.











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