There is in nearly everybody a touchiness, a strong vein of pride, that makes humiliation harder to bear than almost any other form of hurt. I certainly have it … which makes me quick to recognise it in others!
With good upbringing we can often manage to suppress a crude explosion of our anger or resentment when we feel humiliated, but the feeling boils or rankles within. Our behaviour may be moralised, but not our hearts. Our conscience may tell us that our resentment is wrong, and common sense may tell us that it is just silly to bother; but these recipes do not as a rule turn out to be effective. The sour core in us is not cut out.
This universal mark of our sinfulness in some people reaches chronic proportions. They cannot stand being laughed at at all. They take themselves 'terribly seriously', take offence at the least provocation. Practical jokes and teasing are not appreciated … are tolerated at best with a sickly grin.
Somewhere deep inside they feel they have been held in contempt all their lives. Perhaps in infancy or early childhood they were cruelly held up to ridicule by some insensitive adult, and though the experience itself is lost to memory beyond recall, the reaction of mixed hurt and anger they knew then still poisons the inner spring out of which all their emotional responses flow; so they are irrationally sensitive to mockery.
Along with it they have an unreasoning jealousy of others who are well regarded. Let them hear others praised or highly approved and they instinctively look for reasons to put them down. In the top of their minds they may know they should not regard others like that, but they somehow cannot help it. Tragically, they perpetuate in others the deep wounding they themselves have known. "The sins of the fathers are visited on the children." It is a tragic law of life. Abused children end up abusing their own children. Paranoid parents produce paranoid children.
It is so common that the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides against it:
Article 12
No one shall be subjected (among other things) … to arbitrary
interference with his privacy, family home or correspondence, nor to
… attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right
to the protection of the law against such (interference or)
attacks.
Politicians, for some reason, seem very adept in the art of scorn!
Almost always, when we feel we have been treated with less than proper respect, we compare ourselves to others. It is not hard to persuade ourselves that we have been treated more unjustly than they. What we almost never do, and what it would be far more in our interests to do, is compare ourselves to Christ our Lord.
Christ was mocked, scorned, held up to ridicule, all the way from the Garden of Gethsemane to the Cross. Has He anything to give us out of His experience that can help the humiliated?
There were five situations in which He was treated with contempt.
1. In the Garden
where a false brother mocked Him
as Man
2. Before Caiaphas
where the People of God mocked Him
as Prophet
3. Before Herod
where the effete mocked Him
as Martyr
4. Before Pilate
where the world mocked Him
as King
5. On the Cross
where all mocked Him
as Messiah
Judas so despised Him as to sell Him for thirty pieces of silver, the price of a slave on the open market … and betrayed Him with a kiss. That last touch of contempt was 'the most unkindest cut of all.' … Judas His friend (Jesus so addressed him at the time) whom He loved; His companion, with whom He had walked the land; Judas, with whom He had shared things precious to Him. There was no sanctuary in His heart where Judas had not been invited.
Judas knew where to find Him because the garden was a 'retreat' known only to those He trusted.
"Even my bosom friend in whom I trusted, who ate of my bread, has lifted his heel against me." With the Psalmist Jesus could have said it of him. (Psalm 41:9)
Matthew underlines the warped way in which Judas actually carried through his betrayal. First, he called Jesus Rabbi ('Hail, Teacher' Matthew 26:49). In the whole of Matthew's Gospel the word Rabbi is used but twice, both times by Judas. What a tragic irony that Jesus should be addressed in that Gospel as 'Teacher' only by the one who in the end let Jesus teach him nothing.
Why did Judas betray Him with a kiss?
It made for unmistakable identification in the uncertain moonlight of course; if a disciple had been taken by mistake Judas would still have had Jesus and the rest to face. But all he needed to do was lay a hand on Jesus. He did not need to mock Him with a gesture of affection. It was a 'sick' act. Can we ponder it without a shudder?
If you have ever been the victim of a wicked conspiracy, whispered about, and your ruin plotted by someone who brazened out a disgusting pretence of affection for you to the very last, ask yourself what Jesus felt when He was identified for arrest in the shadows of Gethsemane by Judas … kissing Him.
"He was despised and rejected of men."
But He bore it … without resisting! Why?
