13. The Crucifixion

It was an ugly brutal place.  Golgatha.  It was a place where the ground was blood soaked and the air reeked of death and fear.  Though you might not believe in ghosts you would rather not take your chances being here alone.  If it was between you and your destination you would take the long way around, unless of course it was your destination.

To be sent there, condemned, was to die a slow painful death.  Crucifixion was a particularly painful way to die.  There was not the suffocation that we tell ourselves, the diaphragm was not constricted so that the victim could easily breathe and the outstretched arms did not limit the ability for the lungs to fill.  The outstretched arms did lead to increasingly intense pain.  Suffocation would have inadvertently eased the death by hastening it, and by decreasing the consciousness of the victim, no such luck for those condemned to die this way.

The combination of blood loss and trauma from being whipped and then mounted on the cross killed the person, eventually the heart would give out either by arrest or by beating so hard it would tear. Other times the brain starved of blood would go first and the body followed. The person would experience fear, an intense need to escape, a hormonal response to the blood loss.  The victim would feel chilled as the extremities were starved of blood and warmth.

And he hung there – naked.

The Whipping

You would have not have recognized him as he hung there.  We have no idea what it meant to be whipped.  Oh yes, we saw Roots, and Mutiny on the Bounty, we know what a whipping is!  Bullshit.  The instrument of torture used on Christ was designed to tear flesh from the body.  Long leather tendrils would have had pieces of metal tied at the end in order to wrap around the body.  There would have been other pieces of metal, and broken pottery affixed to the whip so that those would bite into the skin.

Once the whip, cat-o-nine tails, had found its purchase of skin it would be pulled back to tear away chunks of flesh.  We are not told how many lashes Jesus received.  Some suggest that Mosaic law would have called for 39 lashes, but it was the Romans whipping him.  There were many people who did not survive being whipped.

Jesus did.

The Parade

Jesus was led through the streets.  This kind of public execution had in it a number of agendas.  One was to scare the people into compliance; the condemned was an example of what happens when you piss off the Romans.  The other, more sinister agenda was to give the people a target to vent their rage against – the victim - an appeasement of their lust for violence.

The dead-man-walking parade of Jesus would have been just for that reason.  You and I, yes both of us, would have jostled to the front so that we could spit at him, or kick, or throw something.  Here he was, the entertainment of the hour.  That slow rage that burned inside from being dominated by these stinking Romans could be vented on this man.  It would not matter who he was.

Jesus survived the parade.

The Words From the Cross

We hear them spoken aloud on Sunday mornings, and on Good Fridays.  We think that is how they were spoken; loud, clear and resonating with conviction.  I think they were mumble - muttered from a man who was exhausted, close to death, terrified and in anguish and agony.  Had you and I been there we would have had to check with other people to ensure that we had heard him correctly. 

Reflections

This week I will think quietly about what I have done.  Yes me.  I have already been clear that I do not believe that it was a god so angry at a creation that he just had to kill something so he sent his son to die for us.  It was us, you and I.  I would have cheered at the size of the chunks of flesh ripped from his body.  I would have spit on him and called him names as he stumbled in front of me.  I would have pounded in the spikes into his flesh.  I would have yelled at him for him to get his father to come rescue him.  And as he mutter-mumbled “My God, My God why have your forsaken me?”  I would have chuckled.

I would have been puzzled when he said, “It is finished.”

They will proclaim his righteousness,

declaring to a people yet unborn:

He has done it!