The Torture and Humiliation of the King
Mark 15:15b-23
Video from The Passion of the Christ” Chapter 16 0:00-1:30
Scripture reading
When we think of the flogging of Jesus, it is hard for us to understand what really happened. The Gospels only give one line to it. So what really happened when one was flogged? Flogging was very common in Jesus’ day. Flogging was focused on the bare back, buttocks and legs. It inflicted pain and suffering on the one who was being punished. Sometimes flogging was used for those who had committed less serious crimes and they were flogged publicly to shame them. Image of Jesus bent over on block for flogging A person’s shirt is ripped off and they were strapped to a post with their hands tied down. As they were bent over, their back was considered primed giving the licktors, the ones who performed these savage floggings, giving them the opportunity to have maximum impact with their tools. Image of two men beating Jesus There usually 2 to 4 mean men performing the beating which allowed one to rest while the other wound back up. The lictors received special medical training in how to wield the whip so as to open bruises which had already formed. Roman soldiers would repeatedly strike the victim’s back, buttocks and legs with their full force causing deep contusions. This though is a lighter form of flogging.
As Jesus is stripped of his garment, tied to a post and bent over while the soldiers ready themselves, he is silent and appears to be in deep contemplation awaiting the punishment. In Isaiah 50:6 we find a passage that early Christians believed pointed to the experience of Jesus in our Scripture today. “"I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard; I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting.” These verses must have been in Jesus’ mind as he was being flogged by these soldiers.
Video from The Passion of the Christ” Chapter 16 3:00-4:00 Jesus first receives this lighter flogging first but he is undaunted as he takes the pain of suffering of the sins of the world upon himself. He did not beg for mercy nor did he exhibit the usual behaviors of those who were flogged. This must have angered the Romans who were administering this punishment.
But there was another flogging which was far more painful and insidious. It was meant to not only hurt the victim but instill fear in the people. It was so bad that most had to turn away from seeing it. It inspired such fear in the populace that it made them desire not to do anything which would bring such a punishment. When there were criminals who were to be crucified, it wasn’t enough just to have them die on the cross but to inflict this torturous pain on them to make a statement. Image of whips. The tools were like leather whips which were braided together with sharp objects, little bits of bone or glass or metal meant to rip flesh from the back. There was also no limit to the number of blows that might be received. Lacerations from repeated blows cut into the underlying muscles and rip the overlaying skin of the back to a point where it hangs in ribbons of bleeding flesh. The capillaries and veins were often torn causing intense bleeding and sometimes leading to unconciousness. Once the centurion in charge determined that the prisoner is near death, the beating was halted. Historical accounts of floggings report that bare bone was often exposed by the time the lichtors were finished with their victims. But the aim of flogging was not to try to kill the victim but to take them to such excruciating pain and weakness so as to speed up the crucifixion. If you killed the victim prior to crucifixion you would be punished. The object of the was to weaken the victim to a state of collapse and bring them as near to death as possible without killing them.
After this savage beating and torture, this man who was of no significance in Roman eyes was mocked as the King of the Jews. They represented the king of the empire. They would show him who was king. Pilate has sent Jesus to be flogged. The soldiers humiliate him and mock him. They seek to dehumanize him and break him. They called together the entire Roman cohort which is made up of six centurions who commanded as many as 100 soldiers. So it is likely that several 100 soldiers were present as Jesus was taken in the courtyard. Matthew says they stripped him naked, completely exposed and vulnerable and humiliated. He was made to feel insignificant in the presence of so many soldiers. Now imagine 600 of these men surrounding Jesus and Jesus standing there naked and bleeding. Image of Jesus in robe and crown of thorns They brought to him a purple robe, the same color as the emperor’s robe. There is purple on the altar as a reminder of the purple robe which was draped upon his bloody body. Matthew tells us the color was red and was one of the cloaks of a soldier. They draped it on his shoulders. It was long enough just to cover his back. They bring to Jesus a crown of thorns. There are thorn bushes in the Holy Land that at the time of Jesus grew just outside of Jerusalem. Being still green, it is easily wound into a crown of thorns. They placed it upon his brow. Remember, emperors wore crowns but they were wreaths of laurel. Image of coin with Tiberius the Emperor. Jesus would wear a crown of thorns instead.