After Caiaphas had secured the verdict of 'Guilty' and the sentence of death by his disgraceful manipulation of the trial, "They spat in His face, and hit Him," you read (Matthew 26:67). They also blindfolded Him (Luke 22:62) and 'slapped' Him, taunting Him, 'Tell us, you Christ, you miracle man, who was it struck you?'"
Respected leaders of the people, they were; elderly gentlemen, most of them. Dignitaries. But they spat in His face; they struck him with their fists. Never in their lives had they done such things, most of them, to any man. But now they did them, to Him - masters and servants together … flung up His garment like a skirt as a blindfold over His face, and repeatedly struck Him, taunting Him, "You're a prophet! Tell us who struck you then!" They heaped insults and degradation upon Him.
The force of the word 'slapped' is that they gave Him back-handers, striking him 'on the right cheek.' In His Sermon on the Mount Jesus had said, "If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also …" (Matt. 5:39) Why 'on the right cheek'? The only way right-handed people can strike others on the right cheek is with a back-hander - a gesture of contempt.
And contempt is what Jesus was facing.
They mocked Him as a prophet, as a man who spoke for God. 'The Prophet' He was … and was mocked as such. Mocked here, all the prophets were mocked with Him.
"He was despised and rejected of men."
Mockery can be serious and not venal; it can present a man who is a giant in his own eyes as the puny dwarf he really is. Caricature can be an exercise in truth, can tear away the mask of hypocrisy. In this way even God mocks!
But this was not that sort of mockery. This was the mockery of those who have seen the good and adjudged it as evil - who have deceived and corrupted their own souls. These are the leaders of the people whose task it was honourably to rule them for God. These are the standard-setters of morality, of truth, of right. They have seen the truth and mock it as the lie. Their mockery reveals no truth about the man they mock, but only a truth about themselves. They have sold their souls to the devil. It is Satanic scorn.
That is a risk we take when we mock.
For Jesus it must have been excruciating. The deepest inner truth of Himself which He knew - that He was the human embodiment of God - was held up to scorn … openly, brazenly made to look ridiculous. The sacred secret was brutally negated.
It was in the face of Eternal Love that they spat. It was the Source of Life whom they smote with their fists. It was He whom the Heavens adore whom they insulted with their venomous tongues.
And I protest I've not been treated with proper respect?
Must it not have been a point of temptation to Him? … to summon twelve legions of angels to smite them, and vindicate Him before their depraved and blasphemous eyes?
But He bore it … without rejoinder! Why?
'When Herod saw Jesus, he was very glad, for he had long desired to see him, because he had heard about him, and was hoping to see some sign done by him.' (Luke 23:8)
"Aha! … the holy conjurer. Do me a magic trick, Maestro!" The fawning sycophants who surround him in his corrupt palace snigger.
But the miracle man will not oblige.
"Boring!" said Herod, and wearied of Him.
He asked for a sign because he had no faith. He had only superstition, and a guilty conscience. They go together. Signs are sought only by those who have lost the capacity to hear and believe. Herod was in fact haunted by the notion that Jesus might be John the Baptist, whom at Salome's request he had had murdered, risen from the dead. But no hint that He was supernatural did the prisoner give, so that Herod lost interest.
Jesus stood before Herod among the martyrs, as before the Sanhedrin He had been among the prophets. Mocked here, all the martyrs, like John, were mocked with Him.
"The chief priests and the scribes stood by, vehemently accusing him. And Herod with his soldiers treated him with contempt and mocked him; then, arraying him in gorgeous apparel, he sent him back to Pilate." (Luke 23:10) No mouldy old dressing gown here, such as the soldiers would find for Him later, but garments from Herod's own royal wardrobe. It added to the contempt, rubbed salt in the wound.
"He was despised and rejected of men."
And we think we have been badly treated?
A temptation must again have presented itself to Jesus. Get Herod on side and He could drive a wedge here between Herod and Pilate … and benefit from it. Let the two rulers quarrel over Him, and He will be free … for a while at least. He can buy time here. 'Herod questioned Jesus at some length.' Jesus had ample opportunity to manipulate him; 'but he made no answer.'
He bore it … without rebuke. Why?
