Rev. Steven S. Billings
Lent 4 Mid-Week
Sermon
3-25-2009

St. Mark 15:16-20

¹⁶ And the soldiers led him away inside the palace (that is, the governor’s headquarters), and they called together the whole battalion. ¹⁷ And they clothed him in a purple cloak, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on him. ¹⁸ And they began to salute him, “Hail, King of the Jews!” ¹⁹ And they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in homage to him. ²⁰ And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. And they led him out to crucify him.

"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Lk 23:34). I wonder if the soldiers who crucified Jesus were taken aback at all to hear those words coming from a man on a cross. You can imagine that most guys nailed to a cross would usually have considerably less complimentary things to say about those who'd just hammered them there!

But I'm sure they thought: "Listen, buddy, we know exactly what we're doing! We're bringing Roman justice to a pretentious little pipsqueak who's been making all kinds of racket about being a king!" What were they supposed to do - tremble in fear before the "great descendant of David," some stupid Jewish folk-hero from way-back-when whose descendants lost their kingdom a long ago? Cry into their pillows at night for fear that the Jewish Messiah Bogeyman was going to get them? Shiver in their sandals over someone whose own people didn't want to have anything to do with him, whose own priests turned him over to the Romans because even they recognized that he was a monumental failure?

Oh, they knew what they were doing, alright - at least they thought they did. But how wrong they were! Now, how can they hope to escape the lowest pit of hell on the day of final judgment? They tortured the Son of God and made up the cruelest forms of mockery for him. They spit in his face, for heaven's sake!

I'm willing to bet not one of us wants to be standing anywhere near those soldiers on the Last Day. That's why we need to beware of even the slightest drift in their direction. What? You don't think you ever join in their mocking and disrespect? Oh, but you do; we all do. We do it when we don't even know we're doing it. And when it finally comes to our attention, we must catch ourselves quickly and pray: Father, forgive us for despising our Savior's claim!

Have you ever wondered why the soldiers were especially cruel to this man? I mean, what had he ever done to them? But think for a minute about the times they were living in and the ruthlessness of the empire they served. It was Roman policy to humiliate and torture those who were condemned. That scourging Jesus went through? It was known as "the little death." It was not uncommon and the pain and agony it delivered wouldn't let up until the subject died. Many never even made it to the cross; the scourging was enough to do them in. And beyond that, those condemned to death were put on public display, nearly - and sometimes fully - naked, nailed up where all the world could watch them bleeding, gasping and dying.

But with Jesus, there was more. His case seemed to bring out an extra dose of cruelty. None of the others crucified with him had crowns of thorns on their heads; there's no mention of them being spit on or punched in the face. But with Jesus, the Romans seemed determined to treat him as the greatest of fools.

You see, the thing with Jesus was, they didn't take anything about him seriously. Everyone knew about his triumphant entry into Jerusalem back at the beginning of the week. The Romans knew how all the Jews in town for the great Passover festival, had hailed Jesus and shouted that he was the Son of David, the great Messiah, the King of the Jews.

"Some king!" the soldiers must've thought. Where were his armies? Where was his glorious crown, his royal robe of state? Where was his scepter? Was this fool the best Judea could come up with? In so mocking him, they mocked his entire nation. They let every Jew see what the legions of Rome thought about their lofty pretensions of being the chosen people of God with a Messiah-King to lead them to everlasting glory. It was all a joke!

But why such a cynical attitude? As conquerors they despised anything that wasn't Roman. Who, after all, had ever stood against them in battle? Rome was the superpower of the day, and its soldiers were the greatest warriors the world had ever seen.

To such men everything about Jesus was laughable. "King of the Jews" sounded ridiculous to them because there was no king but Caesar. Judea was a conquered territory. As for all the fuss the Jews made about this man and their God? The Romans couldn't care less about the loser religion of a loser nation. To them all the grand, religious debate surrounding Jesus was just plain silly and deserving of the greatest contempt.

So that's what the crown of thorns was all about, and the scepter, and a rough cloak thrown over his torn and bloody back. That's why "they began to call out to him, 'Hail, king of the Jews!'" and why "again and again they struck him on the head with a staff and spit on him," and all the other things.

