4/3/15

Jesus was crucified at nine o’clock in the morning. It was the Phoenicians who were the first to devise the art of crucifixion. They had experimented with strangulation, drowning, burning, boiling in oil, impalement, and death by spear. They found that each of these brought death too quickly. They wanted a slow, humiliating demise fit for punishing criminals and terrifying onlookers. Crucifixion more than met the need. The nakedness, the hours in the burning sun, the jeering crowds, and the indescribable physical torment all filled the Phoenicians’ sadistic requirements. The Romans, in turn, transformed the practice into a science. They produced a specific set of rules and made sure their soldiers were carefully trained in the techniques of crucifying the Empire’s enemies. They had abundant opportunities to gain experience. Following the revolt of Spartacus, for example, more than six thousand men were crucified in a single day and hung on crosses between Capua and Rome. The Romans were experts⎯and now they would employ their craft in executing one Jesus of Nazareth, pretender to the throne of Israel.

By the time Jesus reached Golgotha, he was already bludgeoned and bloodied beyond recognition. He had been brutally beaten, spat upon, and a crown of thorns, each from four to six inches in length, was protruding from his torn scalp. Yet the horror of his appearance was largely the result of the scourging he had received. Had he endured the Jewish scourging, the “forty stripes save one,” he might have fared better. However, Jesus was scourged by the Romans, and they called their torture “the almost death.” There was no legal limit to the number of stripes a man might receive, so the jagged pottery and rocks knotted into the leather cords of the whip tore flesh from bone with seemingly endless blows. Jesus was probably in the early stages of shock, then, when the soldiers at Golgotha pulled him down upon the very crossbeam he had just carried through the streets of Jerusalem and drove five-inch stakes into his wrists. Moments later, he was hoisted up against an upright, possibly a tree, and a stake was driven through his overlapped feet. The final agony had begun.

Instantly, Jesus experienced the secret horror of crucifixion. As he hung from the crossbeam with his arms in a V position, his pectoral muscles paralyzed. He could draw air into his lungs but he could not exhale. This sensation produced an involuntary panic and he found relief only when he pushed himself up by pressing down on the stake that pinned his feet. This was agonizing and it was repeated again and again much to the delight of the growing crowd.

For three hours, from nine in the morning until noon, Jesus hung in this manner above the earth. Then, at noon, it happened. In a matter of minutes, darkness covered the land. In that same instant, Jesus, who appeared to be slowly lapsing into unconsciousness, jolted like a man receiving an electric shock. Some present remembered afterward that he moaned from the depths of his being. Few understood at the time, though, what his followers would later deduce; that in those eternal minutes this treasonous rabbi had taken upon himself the sin and iniquity of all ages.

And so he remained—from noon until three in the afternoon. He hung in the darkness, his sinless soul beset by every evil and wickedness mankind could know. So alone was he, this singular sacrificial victim, that toward the end of his ordeal he cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He thus experienced the ultimate rejection as a Holy God turned away from his own son, now made sin. And in that state of soul-wrenching agony, he breathed a prayer that few could understand and then died.

When it was all over, Joseph and Nicodemus, members of the very Council that had condemned Jesus, took the body down from the cross, washed it, wrapped it with strips of linen and spices, and placed it in a new tomb. Then, with the women who accompanied them, they hurried home to observe the Sabbath. The body of the Nazarene remained where it was placed, quiet and still in the darkness of the freshly hewn tomb.

Early on the first day of the week God’s Spirit entered that tomb. The pierced and shredded body of Jesus was miraculously restored. Where flesh had been torn away by the Roman scourge, perfect skin and muscle now appeared. Where a soldier’s spear had pierced the side of Jesus, only a scar remained. The once lifeless body then filled with a brilliantly radiant force and rose from the stone slab. And then, just as Lazarus had done once before, Jesus walked out of his tomb.

At that moment, all heaven knew what mankind would soon discover; that He, for all his sacrifice and suffering, is worthy. More than any champion of Greek myth, more than any hero of human history, more than any icon of pop culture, Jesus, the risen Christ, is worthy . . . as the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise. He alone, the Crucified One now raised, is worthy.

Stephen