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The language in this passage is remarkably restrained.
There is no attempt in it to create sympathy for Jesus.
There is no attempt to incite hatred toward those
responsible for the actual crucifixion itself.
This is an event far too solemn for that sort of thing.
The facts are stated and left to stand for themselves.
There is no additional comment of any kind.
In a passage where the language is so carefully chosen
the reader must go through it slowly and thoughtfully.
Otherwise we might miss what is being said.
The enemies of Jesus believed they had destroyed him.
They believed that they had seen the end of him.
And yet, nothing happened, according to Mark,
that should have surprised anyone who knew his/her Bible.
For all unknown alike to the friends and enemies of Jesus
in some mysterious way, the things they did and said
had always been a part of the eternal plan of God.

It is a great mystery, certainly, but one the church believes,
that in the events surrounding the death of Jesus,
the purposes of God were being fulfilled.
____________

He was put to death -- with criminals.
He was offered a drink of wine that had been drugged.
His clothing became the prizes in a lottery.
And while he hung on the cross
he was mocked and humiliated by those who passed him by.
All these things about the Messiah, the Servant of God,
a careful reader might have found in certain psalms1
and in the book of Isaiah.
And it is from the perspective of those writings
that Mark composed his gospel.
They were proof, surely, all evidence to the contrary,
that the will of God was being fulfilled
as it had been predicted in the Hebrew Bible.
____________

As a part of the pre-crucifixion routine
Jesus had been brutally beaten.
It was a procedure that brought men to the edge of death.
And sometimes to death itself.
It is quite likely he needed help to carry the cross-beam
of his cross as the procession left the city for Golgotha.
The man chosen to help him was called Simon, a native of Cyrene.
He must carry the cross-beam in the place of another man,
-- Simon Peter of Galilee.

We hardly need a reminder at this point
that Simon Peter had pledged himself to die with Jesus,
if that should have been necessary.2
Instead of denying himself,3
taking up the cross and following after his master,
he denied his master.
And so another man, another Simon,
must do under orders what Peter had offered to do voluntarily.
By the time the gospel was written,
Peter had in fact been martyred in Rome.
And doubtless in that situation
he had carried his cross in every sense of the word.
But on the day of the crucifixion of Jesus,
when the disciple from Galilee ought to have done it,
it was a native of Cyprus who carried the cross-beam.
____________

The contrast between the pledges of a disciple
and his actual performance in a time of crisis
does not end with Peter.
Earlier in the gospel,4 two of the disciples,
James and John, asked for the chief places with Jesus
when he came into his glory.
They asked that when the great day came
they might be one at his right hand and one at his left.
At the time of their request Jesus had warned them:
"You don't know what you are asking."
And neither they did!
When his royalty was demonstrated on the cross
Jesus had other companions with him.
In the places of James and John, his disciples,
he had the fellowship of two robbers.

They were one on his right and the other one on his left.
Just as Peter ought to have been carrying the cross,
so the ambitious brothers ought to have been with him then.
However, they had dreams of more comfortable places.
They had dreams of a cup brimming over with the good life,
and of a baptism into a different sort of society altogether.
It is true, though, that, like Peter,
they were to follow Jesus later.
In the meantime, the chief places on either side of him
were taken by two men from the city jail.
Men who were crucified were put to death
where they could be seen by the largest number of people.
Their deaths were a warning to all who saw them
that imperial power did not deal lightly
with those who dared oppose it.
Jesus was put to death in a place called Golgotha,
-- so named because it was shaped like a human skull.
There is an old Jewish legend
that the skull of Adam was buried at Golgotha.
"If through Adam disobedience, sin and death came into
the world,"
wrote Paul, "through Jesus there is obedience and life to undo
Adam's wrong."5
The connection of Golgotha with both Adam and Jesus
is one that Mark would have us make.
____________

People who were crucified were put to death
in a location at eye-level with the traffic that passed by.
The body of the victim was bent in an "S" shape
to keep its feet from touching the ground.

As he hung dying, the criminal was frequently subjected
to the taunts and tortures of heartless folk
who saw him there completely helpless.
In his dying, Jesus was despised and rejected by passers-by,
by religious leaders and authorities,
and by those who were put to death with him.
The reactions of those who watched him die
served only to underline the complete abandonment of Jesus.
It was a procedure that had begun long before.
The passers-by were right and wrong
in the things they said and did to Jesus.
"You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days,
save yourself and come down from the cross."6
They were unable to know it then,
that in his death he was destroying all that temple worship
had stood for in its sacrificial system.
And in his dying he was replacing it with another way to God,
himself, to be raised from the dead in three days.
The religious leaders, for their part, also had sport with him.
They called out "He saved others, himself he cannot save."
And that was precisely true!
He had saved others, from their sins and diseases.
Yet finally, in order to do as much for us,
he could not and would not save himself.
We believe in him today
precisely because he did not come down from the cross,
precisely because he did not turn back from the plan of God,
as he was challenged to do.
And then the men on either side of him
joined the passing parade of pathetic people
in their outpouring of contempt and hostility toward him.

In fact, according to the text of Mark,
what they said was not fit even to be recorded.
____________

The rejection and abandonment of Jesus,
even the horror of crucifixion itself,
have been the experiences of more people
than we will ever know.
It happens, in one form or other,
as often in our village, town or city
as it does in any other part of the world.
And while that is true, and we know it is,
what happened on Golgotha was different in nature.
What happened there was a part of the plan of God
for your salvation and for mine.
-- Amen.


1-Psalms 22 and 69
2-Mark 14:31
3-Mark 8:27f
4-Mark 10:37, 40
5-Romans 5:19
6-Mark 15:29, 30

Prayer

Mark 15:21-32

Mighty God,
the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,
gather us up in the great company
of those to whom salvation has come
through the cross of Christ.
Let the redeeming power of his love
flow through us and transform us
as it has done for generations before us.
Kneeling before you,
let us find forgiveness, wholeness and peace.
Here let us determine from this time forward
to share with Christ the burden of suffering
wherever we meet it in the world.
Here let us begin all over again
to live, work, speak and pray
as those whose lives have been given back to them,
through the death of Christ our Savior.
-- Amen.