I imagine that there was a chill in the air, though I can't be sure because scripture doesn't say. Yet even if the temperature didn't fall I have to believe that there was a prevailing feeling of cold, you know the kind that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. A few hours before there had been laughter, cruel and cold itself, jeering out the name of Jesus. "King of the Jews, " I can hear one guard saying to another, "that would be the kind of sorry king these Hebrews would have."
He finally had trudged his was to Galgotha. Could there be a more fitting name than this, place of the skull. Those that crawled up this hill with their last measure of strength were only carried out, there was no return, no reprieve, no last minute call from Pilot. Jesus was spent, poured out, used up by the time he made it to the top. This once strong carpenter was reduced to stumbling about, unable to hold his own body weight courtesy of the abuse he had suffered.
I hate to imagine the scene that must have unfolded as he was laid on the cross, the metal on metal sound of the nails, the squishing sound as the nails tore through flesh. Then the cross rises, the body weight pulls, the jolt as it slides in to place. No, no, no, I just want to scream at the thought. Leave him alone.....
As time drug by, I would like to say it got better, easier. But that is not how crucifiction worked. No, You would have to pull against the nails to take the weight off your chest to push breath in and out. You would pull, anguish each time, growing weaker and weaker. The trauma of the beating and whipping that Jesus had already endured had weakened his body......Yet none of this was the worst of it.
Look at the gospels and look at the moments right before Jesus died. In Mark we are told Jesus cries out in Aramaic, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" Can you imagine? No, I don't think any of us really can. Jesus against all human emotion and inclination had lived an entirely blameless life. He was the Son of God, God incarnate, yet the father head turned away from him. Why? For you and me.
Jesus was a substitution for us. He literally took on every sin that the world had or ever would commit onto himself. In that moment the blameless life that Christ had led was smeared with every sin in my life, your life, all of us. He was for the first time separated from God by sin. Imagine, he had always been there, always answered, always directed. Now in this moment, when Jesus knew he was about to perish, there was no answer, there was no reassurance.
See Jesus did take it all for us. To be without God, to be separated from him is what we deserve. But because Jesus chose to experience that for us, even though he didn't deserve it, we are covered by his blood. When God looks at those of us who believe in him through Christ, he sees Jesus. Jesus' blood is the ultimate magic eraser taking the stain of our deeds away and leaving only his perfect shining image.
