Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified. So the soldiers took charge of Jesus. Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha). There they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle. (John 19:16-18)
We’re accustomed to seeing crosses in many places. In churches. On churches. In cemeteries. On graves. In worship videos. On tattoos. To most of us, crosses are a symbol of faith.
In the Roman world, there were crosses in public places, too. But those crosses were not a symbol of faith; they were weapons of torture and death. People would see crosses frequently, often with a naked figure hanging on it–alive or dead. Rome crucified thousands of people, most of them slaves or criminals. There is a record of Roman soldiers crucifying an entire village simply because they wanted to occupy that territory. One way Rome kept the peace was by the terror of crucifixion. They used timber configured as a cross to crucify their victims or they used whatever tree happened to be available.
Jesus of Nazareth was crucified on a Roman cross outside Jerusalem. We remember that event on Good Friday.
Brian Zahnd writes: When the blood of the Son of God stained the wood that stood upon Skull Hill, it became the tree of life. What once was lost behind the closed gates of Eden has now been found…. The cross of Christ is the wood between the worlds—the world that was and the world to come…. As in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, the wood between the worlds is a portal.” (The Wood Between the Worlds, p. 16)
To the Apostle Paul, the cross was a scandal. He wrote, “We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block [skandalon] to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” (1 Corinthians 1:23)
The scandal was not that crucifixion was a horrific and cruel practice. No, the crucifixion of human beings–guilty or innocent–was a common sight in Roman-occupied Israel. The scandal was that a cross would become Good News to the world. The heart of the gospel is the cross.
What turned a scandal into Good News was the third day. We’ll consider that next time.
Prairie Pastor 