John 19:17-27

 John 19:17-27

Jesus lived in a world that was commonly brutal.  Even the best of times people were living in the presence of pain and suffering.  Without modern medicine, we take for granted, illnesses and injuries were endured with little or no relief.  Death came often and at a much younger age and when it came there was little available to ease the passing.  We as a society try to blunt the horrors of life.  We have ratings for movies to protect children and we have warnings “The following program contains graphic and disturbing images.  Viewer discretion is advised.”  Not so in the world in which Jesus lived and died.  Public crucifixion was as public as possible.  It was meant to be a declaration of the power of Rome and a warning to anyone who might consider challenging the Empire.   The experience of seeing a naked man beaten beyond recognition, writhing in agony, bleeding, weakly screaming, pleading for death to give relief this was an image everyone knew.  Like any great tragedy, art, film and imagination cannot adequately capture the moment.  It was a dark, ugly, terrifying reality.  What is more, the hopelessness of the spiritual reality is worse than the physical experience.  Every aspect of the physical darkness is darker and worse spiritually.  The hopelessness, sorrow, pain, fear, misery of this hard life is multiplied by a factor that cannot be named in a Godless eternity.

Pilate unknowing and metaphorically describes our hopelessness.  “What I have written I have written”.  He clearly did not mean to give us a spiritual lesson but it is there.  What we write with our lives is ours.  We write a history of sin and selfishness and evil and it is there forever.  We cannot erase it, we cannot bring light to the darkness of our soul.  We cannot bring life to death.  What we write with our lives is written. Until we return to the place of the skull.

There is One on Skull Hill who takes on Himself all our wrath and evil and wickedness.  What we have written we have written but He takes all that is written and takes it away.  In place of all our lives have written He gives a new life.  

“Lord, thank you for the cross. AMEN”