Image of Jesus being mocked They then took reeds and Matthew tells us they place one of them in his hand as a sceptor, not the sceptor of power but a thin reed which would have been easily broken. They walked around Jesus and began to beat him with the reeds, not to inflict pain but to humiliate him. Then they circled around him and spit upon him. They knelt before him and cried out mockingly, Hail, King of the Jews. This is how the Romans treated Jesus.
Why did they do this to this man who preached the Good News of God, loved people, healed them, fed the hungry and called people back to living for God and for this they would treat him this way. What kind of men do this to an innocent victim? But it is not just these soldiers, it was the Sanhedrin demanding he be put to death and who watched his flogging, it was the crowds calling out “Crucify Him!”, it was Pontius Pilate who knew he was innocent but caved into the demands of the crowd to satisfy them. It’s the Roman soldiers who take delight in ripping his flesh from his bones but in humiliating and mocking him. Why does this happen?
Today, I’d like for you to see yourself in the Roman soldiers. We need to be reminded that’s history’s record has shown human beings are capable of doing the worst of things to one another. It is the story of our human existence. Remember, God sent the flood on the earth because he saw how violent and evil people were to one another. God was grieved by what they had become. Our inhumanity to one another is our story and a part of our human condition. It’s easy for us to say, “I could never do that, I would never do that! I could never had been one of the Roman soldiers who took delight in causing the pain and suffering of Jesus and then mocked him.” And yet we must be careful in quickly judging ourselves as incapable of participating in something like this.
Image of Stanford Prison Experiment There was a study done in 1971 called the Stanford Prison Experiment by two psychologists named Philips and Bardo. The US Navy commissioned a study on how people respond to prison conditions. They transformed the basement of a building at Stanford University into a prison and hired 24 middle class college students: 12 were prisoners and 12 were guards. The prisoners were arrested and taken to jail and for the next 14 days they were observed to see how the guards treated the prisoners and how the prisoners reacted to guards. Image of guards and prisoners But after the 6th day, it had to be called off because these college students who were doing this only as an experiment began to grow into their roles and hurt each other. The guards started to oppress the prisoners. They forgot it was an experiment and they began to hurt each other. Philips and Bardo spent the next 30 years analyzing the data from that experiment and what they found is that all of us are capable of being transformed from Dr. Jekyl to Mr. Hyde. Image Jekyll and Hyde
There was a study in Rwanda and in it they interviewed one woman who was a Hutu. Over time her government convinced her that her neighbor and best friend who was a Tutsi was now her enemy and she needed to be destroyed. This woman ended up killing her neighbor’s children and then killing her friend. And today she cannot explain how or why she did what she did but somehow she made that transformation. One study found that 67% of people were willing to give a legal dose of electrical charge when told by an authority figure to do so because that person gave a wrong answer to a question. They theorized that only 1% would be willing to do so. There was a study of the Nazi death squads called the Milgram Experiment and its goal was to answer this question: "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?" It was filled with retirees who were recruited for this specific purpose. What they found is that 80% of the men were willing to kills their Jewish neighbors, 80%! All this is to say that any one of us is capable of committing such heinous acts as the Roman soldiers even when we don’t think we would. We see ourselves in the soldiers and then we have to make a conscious choice not to be like them and guard our hearts from that.
Image of Golgotha “Then they led him out to crucify him. The place where Jesus was crucified was Golgotha meaning place of the skull. If you have ever wondered, the word Calvary is the Latin for Golgotha. It was a hill outside the walls of Jerusalem near a quarry where the Romans crucified criminals. It was called this perhaps because there were skulls lying there from those who died. We do not know the exact location of Golgotha but it would have been no more than a third of a mile from the place where Jesus was tortured and would have taken Jesus about 30 minutes to get there in his state.
