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I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles; but on a cross between two thieves; on the towns' garbage heap; at a crossroad, so cosmopolitan they had to write his title in Hebrew and Latin and Greek... at the kind of place where cynics talk smut, and thieves curse, and soldiers gamble. Because that is where He died. And that is what He died about. That is where church-men ought to be and what churchmen ought to be about."
-George McLeod
"And I, as I am lifted up from the earth, will attract everyone to me and gather them around me." -John 12:32.
"Did you think that I didn't hear you when you cried out to Me in your time of need? "Did you wonder if I was listening when you prayed to Me for an answer to the troubles that weighed you down?
"Do you think that I don't know when problems occur in your life? I know everything there is to know about you! Even the very hairs of your head are numbered! I've watched you daily, from those first tentative steps and groping words to your very first love; and I was there, cheering you on, though you never knew it. "Did you think that I was unconcerned because you didn't receive an instantaneous answer to your prayer?
My dear child, I am more concerned for you than you will ever know. If I were not, would I have been sent to earth in the flesh and allowed you to mock Me, spit on Me, beat Me, and nail Me up on a cross for all to see? I gave My life for You! I poured out my very life's blood in order to pay a price for your life, and to set you free! Would I have done that if I wasn't concerned?
"Or did you accept the lie that I didn't even exist? Can you really believe that lie when the very magnitude and complexity of the universe is a witness to the unquestionable fact that they are My handiwork... when everything that you can see and cannot see, is a work of My perfection, delicately balanced and timed, from the spiraling galaxies to the spinning atoms? Is it possible to comprehend such an intricate work and say, "There is no God"?
"Take a good look at yourself!
You are the very epitome of My work!
You are My greatest creation!
A one-of-a-kind human being. Of the seventy billion humans that have lived and walked this planet, there has been no other exactly like you. I created you perfect! I created you with a hundred million receptors in your eyes so that you could see the beauty around you...
I created you with twenty-four thousand vibrating fibers in your inner ears to hear the softest whisper of the wind... I designed five hundred muscles, two hundred bones, and seven miles of nerve fibers, all wrapped in a renewable, nearly indestructible layer of skin and tissue...
I gave you a heart that pulses hour after hour, day after day, thirty-six million beats a year, pumping blood through more than ninety-six thousand miles of veins and arteries to give your body life and keep it free of disease; and I gave you a brain that is the most complex organ in all of the universe, made up of one-hundred-trillion cells and crisscrossed with twenty-five billion nerve cells to help you retain the minutest memory; and I equipped your body with four million pain-sensitive structures, five hundred thousand touch detectors, and over two hundred thousand temperature detectors! And then, to top it all off, I gave you the ability to reason, to dream, to imagine, and to speak; things that no other of My creatures can do.
And, as a final touch, after creating that magnificent body that you live in, I created the real you, the inner you, the spirit that I created in My likeness, and I breathed you into your body at the instant of birth. "And you were connected to Me then, but you never knew it. Deep inside of you you knew, because I planted that knowledge of Me there, but over the years you have allowed the things of the world to choke that knowledge out.
In the beginning, however, you were perfect; My greatest creation; molded in My own image. Don't you find it really quite humorous, to think that some could adamantly believe that this all came about by chance or evolution?
Could such a masterpiece have come about simply by chance?
"If you can see the truth in this, then how can you think that I didn't
hear you?
"Listen, I am standing at your heart's door, knocking and asking entrance, but I will not force My will on you. Call to Me now and ask Me to come in; into your heart and your life. Call to Me, for I am listening and waiting even as you read this. I'm only a word away, and if you will invite Me in, I will come in and never will I leave you alone."
Forever,
Jesus
HIS SUFFERING
The physical trauma of Christ begins in Gethsemane with one of the initial aspects of His suffering ... the bloody sweat. It is interesting that the physician of the group, St. Luke, is the only one to mention this. He says, "And being in agony, He prayed the longer. And his sweat became as drops of blood, trickling down upon the ground."
Though very rare, the phenomenon of hemathidrosis, or bloody sweat, is well documented. Under great emotional stress, tiny capillaries in the sweat glands can break, thus mixing blood with sweat. This process alone could have produced marked weakness and possible shock.
After the arrest in the middle of the night, Jesus was brought before the Sanhedrin and Caiaphas, the High Priest. A soldier struck Jesus across the face for remaining silent when questioned by Caiaphas. The palace guards then blindfolded Him and mockingly taunted Him to identify them as they each passed by, spat on Him, and struck Him in the face.
In the early morning, Jesus, battered and bruised, dehydrated, and exhausted from a sleepless night, is taken across Jerusalem to the Praetorium of the Fortress Antonia. It was there, in response to the cries of the mob, that Pilate ordered Barabbas released and condemned Jesus to scourging and crucifixion.
