Holy Week: Friday, when Jesus was executed.

 The chief priests

   stirred up the mob. (Mark 15:11)

Jesus gets dragged around from trial to trial. First he is accused before the religious powers—the high priest and all the chief priests and a gathering of the Sanhedrin where he is accused of messing with their temple and saying something about destroying the temple and rebuilding it in three day. There is some truth to the accusations. But, to get Jesus killed, they will need the political might of Rome. So, they drag Jesus into the Praetorium—the Roman military outpost where Pilate, the Roman governor, resides during Festival. Here the charge against Jesus is political: “He claims to be Christ the King.” There is some truth to that as well.

There will be more maneuvering, but the mob will not relent. They continue yelling out and demanding that Jesus be crucified; for as they say, “We have no king but Caesar.”  Pilate seeks “to satisfy the mob.” He can’t risk a riot. So he releases Barabbas, a notorious insurrectionists, instead of Jesus and has Jesus scourge and “delivered to be crucified.”

Crucifixion is the cruelest form of capital punishment the state has ever devised. It had to do not simply with execution, but public execution as a form of shame and humiliation—to be stripped naked and hung high upon a cross to die a slow agonizing death. Crucifixion was a public spectacle.

The mob, and the chief priests also, along with the scribes and elders mocked and taunted him as he hung upon the cross. Pilate placed an inscription on the cross in Hebrew, Latin and Greek that read: “This is Jesus the King of the Jews.” For Rome, it tells what happens to anyone who claims to be king apart from Caesar. The chief priests want Pilate to change the sign to read “He claimed to be King of the Jews.” But Pilate lets it be. There is truth in it and more—something more and unimaginable will have to happen for this tragic Friday to turn into Good Friday—for this Roman cross to be turned from an instrument of death and shame, into a symbol of redemption and new life.