"The soldiers led him away inside the palace (that is, the praetorium) where they called together the whole battalion. And they clothed him in a purple cloak, and plaiting a crown of thorns they jammed it on his head and saluted him, "Hail, King of the Jews!" They struck his head with a reed, and spat on him, and knelt before him in mock homage. And when they'd had their fun with him, they stripped him of the purple cloak, and putting his own clothes on him they led him out to crucify him." (Mark 15:16)
If you have ever felt humiliated because you were held up to public ridicule, ask yourself what it felt like for Jesus, barely able to stand upright after the flogging, to have a crowd of big, sweaty soldiers bellowing with laughter in His face, "Look! His Royal Majesty, King of the Jews!" … while the blood ran down the backs of His legs under the ridiculous dressing gown they had put on Him, and the crown of thorns stuck like a lop-sided bird's nest on His head, and a reed in His hand for a sceptre, all floppy and drooping. "He's a joke," they said.
Barracks horse play; but it should make you sick.
We think we have been treated insufferably?" He was despised and rejected of men."
And He bore it … without retort. Why?
In the Roman Empire the cross was an instrument not only of cruelty but also of contempt. The honourable method of execution was by the sword. So Paul was executed, because he was a Roman citizen. Jesus, having no earthly privilege, was treated like the lowest of criminals.
We have to remember further that in the eyes of the Jewish Law death on a 'tree' was religiously abhorrent. "Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree," as Paul reminded the Galatians (3:13 - Deuteronomy 21:23).
Gentile and Jew collaborated to make the death of Jesus disgraceful as well as physically unbearable - added insult to injury - consciously set themselves to abase Him.
One feature of the Crucifixion above all adds vulgarity to the contempt; it was public. 'The people stood watching,' Luke faithfully reports. The death-agonies were put on show to be gaped at, made an entertainment for an idle crowd. There was no solemnity on Golgotha; the atmosphere of Calvary was that of a fairground, complete with ribaldry. Matthew and Mark both tell us that 'passers-by jeered at him, shaking their heads in mockery, and saying, "You - who destroy temples, and build them in three days, save yourself - come down from the cross." The chief priests and scribes, the leaders of the nation's piety, did the same. The Roman soldiers who had carried out the execution gambled for His clothing; it made a change from 'two-up.'
When a cross was in place, the body that hung on it was not very high off the ground - only a couple of feet. Some Jew went right up close to Jesus, lifted his head and spat full in His face. "Saviour, are you! Well, save yourself, you fraud!" Jesus could not even wipe the spit off His face.
No ingredient of insult, humiliation, pitilessness, or crudity seems to have been missing from the mix that was handed out to Him.
Nowhere was there left to Him one human face in which He could read either compassion or regard. What faces crowded round Him?
… the smiling, bold, but sickeningly false face of Judas
… the cruel, jealousy-riddled faces of the priests
… the hard, pitiless, scornful faces of the Pharisees
… the dissolute, bored face of Herod
… the empty, grinning faces of the people.
"He looked for some to have pity on Him, but
there was no man, neither found He any to comfort Him."
"He was despised and rejected of men."
With all who are driven by man's heartlessness into the howling wilderness of desolation, who hunger and thirst for human affection and are not filled, who are tortured by an unendurable longing for some face - any face - to smile upon them and are not comforted … with all such He stands, brother to them in their deprivation. Where they stand, He stands. Where they fall, He lies. He is for ever brother to those whose spirits are shrivelled by the grinning faces of rejection, scorn, contempt and insolence.
"Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows."
But … "He hid not His face from shame and spitting." Why?
Now there is something we simply must see, or all the suffering He endured was for nothing. We have to see that in all this 'God was in Christ' - in it all. God did not flit in and out of our Lord's person like some self-preserving ghost, popping in for the important bits, and popping out for the nasty bits. The humiliation and the suffering were all God's.
I see Jesus, soaking up the outrage that was inflicted on Him, absorbing the mockery, the insults and the contempt of men without a trace of bitterness or self-pity, and I realise with a sudden shock that I am looking at God. "I do nothing of myself," He had said, "but what I see the Father doing." God-in-Christ let men tread Him contemptuously down. He accepted this most vicious humiliation, this bottom-most spurning.
