ON HIS WAY to Golgotha, in the midst of His mortal woe, even respect for His anguish, which is every sufferer’s due, was cruelly denied our Savior.
From of old it was customary, as only truly fulfilled in Jesus, to put the words of Jeremiah in his Lamentations (1:12) upon the lips of the Man of sorrows: “All, ye, that pass by, behold, and see, if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow.“
That is the prayer for respect for grief, which from the tortured soul of the sufferer goes out to men.
He who suffers is naturally prone to ask others for something in their heart of an after-thrill of his suffering. Especially in suffering the need of human sympathy makes itself felt. A sharing on the part of others of one’s grief, which does not need to be real love, but just a response of human feeling, and which therefore we expect from every one that is human, even though he is an entire stranger to us.
Just as it reads in Lamentations, a stranger, one who pursues his journey, one who passes by, must be struck at the sight of such suffering, it must move him, and by so being moved at the sight of our distress, even an utter stranger can sustain, refresh and comfort the sufferer.
Only a few drops of this human comforting were mingled in the cup of Jesus’ suffering.
On the way to Golgotha women from Jerusalem walked along, who, seeing Jesus’ exhaustion under the weight of the Cross, were softened and wept.
They were probably young women from the lower strata of society, who knew nothing of Jesus, but were made tender at the sight of the striking contrast between Jesus’ noble appearance and the scornful treatment He endured.
But these women, whose heart was softened for the moment, were the exception. Everywhere else, in the street, before the house of judgment, in the court room of the Sanhedrin, among every group of people who knew of Jesus, there was no evidence of sympathy with His suffering, no trace of respect for His anguish. But rather fiendish delight that was wickedly on the watch for the chance to take part in the fray, not merely to scourge Him, so that blood trickled down His back, but to wound Him with insult, and so to cut Him as to make His human heart to bleed.
This satanic wounding of Jesus’ heart reached its highest point, when He hung upon the tree, when the devilish goading began: “If thou art the Son of God, come down from the cross, and we will worship thee!”
The pain of such a demoniac word was greater anguish in His heart than the nails that pierced His hands and His feet.
Scorn and insult mingled to grieve Him, to hurt Him in the marrow of His soul, to wound Him in the deepest parts of His hidden being.
That doeth the word. That is the power of the tongue.
A Divine, glorious instrument given to us of God; for the word, the tongue is the instrument with which we praise God, utter love, and comfort the brethren.
But as spoiling of the best always occasions the most terrible corruption, optimi corruptio pessima, so likewise it is here.
That same tongue, that same word, profaned, desecrated, stolen from God, and placed at the service of Satan, exceeds, in power to wound, the most poisonous arrow-point and the sharpest lancet.
With the dagger you can wound a man’s body, but with the dagger of the word you can wound him in the soul.
Therefore human cruelty exceeds animal bloodthirstiness. For the animal also hisses and roars when it leaps upon its prey, but merely to frighten it, and not devilishly to harrow it. Further than thirst after blood it does not go with the animal; it is man alone who hankers after the marrow in the soul of another.
And that evil hankering spake in the cry: “Crucify Him, Crucify Him!”
For this they cried, not away from, but in the presence of Jesus; so that He must hear it; the while they saw Him standing there, and with their evil eye awaited the effect of their murderous cry upon their victim.
When Jewish people lose their self-control, they become passionately excited and inflamed.
When Jews become excited, the sounds from their deep throats are grating; almost raucous.
That raucous sound goes still more piercingly through the ear of him who must hear it, and when it becomes a cry for blood it degenerates into screams of madness.
And this evil passion whips up a yet more violent wave-beat when such a cry goes up, not from a small group, but from an innumerable multitude that crowds a whole market-place.
Then such a cry becomes tempestuous, violent, overwhelming.
