Description
Mark For Everyone
MARK 15.1–15
Jesus Before Pilate...
...Today they sell crosses in fashionable jewellery shops. If you ask the shop assistants, you will find that many of them don’t know where the symbol comes from, or what it means; and neither do many of their customers. It has become, ironically, a dead metaphor. Someone once remarked that if you want to wear a cross as an earring, it might be a good idea to wear an electric chair as its pair, to remind yourself what the cross was, and did, and meant.
The cross was a political symbol long before it became a religious symbol. Pilate knew, the crowds knew, the chief priests knew, and Jesus knew, what it meant. It was the ultimate symbol of Roman power. It said, ‘We are in charge here, and this is what happens to people who get in our way.’ They had crucified thousands of rebel Jews when Jesus was a boy in Galilee. They would crucify thousands more when they took Jerusalem in AD 70 – so many that they got bored, and experimented with hanging people up in different positions and attitudes, until they ran out of wood. And in between those two devastating repressions of revolts they crucified lots of people for a variety of reasons, often on small pretexts...
Taken from Mark for Everyone by Tom Wright