God did.
Jesus here redrew the picture of God which we have believed since the dawn-time of our sinning, that God punishes sin … redrew it to show that sin punishes God. When we sin-blinded, sin-warped children of Adam spat our venom into His face, He 'took it.' Something there was not trodden down; that something was the capacity in God to bear hurt, to bear scorn, and not change in His love for those who hurt and scorned Him.
If it were not for that one resplendent thing, no-one would ever have had any interest in remembering what happened, let alone in telling the tale. Only one thing freed the whole appalling outrage from unrelieved beastliness: it is that extreme wickedness was there met by extreme magnanimity. He Who was lifted up, the object of it all who suffered it all, miraculously soared above it, mending it. He that should have been pitied but was not, introduced pity into it with His prayer for those who did it to Him, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." That response of Jesus to the whole situation was 'out of this world,' because it streamed forth through Him into this world from God. In the hour of His most abject ignominy, He interceded for those who gloated over Him; and in that intercession - made in such circumstances - lies the mystery of salvation.
I cannot find words to say how mighty a thing it is.
We draw ourselves erect in offended dignity when we fancy ourselves insulted; GOD sank His dignity to absorb our contempt in His own suffering, so as to disinfect it. He 'took it.' And by the way He took it, He neutralised it. He put it away in His own pain.
He bore it … without resisting!
He bore it … without rejoinder!
He bore it … without rebuke!
He bore it … without retort!
He hid not His face from shame and spitting.
Now we see why.
Three Gospels tell us that from noon until three in the afternoon, the hour in which Jesus died, 'darkness came over the whole land.' Did Nature, ashamed where the mocking crowd was not, draw a veil over the scene? Or did she put on mourning for the monstrous mistreatment of her Maker's Son, who "came unto His own and His own (to quote what is a monumental understatement) received Him not"?
There is an ancient legend that in those same hours, away in Athens, a certain Dionysius, called the Areopagite - a pagan until he heard the Gospel from St Paul some twenty years later (Acts 17:34) - saw the darkening of the sun, and exclaimed: "Either God is suffering, or else is sharing someone else's suffering." A profound perception, which pulls us back to the uniqueness of the Cross. The most awesome thing is not that we broke Christ's body there, but that we broke God's heart there … and He loves us still! Had Jesus been merely a man, the devilish breaking of both body and heart would have been dreadful enough. But when we see Jesus as not merely a man but as God Himself, embodied, there are no words strong enough to describe it.
God there was mauled; and in His frail, human flesh, Jesus bore that immemorial pain of God. In the words of Alice Meynell:
Over the abyss
Of God's capacity for woe He stayed.
Only the physical pain ended with His death, not the heart-agony. He rose from the grave to go on suffering; for men sin on, perpetuating the offences that slew Him. Asked the risen Christ, from the throne of His glory, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" … still! Our sins that crucified Christ on earth crucify God in heaven still. "Inasmuch as you do it to the least of these my brethren" - even the one of these my brethren who offends you - "you do it to me," He says. Scorn our brother and we scorn Him, still.
Now see where all this is leading us.
If God could be humiliated by men, we have no reason to expect that we shall escape humiliation.
But further, if God bore humiliation, so should we … unless we blasphemously fancy that the servant is greater than his Lord.
God stooped; so should we.
We are already too low to be able to stoop far; His stoop was abyssal.
He was humble; humble we should be.
Do we want to be more dignified than God?
Wrote Clement of Rome to the church in Corinth (towards the end of Paul's century): "You see, beloved, what is the example given to us; if the Lord was thus humble-minded, what shall we do who have come under the yoke of His grace?"
Should we not bear scorn as He bore scorn and yearned for the healing of those who humiliated Him? That is the truth about the character of God - the only sort of character that will inhabit the eternal ages.
We do not want that sort of weakness. We want power. Is the Spirit of God not promised so we should be "clothed with power from on high?" Yes indeed - with the power to endure as Jesus endured, the power to be almost as lowly and forgiving as God.
* With acknowledgments to T. E. Jessop, 'The Enduring Passion' Epworth Press, p. 73ƒƒ
This material is copyright; it may not be quoted, published or reproduced without the author's permission, nor preached without acknowledgment!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|