My friends, does it shock you to think that the same attitude is rampant in the world today? That Jesus' claims are despised pretty much everywhere? Surely you must know that there are those who mock the very core concepts of our Faith. You know who I mean: those who think they're just way too intellectual for religion, who think we're so stupid because we believe the Bible. We're enemies of everything they hold dear - the freedom to sin as much as they want to, in any way they want to. "Who are you to say we shouldn't have sex before we're married? Who are you to say same-sex relationships are wrong? Who are you to say I can't kill my unborn child? Who are you to say we shouldn't grow babies to use as spare parts for other people?" Don't you see? We stand in the way of their twisted utopia, and that terrifies them, so they feel the need to de-humanize the objects of their fear, to de-humanize us. They've become so jaded that they hold in contempt anyone who, like you and me, think there's a deeper meaning to life. For them, this is all there is, so the desires of the flesh outweigh any other considerations.

The result of this cynicism is ubiquitous; it's everywhere. On more than a few college campuses, there are professors who believe it's their duty to cajole, argue, and ridicule the Christianity out of any believing student who happens to enroll in their class. I know of one who actually boasts about it. And look at what the popular media is doing to our faith! Christian teachings and those who follow them are made to look like complete idiots. It's like the whole world is telling us Christians to shut up and keep our religion to ourselves.

And how about us? Aren't there times when life would seem a whole lot easier without the albatross of a two-thousand-year-old religion hanging around our necks? Sometimes you just don't want to be made fun of for your beliefs. Sometimes the Christian Faith demands things we don't really want to do or condemns things we really like to do. It's at times like these that the siren call of the cynics seems the strongest. It's then, especially, that we suffer the temptation not to take all this religion stuff so seriously, but to "grow up" and join the "21st century" like "everyone else."

But before we let ourselves get too close to the cynical legionnaires of ancient Jerusalem, let's fervently pray, "Father, let Jesus be the foundation of our lives."

The trouble with those soldiers was that they based their lives on something less than what God holds out for us. Remember how Jesus ended the Sermon on the Mount, talking about building your house on the rock or the sand? The soldiers couldn't tell the difference. Everything God wanted for them, even the place he prepared for them to stand forever - none of it had any appeal for them. "Repent and believe in Jesus Christ!" That's the solid ground. But to those foolish men, it seemed more like quicksand.

Repentance never entered their minds because they didn't think they'd done anything wrong. Even when they tortured their victims, they felt perfectly justified. Why bother with guilt? That's no way for anyone to live, especially a soldier in the Roman army. These guys didn't have any room for the Ten Commandments. What use were silly Jewish fairy tales to the masters of the world?

Thank God we know better, right? We know our place. On the one hand, we are merely creatures put here by a God who has every right to demand our obedience to his laws. We don't get to choose which laws apply to us. We don't get to decide that this or that commandment doesn't really fit into our life right now. God's code is forever. That means we owe his laws the greatest awe and respect and trust - trust that He knows better than we do how we ought to live our lives.

On the other hand, we are the redeemed children of God through faith in Christ. The reason Jesus was in the hands of sadistic mockers was to save us from our sins. Through his suffering and death he wiped away our guilt and made us sons and daughters of the Almighty. "The blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin" (1 Jn 1:7).

This means we understand how great a claim he has on us as our Savior, our God, and our King. How could we deny that we belong to him who paid so great a price to make us his own?

Indeed, we no longer look at ourselves the way the world looks at itself, but see the greatness of the claim Jesus Christ has on us. We now belong to him, not to ourselves. We are his people on earth, put here to do his will as He clearly recorded in his Word.

Christ and his Word, then, are the very basis and foundation of our entire lives. But don't think of this as some kind of terrible burden or unwelcome imposition. Rather, rejoice and be glad - honored, even! - to be servants of this great King. "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me," Jesus said, "for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls" (Mt 11:29). Knowing this, how could you build your life on any foundation other than Jesus Christ and his Word?

To this day He is denied and mocked by many, but we pray that he will always be honored and acknowledged by us. The Roman soldiers had no time for his claim to be the King of the Jews, and they made that clear in the shameful way they treated him. But we bend our knees before him who shed his blood to save us from hell and to make us his own. We gladly confess him as King and pray for strength to obey his Word. Let all the world deride him. But we pray: Heavenly Father, make us ever more truly his subjects in his wonderful kingdom of grace. In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

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