When I was at college, there was a group of lads known as the bar boys. They also had roles in the college chapel. One of them was the Dean’s sacristan no less. These bar-boys specialised in mockery. They knew how to wind people up, to press that precise button, as it were, but they picked on the wrong man in the form of a very large American Ivy League exchange student. He did not appreciate having the word ‘Ego’ placed between his Christian name and surname by one of the bar boys on a rugby club photograph. The guilty bar boy was close to being ‘decked out’.
The Dean defused the situation by putting it to the American that if you take louts and you educate them, then what you get is educated louts. The Dean didn’t explain quite why he’d appointed these individuals to positions of responsibility in his chapel but it was good enough to keep the fists from flying.
Mockery – none of us likes it. You can probably track almost every pub punch-up or bar-room brawl to mockery in one form or another.
In addition to the excruciating physical pain and the utter spiritual desolation Jesus experienced on the Cross, mockery was also part of the experience. Mockery by the Roman soldiers – the crown of thorns placed on his head. The mock worship – ‘hail King of the Jews’. And then as he hung on the Cross bleeding and dying the mockery of the chief priests, the scribes and the elders of his own people. ‘He saved others: he cannot save himself.’ ‘He is the King of Israel: let him come down now from the cross and we will believe in him.’ ‘He trusts in God, let God deliver him now, if he wants to; for he said I am God’s Son.’
Mockery with its blend of sarcasm about Jesus’ messianic status – he is the King of Israel – and the humiliating reminder that Jesus never looked less like a king than he did hanging on that Cross – let him come down now from the cross and we will believe in him. The mockers, like all bullies - bar-room, playground, or office - gloried in the powerlessness of their victim.
But these bullies were saying more than they knew. There’s a deep irony, a layer of meaning in their mocking words of which they were entirely ignorant but which believers in the crucified Messiah can discern and in fact thank God for.
Take the first taunt: He saved others: he cannot save himself. Precisely. If he is to save others, if he is to die for the sins of the world, then he cannot save himself, for the death of the Christ, the self-substitution of the Son of God for sinful mankind, is the only way God’s wrath on sin can be satisfied and us saved from hell. Jesus’ death on the Cross in our place is God’s means of saving us. Yes indeed, Jesus could not save himself if he was to save others.
Take the second taunt: he is the king of Israel. Let him come down now from the cross and we will believe in him. Again, precisely. The chief priests and the elders and the scribes would have believed in Jesus if he’d come down from the Cross. That’s because were looking for the wrong sort of Christ. They wanted a Christ without his Cross, they wanted a Christ who would pull off a final cosmic victory against the occupying Romans. They wanted a conquering Christ. But what they failed to realise is that though Jesus never looked less like a king than he did at that moment of powerlessness, this was the climax of his divine destiny as the true Christ, the true King of Israel. This was the moment when his work as God’s rescuing King, the Christ, was reaching its fulfilment. He was indeed the King of Israel, and because he was the true Christ, because he was determined to be true to his divine destiny, he stayed on that Cross and fulfilled his Father’s will in dying for our sins.
Thank God the Lord Jesus didn’t save himself otherwise there would have been no salvation for us. Thank God he didn’t come down from the Cross otherwise he would have been a bogus Messiah, a false Christ, not the true Son of God that he was. Thank God that the true Christ stayed true to God’s purposes and let us give him all the glory for the salvation he achieved by staying on that Cross and saving others by refusing to save himself.
With all good wishes to you and your loved ones for a Happy Easter,
Julian Mann
Vicar