Picture of Jesus and Simon Our Gospel tells us that Simon of Cyrene carried the cross but probably only a portion of the way. Let me remind you that they did not carry the entire cross. In Roman times, the vertical part of the cross was left in its position and those to be crucified were forced to carry the cross beam as the final act of torture. It was most likely that as a result of the vicious flogging and blood loss, Jesus did not have the strength to carry the beam the entire way to Golgotha. Dropping it, someone else would have been pressed into service. Simon of Cyrene was a man in the crowd who was chosen. Cyrene is a town in northern Lybia on the north coast of Africa. He was probably a Jew who was in Jersusalem to celebrate the Passover. How this experience must have impacted him. Mark is writing to the church at Rome. Peter has been put to death. Paul has been put to death. He is writing between 56-60 AD, about 30 years after Simon carried the cross for Jesus. Mark is the only Gospel which tells us that Simon is the father of Rufus and Alexander. He was so moved by this experience that he became a follower of Christ, his wife became a follower of Christ and Rufus and Alexander become followers of Christ. In Roman 16:13 Paul is writing a few years before Mark and giving his greeting to the church when he says, “Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord, (chosen because his father carried the cross for Jesus) and his mother, who has been a mother to me, too.” Simon was changed by the experience of the service, suffering and death of Jesus that his family became followers of Christ too.
As Jesus and Simon arrive close to Golgotha, Jesus has a glass of wine offered to him, wine mixed with myrrh. Myrrh was bitter and was placed in the wine as an analgesic. This was an act of compassion because it deadens the pain. But the Scripture says Jesus refused to drink it because he was determined to experience the full extent of the pain and suffering of the crucifixion. This is because his suffering was a part of God’s plan for him for the redemption of the world and he wanted to experience the full extent of it for us. This is what last week we called the atonement, having our sins redeemed by God because one has paid the price or taken the punishment for our sins, thus making us right with God. There are a variety of understandings of the atonement. Last we learned about the substitutionary theory which says that God came to earth in the form of Jesus and he died in place of us and for all humanity. All of our sins were placed upon Jesus on the cross and that he suffered and died for all our sins whose punishment is death.
Today, we going to look at the subjective theory of atonement. This says the atonement was not about changing God’s mind toward us but rather about changing you. Jesus’ death calls us to live a different life. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.” 1 Peter 2:24 Jesus’ suffering and death was a way for God to speak to you to show your need for redemption, to lead you to repentance and then to show you the full extent of God’s love for you that you might follow and live for God. Jesus’ death on the cross was more about changing your heart than it was about changing God’s heart. This theory of atonement is inadequate in and by itself but it is another window into understanding the atonement. Regardless, it is important to understand that Jesus’ death is for our salvation. We believe he died for us and now we try to understand how and why.
In the Gospel of John, we are told that Jesus is God made flesh. Jesus was God’s vehicle of communication to us. What was he trying to say in our suffering and the death of Jesus? There are three things we hear in Jesus’ suffering and death. The first thing he wanted to hear is that we are broken. When Jesus walked on this planet, what human beings did was unite and put him to death. We are meant to remember how even at the Last Supper the disciples didn’t get it as they argued over who was the greatest, how in Jesus’ greatest time of need, they abandoned and betrayed him. We are meant to remember that even in the Sanhedrin who were seeking God above all others which included Nicodemus whom thought that Jesus had something to say and may have even been the Messiah, he and I’m sure others did not speak up. We are meant to remember that it was the religious faithful, people like you and me, who voted to put God to death for blasphemy. What is wrong with us as human beings and children of God? We are meant to remember it was the crowd who called for Jesus’ crucifixion and chose Jesus Barabbas over Jesus of Nazareth. What is wrong with us as human beings? We remember Pilate who even though he knew Jesus was innocent, to satisfy the crowd, he put him to death. What is wrong with us? We are meant to remember that fellow human beings can and did beat a man until the skin and muscles in his back were like hamburger and yet still mocked and degraded him. All of this is meant to paint a picture of the brokenness of humankind and to move our hearts as we see there is something gravely wrong with humanity but more important something gravely wrong with my us. That brokenness is in all of us. We are all broken and in need of forgiveness.
