The sacred contradictions - 3 reflections for Easter

The execution of the 33 year old Jesus of Nazareth was a contradiction. In the familiar surroundings of the often visited garden knelt a tormented and agonised man. In his divinity fully aware of what was about to happen. This divine insight had a very human effect; fear. With images of the many crucifixions that Jesus would have witnessed the shear stress and pressure of what was coming caused his blood vessels in his head to hemorrhage. His skin, weakened as the Cutaneous hemorrhage caused by the stress induced Hematidrosis stained his face with drops of blood filled sweat, a condition that in itself can lead to death.

Then the betrayer and the kiss of death.  A sacred greeting, one of friendship and relationship, but this was not the kiss of a friend.  As lips touched blood stained skin, the friend/king was betrayed.  Next, Jesus brought before Caiaphas, the next betrayer Peter, warming himself around an open fire with the crucifixion conspirators. 

“Our Lord Jesus, in the night that he was betrayed…” Must not the thought of that night knit the church together, make it watch carefully to see whether the night of betrayal threatens once more?’ Kierkegaard

1. priest / Priest - John 18:19-24

Our first contradiction is a couple of high priests.  One priest asking the questions not knowing that the recipient of the interrogation was also a priest, THE priest, the great high priest.  The priest gets no straight answer - The real priest is beaten and bound in preparation for execution.  The contradictory question echos ‘Is that how you answer the high priest?’x3.  By mocking him and beating him?

2. king / King - john 19:1-2

Our second contradiction is a couple of kings.  Bound with his hands in the air to a wooden stake the king receives the first of two beatings, the fustigatio.  Later would come the Phrageloo a beating so severe that many would not see the end of it.  In the courtyard stood a fancy dress mock king clothed in a purple robe, the rough material rubbing against his raw, open wounds.  Thorns that he created thrust heavily onto his already beaten and bruised head. “Hail, King of the Jews!” The mock king is mocked but underneath the fake regalia is THE King, The King of Kings.  Announced sarcastically by pilate to the waiting crowd ‘Ecce homo, Ecce homo’ Behold the man.  Before the crowd was a heartrending sight, beaten, bruised, dazed, bloodied, abused, mocked. ‘Ecce homo, Ecce homo’ behold the man…............the only perfect man.

‘As far as power is concerned, to rule the world with a scepter is nothing compares to ruling it with a reed - that is, by impotence - that is, divinely.’ Kierkegaard

3. death / Death

Our third contradiction. Death.  This was death for sure, but a death that would reverse death, a death that would bring life.  There on a second hand cross, suspended naked, genitalia on shameful display, all bodily functions lost, tortured, unrecognizable as a person was Jesus, son of Joseph the carpenter, son of Yahweh. The one who by his word, in that very moment of shame was upholding the entire universe.  Each heartbeat of the executioner, the atoms that held the nails together holding him to the cross, the thorns pressed into his head, the breath of the mockers, all sustained by the innocent king facing a criminals death.

As one theologian put it…..

‘... the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.  Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be.  Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone; God accepts penalties which belong to man alone…........ If we bring God down to our level and raise ourselves to his, then of course we see no need for a radical salvation, let alone for a radical atonement to secure it.  When, on the other hand, we have glimpsed the blinding glory of the holiness of God, and have been so convicted of our sin by the Holy Spirit that we tremble before God and acknowledge what we are, namely ‘hell-deserving sinners’, then and only then does the necessity of the cross appear so obvious that we are astonished we never saw it before.’ - Stott, The Cross of Christ.

Crucifixion was death, death was the end, but this was a different kind of death, this death was not the end.  this death was the beginning of something new.  This death was life.

The glory is in the contradictions. 

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