John 19.1-37
As a child, I read The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. It was just a story to me, a book I picked up. Children playing in an old house, a snowy world through the wardrobe. Very entertaining, until…
I read the part when Aslan is shaved and bound to the stone table. The White witch’s grotesque supporters mass and mock, jeering and gurning, as the Great Lion dies.I wept.
I couldn’t understand why this had happened. Why the Great Lion, who could have knocked them all aside with one blow of his paw would submit to their power. I will never forget the bleakness of reading that part of the book. I had no idea what was going to come next.
When we hear again the Passion Narrative, we know what is coming; it’s a familiar story.
But for a moment, become again the child who does not know. Be a spectator in the trial scene as it unfolds; be with the women at the cross; be in this story – not so hasty to run ahead, to flee the incomprehensible cruelty. Stay present and watch.
What do we see? Pilate who finds no fault in Jesus, who wants to release him – yet is fearful.
Of what? Disrule? Riots? Roman retribution? Or something deeper? Has he some intuition,
some sense of a deeper disruption, an unease he cannot quite articulate? ‘Speak to me,’ he says to Jesus, ‘I can fix this.’
Jesus – calm amid the storm – in control of the situation, reminding Pilate that any power he has
is given by the Power of all powers.
Notice the ironic references to Jesus as King. Pilate insists on naming Jesus ‘Behold your King!’ ‘Shall I crucify your King?’
Hear the chief priests’ political deception, ‘We have no King but Caesar.’ Surely, we raise our eyebrows here? The scriptures name God ‘King of Kings and Lord of Lords.’ They know this. Truth denied for political expediency. Watch out for that.
Jesus – carrying his cross on the road to Golgotha. A single image that cuts through all our pride.
Behold your King who labours for you, approaching Golgotha – the place of the skull – the place of death.
How did it come to this?
Yet Jesus bears the humiliation, the mockery, the cross, the pain, without complaint, without resistance.He allows himself to be led into this.He who could summon a legion of angels to bear him away, is silent.
Pilate insists that a sign is pinned above Jesus’s head In Hebrew , Greek and Latin – ‘Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews.’ He wants all who see it to understand. Why? A petty act of revenge for being pushed about by the religious leaders? Maybe. But whether mockery or not, such truth cannot be withheld; Jesus is crucified under a sign of his identity: King. The suffering King.
Now see the women: His mother, grey with grief, stooped with sorrow. The sword that will pierce his side has shattered her heart. His aunt supporting her, as they gaze upon him. Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary – leaning together; a tableau of trauma. Love and sorrow bind them all.
See Jesus – mother of us all, ensuring his own mother’s security. ‘Woman behold thy son! Re-mothering his friend, ‘Behold they mother!’ pointing them to a future beyond this dreadful now -
a glimmer of hope in this darkest of scenes. Such kindness and compassion. Even wracked in pain, he can frame the thought of their need. Reaching out, beyond himself. This is his nature, even in death.
And then – it seems the candle is snuffed out. It is Finished. A tsunami of grief smashes over them.
I am a child again, holding the book in my lap, Weeping in utter disbelief.