Second, we’re meant to see the extent of God’s love for us. God loved us so much that he suffers and dies so that for once and all we might understand the depth of his love and how far he would go to reconcile us to Him. I don’t know anyone in this room who had a person die for you but I can’t help but imagine how that would dramatically change how you would live your life. That you would see the world differently knowing that someone loved you so much that they would die for you.
Third, it’s meant to call you to live differently. Image of Amy Duckworth Amy Duckworth was a reservist called up to serve in Iraq. She flew helicopters and was taking troops on a mission when her helicopter was hit by a rocket. It struck just below her feet blowing her legs off. They were able to land the helicopter and everyone got out as quickly as possible knowing the enemy was coming for them. But as they looked back at the helicopter, some of them returned to get Amy out and then carried her miles through head high grasses to safety. She returned home and ran for a congressional seat last year. The interviewer said, Knowing that these men risked their lives to come back for you and wouldn’t leave you there, how does that make you feel? She said, “You have to get up every day and seek to live in such a way as to be worthy of that kind of sacrifice.”
Slide with Scriptures. This is precisely what you are to see in the cross. Jesus said, Greater love has no man than this, than to lay down your life for your friends.” John 15:13 Paul says in Romans 5:8, “That this proves God’s love for us. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
Split screen with Roman soldiers beating or mocking Jesus and Simon of Cyrene. You have the choice now to identify with the soldiers who contributed to the crucifixion of Jesus and who mocked him or the follower whose life was changed. It is easier to mock Jesus than we think: to say one thing in church and then do something completely different in our thoughts, words and actions throughout the week. Do you ever hail him as King on Sunday and mock him on Monday by how you live? Peter Schmidt writes, Sadly, we are sometimes have mocked Jesus by being ashamed of Him. I’m guilty of it, and so are all of you. Sometimes we might not hide our faith, but we don’t go out of the way either to let people know that how much Jesus means to us. “Oh man, my friend will think I’m nuts if I tell him about the Savior. I don’t want to be known as the ‘Jesus-Freak’ at work, so I won’t say anything about my faith unless someone asks me about it first.” Are you ever ashamed of Jesus? I’ve never had a nail driven through my hand. I imagine that would hurt quite a lot. Not to mention the whipping, the beating, and the mocking that Jesus endured. Not to mention the very hell that he suffered for you. And yet we sometimes think, “Oh, I don’t want to bring Jesus into this conversation and ruin this good relationship that I have.” Ashamed of Jesus? Are you ashamed of those nail marks on the hands of your God and the gouging split in his side?
Don’t be ashamed. Those are the wounds that saved you from hell. Jesus did so much for us…let’s do more than just the minimum for him. Actively obey God by pulling the sin weeds out of your heart every day, but passively obey him by allowing him to use you to bring the Gospel to another person. I don’t know the same people you know. Each of you knows people well who don’t know their Savior at all. Each of you has at least one person who trusts what you say. Isn’t it time that we all come out of our comfort zone? That we all open our mouths and tell that person how much we care about where they spend eternity? Isn’t it time to stop being ashamed of Jesus, and start being proud that Jesus Christ was willing to come out of heaven and suffer for worthless beings like us? Oh! What a great God we have! Oh, let’s serve him, my friends! Let’s give him our best!” As we consider the cross and what it means for you, may each day your prayer be to live in such a way as to be worthy of Christ’s sacrifice for me.
