As I write this the new film by Mel Gibson about the life of Jesus has just been released in America. There is much controversy regarding the depiction of the flogging and the crucifixion, deemed by some to be gratuitous in its violence. The Bible makes very brief reference to both the flogging and the process of the crucifixion. It seems to gloss over the aspects that many people today like to focus on, the physical horror and the emotional anguish, they are dismissed in very few words. There are several reasons for this that come to mind.

In the days when Jesus walked this earth anyone hearing about a flogging by the Roman soldiers would not need to be told about the details, they would have known only to well what it involved. They would have been told or even seen the whips with the flint chips embed in them, and known of the fine art of those applying the scourge who could gauge to a nicety just how far to go before the victim succumbed to death. The people of Jerusalem would have been well aware of the process of crucifixion, the nailing of the wrists and ankles to the harsh wooden crossbeams, the thump of the cross into the hole prepared for it, the agony of the victim hardly able to breath, pestered by flies and parched by thirst. The Jews also would have been aware of the utter shame involved in being hung naked upon what to them represented a tree. In our depiction of Christ on the cross we decorously place a loin cloth about him, but in reality that would not have been there. To the Jew such a thing indicated the complete abandonment of the person.

God could not look upon him.

Perhaps today we do need a more graphic portrayal of the goings on that night and morning in Jerusalem nearly 2000 years ago, though may be the new film goes too far in pandering to the modern desire to be horrified. The flogging and crucifixion was a horrendous event physically and emotionally, but to us the events are symbols of a deeper horror that was being played out on the spiritual plane.

The Bible is full of symbolism, often acted out in the lives of the people recorded there. This is necessary because we are unable to fully understand the nature of the spiritual realm in which God exists, a realm for which we were destined when God first created us. I think it important to consider this point of the nakedness of Jesus upon the cross for it takes us straight back to that incident related in the first chapters of the Bible where mankind rebelled against God in reaching out for the forbidden fruit, the fruit of self-determination. Adam and Eve were tempted and succumbed to the desire to determine the difference between good and evil, but in taking hold of that prerogative they were rebelling against God and saying that they knew better than the Almighty what was good for the world and mankind. But having obtained that ability they realised how impossible it was for them to correctly fulfil the task. In consequence they felt naked and unprotected, a rift had been riven between themselves and, more importantly between each of them and their creator.

The extreme brutality of the crucifixion and the events leading up to it are symbolic of the terrible consequences of that act of disobedience and the measures that God had to take to undo those consequences. But there is one part of the scene where symbolism and reality come together, Jesus' words of dereliction "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?". This anguished cry should be on our lips too, for ever since the first man, symbolised by Adam and Eve, rejected God's goodness all people have had within them that seed of rebellion which separates us from the Holy God who made us to be like Him and holds all of creation in His hands.

But the symbolism does not stop at the cross, Jesus died and was taken down from the tree of execution and placed in a rich man's tomb, things predicted hundreds of years previously, however the powers of evil could not hold him because he was no mere mortal, he was the Son of God and he rose again leaving the tomb empty, with the stone sealing it rolled away. He rose to Eternal Life and if we will confess that we have turned away from God and have let our pride, our greed, our bitterness, our apathy and our selfishness rule our lives, instead of our love and worship of Him, then Christ Jesus will take us back into the presence of our creator and Heavenly Father.

None of us are free from these characteristics, and it is these things which ultimately make this world the strife torn place that it is, we may try in our own power to rid ourselves of bad traits, but ultimately we will be unsuccessful, we need the indwelling power of Jesus, that is the Holy Spirit, to do it for us. We get this power when we surrender our lives to His control, trying to be good is simply not enough because it does not rid us of the root of the problem, which is our pride.

Written - 1st March 2004

---

---