There was just too much human on human abuse, vioence and hatred in the radio news programme I was listening to this morning.
- Countries whose troops were gunning down multitudes of their own citizens in the streets.
- Boys abusing and raping girls in our schools.
- Fears about end-to-end encryption being rolled out on more social media sites because of the much increased opportunities for sexual predators to groom children for abuse.
It leaves you thinking doesn't it, how do people ever manage to DO such things to other people, do you think?
De-humanising a human enables the predatory process
When we were still able to travel freely I stopped off one day on the way back from a trip to some French ram sales at a place called Falaise in Normandy the birth-place of William the Conqueror.
It was a great place to visit and I didn't realise the town had recently proudly opened the Museum of the French Resistance there.
My uncle had married into a family that lived through the Nazi occupation of France, that had been prominent in the Maquis, the French Resistance, and my aunt had two parents (one killed in the conflict) both awarded the highest French civilian honour for their efforts.
You can imagine that the museum was place I wanted to visit but it was a salutary place to visit.
I couldn't imagine how people could do these awful things to people, until I stood for a long time and read a set of letters in a showcase from a German soldier.
These were ...
Letters home from an ordinary man
He'd sent these letters home to his wife about shooting day after day hudreds of civilians (men, women and children) as a member of a Nazi firing squad.
He described how he'd found it hard to shoot the first few ... children ... but that he reminded himself these were vermin, less than human, and that as he continued to view them like that the task got easier until he really didn't mind it at all.
He got used to it.
And THAT's how atrocities happen
The image of God in mankind needs to be pushed from your sight, and then any human can inflict evil on another.
The fundamental enabling feature of the enabling of atrocities is the lie that this person isn't created as the image of God.
So that Easter week, to stiffen their own resolve to commit their terrible deed ...
The legionaries humiliated the King
In the words of our verse for the Day:
""Then they knelt in front of him and mocked him. ‘Hail, king of the Jews!’ they said."
Matthew 27:29
So what on earth is going on here?
Let's drill down into the full story:
Matthew 27:27: "Then the governor’s soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company of soldiers round him."
The Praetorium was an intimidating place ... the Roman governor’s official residence.
It was the regional hub of the Evil Empire's tortuous operations with it's large echoing halls and hard surfaces it oozed threat, menace and institutional evil.
That 'the whole company of soldiers' that gathered around Jesus thranslates 'a cohort'. This was a hostile group of trained killers numbering 5-600 men. And they weren't gathering around Him for autographs.
v. 28 "They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him"
The scarlet robe probably refers to a military garment that was cheaply dyed in contrast to expensive royal purple, but it resembled the robe of a King.
Evidently the soldiers were doing this to Jesus as a form of mockery because the charge was that he was a king.
v. 28 "Then they knelt in front of him and mocked him. ‘Hail, king of the Jews!’ they said."
Mocking, de-humanising, de-imaging Jesus as the image of God which His words and deeds and Old Testament prophecy fulfilments, as He taught all around the countryside, had so clearly indicated that's Who He truly was!
The soldiers were building their self-reinforcing lie to steel themselves to their terrible purpose.
It was obviously taking some doing, because they weren't even finished with that task yet.
v. 29 "and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head."
The soldiers' purpose would have been to mock Jesus’ claim to be a king; the crown of thorns would have represented the “radiant corona” portrayed on the heads of rulers on coins and other artifacts in the 1st century.
The crown may have been made from palm spines or some other thorny plant common in Israel, but the botany's not really the point.
They were reinforcing their mockery and their de-humanisation of Jesus, but in placing the crown of thorns on his head, the soldiers were unwittingly symbolizing God’s curse on humanity (see Genesis 3:18) being placed on Jesus's head.
Again, they are debunking Him in their own minds in order to be able to do what they were going to have to do to Him.
To steel your nerve and re-inforce your will to crucify a preacher was obviously proving a bit of a challenge to them ... especially when even Pilate himself knew that there really was no basis for a legal charge against Jesus.
v. 29 "They put a staff in his right hand"
You may have seen these things in old epic films of Rome ... the Emperor and his minions carried one of these staves as the symbol of Imperial authority. So they found a reed to put in Jesus's hand to mimic that to mock His Palm Sunday claim to be King, something they next went on to make explicit.
v. 30-31 "They spat on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again.
After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him.
Then they led him away to crucify him."
Did you notice that last point that's being made there?
Once they'd de-humanised the Lord Jesus, after they had mocked Him, in their own minds they felt enabled to get on and crucify Him.
The enabling power for evil of the de-humanising myth
It takes a lot to mentally prepare yourself to commit such an atrocity to another human being ... but if the history of humanity teaches us anything, it's that de-humanising someone makes us capable of anything.
And that's how the things that were on the news this morning, and the atrocities I read about in the Museum at Falais in Normandy are able to happen, in reality.
But there is a fascinating postscript to this story, though, and it comes from the execution detail themselves and the centurion supervising the crucifixion of Jesus.
The postcript
"When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus
saw the earthquake and all that had happened,
they were terrified,
and exclaimed, ‘Surely he was the Son of God!’
Matthew 27:59
In the goodness of God, the lies they'd told themselves were debunked in the end,
and we see even Christ's executioners brought to repentance and faith
(Could you IMAGINE having THOSE guys in your congregation?!)
The Point
If you remove the fundamental belief that a human life has worth as created in the image of God, then human nature is sinful enough for ordinary family men like the soldiers and like that German soldier in France an ordinary family man writing home to his wife and his children ... to do almost any sort evil to another.
It is in order to address the realisation of that capacity for evil which lives and writhes in the heart of every person that the Lord went through the mockery and de-humanisation that day, as He walked to the Cross.
The Takeaway
On social media, in our homes, in this world today let's be mindful of the Royalty of Jesus so WE don't end up de-humanising or diminishing Him ... and let's be diligent in seeing His image, even in those who get in our way during this day.
On the other hand if you wish to reject Him, the way lies open to you by de-humanising and mocking Him.
The light at the end of that tunnel though is this: even the people who mocked and de-humanised Him so they could bring themselves to nail Him to the Cross, even they lay within the scope of His mercy ... and no doubt to their own great amazement, would shortly be sitting in Church.
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