Thoughts on the Holy Week, Behold the man!

After the account of Jesus’ trial and torture, Pilatus brings him in front of the crowd and shouts: “Behold the man! Behold your king”. This statement is a key. It has lots of implications for us. Actually, Pilatus is showing a tortured man, but prophetically, he reveals humankind, the state of the fallen humanity as result of sin and evil. That’s how broken men and women look like. That is also what evil and the powers of this age do to God’s image.

It is also political. Human empires only know how to torture and humiliate others! (Similarities with recent facts are not pure coincidence). Even those who were expected to recognise him as king, doesn’t. Nobody wants to see the revealed brokenness of humanity and one’s own life. Empires cannot resist different kingdoms or the challenge of their ways and philosophy. So they have to kill those who oppose, intellectually or militarily. But the Cross, though perceived by the Empire as its own victory, is indeed the place of its own defeat. For once and for all, Jesus defeated the powers of evil and sin. Yes, He inaugurated a Kingdom, but a different one, not from this world but for this world, with the rule of true love, of humble service, of forgiveness of sins and of radical inclusiveness.

It is at the Cross where the true humanity is restored, and creation healed. It is the climax of history, when God, so loved the world that He sent His only Son to give His life for. Just to finalise, I want to quote again Tom Wright:

This is the love which shines out at the very moment when the darkness seemed after all to have overcome the light.

And if it is true that that love must transform our whole lives, our public life, our grasp on truth on the one hand, our dealings with Caesar on the other, this can only be if we are first grasped and transformed by that same love at the very deepest level of our won personalities.

About the picture above:

The picture Forgiven reveals the heart of God toward you. As you look at the painting you see not only Jesus wrapping His arms around a fallen man, you see Him wrapping His arms of mercy around you. Your eyes say, "Jesus is holding a broken sinner." Your heart says, "Jesus is holding me." When you look at the cross you will never need to question if He loves you. He came for you -- He died for you -- He lives for you. What a tremendous price has been paid -- more than all the riches in the entire world. This price was paid so that you could know the joy of being forgiven. ROY LESSIN

The scene of Forgiven is Mt. Calvary. A despairing man has a mallet in one hand and a large spike in the other . Both symbolize that each of us is responsible for Christ's death on the cross. Jesus Christ is holding up this broken man; at Christ's feet are broken chains, representing the sin that was to overcome at Calvary. There is a trace of blood on Christ's hands, and in the place where blood has fallen, lilies have grown.Thomas Blackshear II