Way of the Cross 2
March 6, 2009
Station 2: Jesus Accepts His Cross
Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor’s headquarters, and they gathered the whole cohort around him. They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on his head. They put a reed in his right hand and knelt before him and mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” They spat on him, and took the reed and struck him on the head. After mocking him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him. (Matthew 27:27-31)
Jesus, I cringe at the pain of the thorns. But I am wounded far more deeply at the humiliation and degradation you suffer, that the very thing you came to offer us as a gift becomes a source of ridicule. The crowds thought of a King in terms of power. But you came to be the kind of King who shepherds his people, who takes responsibility for their well being, whose principles are faithfulness, justice, and righteousness (Isa 11:3-4). And yet, the people are not ready for that kind of King.
I would like to think that I am ready to follow you who offer a Kingdom of peace and love for one another. But am I? Am I willing to yield my ideas of what the Kingdom should look like for the role of a servant? Am I really so willing to give up my human preoccupation with power and control and accept a different kind of crown than I was expecting?
I see you accept the Cross in the midst of such mockery. You could have refused. What more could they have done to you? Yet you begin this journey, knowing full well where it will lead. I hear no words of complaint, no protestations of innocence, no cursing the injustice. And yet I am so prone to complain and whine about the most trivial things. Sometimes the things I face in my life are more than trivial. Sometimes the troubles of life bear down on me. But I so easily fall into self-pity. I too often assume that I am the only one who bears a cross, or that my cross is larger and heavier than any others.
But I am not alone in that. People all around me bear far more than I must bear. You accepted your cross without self-pity. O Lord, forgive me for forgetting that in my weakness I am driven to trust on you, and that in that trust my weakness becomes your strength. Forgive my attitudes of self-pity that make me more repulsive than loving. I do not ask for crosses to bear. But when they come, give me the strength to bear them as one who follows your example.
*This post is taken from one of my Old Testament Professors, Dennis Bratcher.
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Jamie,
Thanks for doing this series. Very meaningful.