Rising up from one corner of the square, it is at once repeated in echo to all corners and undulating back is repeated over and over again. One storm of human voices, from the heart of a thousand excited ruffians, bent upon blood, spending itself upon that One, Who stands there helpless, and hears it all, and with His sensitive heart trembles before it.
Crucify Him, crucify Him!
So the priests cried out, and the people cried and yelled after them, until Pilate himself became alarmed at the outbreak of such passion.
And although he spoke against it, there was no help. Again the storm broke loose, and again the air was rent with the yet more angry cry.
Always: Crucify Him, crucify Him!
Until Pilate, at all other times the undaunted Roman, became afraid, and even with his soldiers did not dare to take his stand against this howling storm of passion.
Only when at length Pilate submitted, obeyed, and delivered Jesus to be crucified, did that dreadful cry, which made Jesus’ soul shudder, cease.
Such is the rabble, such is the nature of the mob.
Suddenly it will burst into flames of enthusiasm, of unbounded wonderment, of what borders almost upon worship. How often had they wanted to make Jesus king, and how readily they joined in with the Hosanna when upon the white ass Jesus rode into Jerusalem.
But equally suddenly their evil passions will burst into flame. And then nothing can stop them. Then the sense of their superior power makes them arrogant, tyrannical, inexorable. When once they call for blood, blood must flow, and the evil lust of accomplishing the bloody deed poisons their cry.
For that stormy cry: Crucify Him, crucify Him! that was crucifying Jesus already in advance, before He had yet come to Golgotha. It was to make Him battle through beforehand all the anxiety and terror which such an outburst of wild passion casts into the soul.
Jesus was not of stone, but a man with a human heart, and in that human heart was finest sensitiveness.
Mention is sometimes made of pachyderm persons, who as though in a coat of mail stand invulnerable in the midst of the howling of an angry mob. But such Jesus was not.
In Him emotion operated more tenderly, more delicately and more sensitively, than is possible in us.
And what at the sound of that cry: Crucify Him, crucify Him! Jesus has battled through and endured, we have never surmised.
When at last Pilate delivered Him and the tempest of passion came to a calm, that sentence of doom afforded Jesus a respite.
FOR consider, such an hour of wickedness can scarcely be fought to the finish by one who is solely bent upon his own bodily safety, and who meanwhile in bitterness of soul hates and curses the mob, which as an escaped wild animal defies him.
Then passion works in against passion, his own anger overpowers the anger of the mob, until at length the balance restores itself, for though the mob may continue to yell, as hero the individual conquers. But so it was not here.
Also in that hour of furor, when Jerusalem called in the curse upon itself, the impulse of love did not desert Jesus for one moment.
That people who called for His blood, was His people, the people of God, after the covenants.
It was the people of His kindred, from which He had taken His flesh and blood. The people of His brethren. The people, for whom, before all other peoples, He had prepared salvation.
It was the people of Zion, over which the Lord had anointed His King.
And therefore, when that murderous cry of crucify Him, crucify Him! sounded and resounded across the market-square, that wild cry sounded in the ears, and in the soul of Jesus, not as a murderous cry from strangers, of a wild mob, which did not concern Him, but it was to Jesus what it would be to you, if your own children, your own brethren, the men of your own kindred, were to clamor for your blood.
This made that Crucify Him, crucify Him! still more dreadful, still more painful to the bleeding wound of Jesus’ heart.
No, the suffering of Jesus was not merely that they struck Him with fists in the face, and with a scourge lashed His back, and with nails pierced His hands and His feet, and made Him die on the accursed tree.
The suffering of Jesus went on and on.
It was one unbroken suffering from moment to moment.
And therefore he who loves Jesus with a discerning love, also knows what it is in that uninterrupted suffering to suffer with Jesus.
He trembles every time he catches that Crucify Him, crucify Him! as echo in his ear, even in his soul, and can not resist the impulse, as often as he lives that terrible hour of the past over again, with an ever fresh offering of love to make his approach to his Savior.
The fruit not of his own goodness, but of what Jesus suffered for him.