Preparations for the scourging are carried out. The prisoner is stripped of His clothing and His hands tied to a post above His head. The Roman legionnaire steps forward with the flagrum in his hand. This is a short whip consisting of several heavy, leather thongs with two small balls of lead attached to the ends of each. The heavy whip is brought down with full force again and again across Jesus' shoulders, back and legs
At first the heavy thongs cut through the skin only. Then, as the blows continue, they cut deeper into subcutaneous tissues, producing first an oozing of blood from the capillaries and veins of the skin, and finally spurting arterial bleeding from vessels in the underlying muscles. The small balls of lead first produce large, deep bruises which are broken open by subsequent blows.
Finally the skin of the back is hanging in long ribbons and the entire area is an unrecognizable mass of torn and bleeding tissue. When it is determined by the centurion in charge that the prisoner is near death, the beating is stopped.
The half-fainting Jesus is then untied and allowed to slump to the stone pavement, wet with His own blood. The Roman soldiers see a great joke in this provincial Jew claiming to be a king. They throw a robe across His shoulders and place a stick in His hand for a scepter. A small bundle of flexible branches covered with long thorns is pressed into His scalp.
Again there is copious bleeding (the scalp being one of the most vascular areas in the body). After mocking Him and striking Him across the face, the soldiers take the stick from His hand and strike Him across the head, driving the thorns deeper into His scalp. Finally, they tire of their sadistic sport and the robe is torn from his back. This had already become adherent to the clots of blood and serum in the wounds, and its removal, just as in the careless removal of a surgical bandage, cause excruciating pain ... almost as though He were again being whipped, and the wounds again begin to bleed.
The heavy beam of the cross is then tied across His shoulders, and the procession of the condemned Christ, two thieves and the execution detail, begins its slow journey. The weight of the heavy wooden beam, together with the shock produced by copious blood loss, is too much. He stumbles and falls. The rough wood of the beam gouges into the lacerated skin and muscles of the shoulders. He tries to rise, but human muscles have been pushed beyond their endurance.
At Golgotha, the beam is placed on the ground and Jesus is quickly thrown backward with His shoulders against the wood. The legionnaire feels for the depression at the front of the wrist. He drives a heavy, square, wrought-iron nail through the wrist and deep in the wood. Quickly, he moves to the other side and repeats the action, being careful not to pull the arms too tightly, but to allow some flexion and movement. The beam is then lifted in place at the top of the posts and the titulus reading "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" is nailed in place.
The left foot is pressed backward against the right foot, and with both feet extended, toes down, a nail is driven through the arch of each. As he pushes Himself upward to avoid the stretching torment, He places His full weight on the nail through His feet. Again there is the searing agony of the nail through His feet. Again there is the searing agony of the nail tearing through the nerves between the metatarsal bones through the feet.
As the arms fatigue, great waves of cramps sweep over the muscles, knotting them in deep, relentless, throbbing pain. With these cramps comes the inability to push Himself upward. Hanging by His arms, the pectoral muscles are unable to act. Air can be drawn into the lungs, but cannot be exhaled. Jesus fights to raise Himself in order to get even one short breath. Finally, carbon dioxide builds up in the lungs and in the blood stream and the cramps partially subside. Spasmodically, He is able to push Himself upward to exhale and bring in the life-giving oxygen.
Hours of this limitless pain, cycles of twisting, joint-rending cramps, intermittent partial asphyxiation, searing pain as tissue is torn from His lacerated back as He moves up and down against the rough timber. Then another agony begins. A deep crushing pain deep in the chest as the pericardium slowly fills with serum and begins to compress the heart.
The compressed heart is struggling to pump heavy, thick, sluggish blood into the tissues. The tortured lungs are making a frantic effort to gasp in small gulps of air. The markedly dehydrated tissues send their flood of stimuli to the brain. Jesus gasps, "I thirst."
He can feel the chill of death creeping through His tissues. With one last surge of strength, He once again presses His torn feet against the nail, straightens His legs, takes a deeper breath, and utters His seventh and last cry, "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit."
Apparently to make doubly sure of death, the legionnaire drove his lance through the fifth interspace between the ribs, upward through the pericardium and into the heart. Immediately there came out blood and water. We therefore have rather conclusive postmortem evidence that Our Lord died, not the usual crucifixion death by suffocation, but of heart failure due to shock and constriction of the heart by fluid in the pericardium.
"I simply argue that the Cross should be raised at the center of the marketplace as well as on the steeple of the church. I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles; but on a cross between two thieves; on the towns' garbage heap; at a crossroad, so cosmopolitan they had to write his title in Hebrew and Latin and Greek... at the kind of place where cynics talk smut, and thieves curse, and soldiers gamble. Because that is where He died. And that is what He died about. That is where church-men ought to be and what churchmen ought to be about."
-George McLeod
