Jesus is Scourged and Crowned with Thorns
Mark 15:16-20
They dressed him in royal purple, then wove a crown of thorns and put it on him, and began to salute him, "All hail! King of the Jews!" Continually striking Jesus on the head with a reed and spitting at him, they genuflected before him and pretended to pay him homage. When they had finished mocking him, they stripped him of the purple dressed him in his own clothes, and led him out to crucify him.
"We are horrified when we think of what was done to Jesus. But are we equally horrified when this is done to others? . . . When the range and depth of the sufferings of others and what we do to one another no longer bothers us, nor moves us to remedy the situation and stop the pain, then we have lost a part of our own humanity, our own soul. Such sufferings must bother us, and we must speak of them and firmly resolve to find ways to eliminate them from our world. . . . The abuse in families, children dying as a result of parental rage, spousal abuse, and the torture of the elderly are bred of the same callousness of the torturer. The teasing, insulting, excluding, and humiliating of students, the inflicting of pain, are learned from watching it practiced as the national and international way of reacting to others who frighten us whom we feel we cannot control and so must kill."
. . . excerpts from "The New Stations of the Cross" by Megan McKenna
We have learned to breathe under water, to live in spite of the death-dealing that surrounds us. We should be drowning in remorse, sputtering and choking in rage, but instead we adapt to a new reality so we can continue in our daily life, floating along unaffected by the cries of children being abused, wives being beaten, prisoners being raped, by Jesus being crowned with thorns. Is this how you created us, oh God? Take away our ability to inflict pain, and our desperate need to look away from pain inflicted in our witness. Help us see the holiness in each of your children, and lead us to repent for our self-centered view of the world.
We pray for victims of violence, for the restoration of their physical and spiritual wholeness. We pray for those who have given up on life, and thus feel no remorse. We pray for all who are locked in the prison of poverty and need. We pray for those who feel unloved, unworthy, unnecessary. We pray for persons trapped in addiction. We pray for victims of prison violence, those falsely accused, all who are wrongly imprisoned, and for prisoners on death row.
Save us from our complacency that allows us to breathe in the violence of the world. Open our lungs that we might cry out with on behalf of those who can not, free our hands that we may act on behalf of those who are bound by fear and hatred. Push us forward when we want to stand back. Show us the way to be your people.
In the name of Jesus, we pray.
They dressed him in royal purple, then wove a crown of thorns and put it on him, and began to salute him, "All hail! King of the Jews!" Continually striking Jesus on the head with a reed and spitting at him, they genuflected before him and pretended to pay him homage. When they had finished mocking him, they stripped him of the purple dressed him in his own clothes, and led him out to crucify him."We are horrified when we think of what was done to Jesus. But are we equally horrified when this is done to others? . . . When the range and depth of the sufferings of others and what we do to one another no longer bothers us, nor moves us to remedy the situation and stop the pain, then we have lost a part of our own humanity, our own soul. Such sufferings must bother us, and we must speak of them and firmly resolve to find ways to eliminate them from our world. . . . The abuse in families, children dying as a result of parental rage, spousal abuse, and the torture of the elderly are bred of the same callousness of the torturer. The teasing, insulting, excluding, and humiliating of students, the inflicting of pain, are learned from watching it practiced as the national and international way of reacting to others who frighten us whom we feel we cannot control and so must kill."
. . . excerpts from "The New Stations of the Cross" by Megan McKenna
We have learned to breathe under water, to live in spite of the death-dealing that surrounds us. We should be drowning in remorse, sputtering and choking in rage, but instead we adapt to a new reality so we can continue in our daily life, floating along unaffected by the cries of children being abused, wives being beaten, prisoners being raped, by Jesus being crowned with thorns. Is this how you created us, oh God? Take away our ability to inflict pain, and our desperate need to look away from pain inflicted in our witness. Help us see the holiness in each of your children, and lead us to repent for our self-centered view of the world. We pray for victims of violence, for the restoration of their physical and spiritual wholeness. We pray for those who have given up on life, and thus feel no remorse. We pray for all who are locked in the prison of poverty and need. We pray for those who feel unloved, unworthy, unnecessary. We pray for persons trapped in addiction. We pray for victims of prison violence, those falsely accused, all who are wrongly imprisoned, and for prisoners on death row.
Save us from our complacency that allows us to breathe in the violence of the world. Open our lungs that we might cry out with on behalf of those who can not, free our hands that we may act on behalf of those who are bound by fear and hatred. Push us forward when we want to stand back. Show us the way to be your people.
In the name of Jesus, we pray.
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