The rooster crows, Peter escapes attention at the cost of his pride, and the trial of the Sanhedrin concludes that Jesus must be put to death. Fun fact–well, troubling fact–the Sanhedrin was required to meet in normal daytime hours and hold an open trial for an offense that carried a death sentence, so this hastily assembled trial conducted before the sun rose at some elder’s house was completely in violation of the law. This “counsel” that verse 1 describes is a secondary “ceremonial” trial where everything is still decided with no chance of change or review, they’re just going through the motions. So even the trial procedure affirms everything Jesus said about these people. It’s all show, it’s all hollow.

Another issue for the Jews: they don’t actually have the authority to execute anyone lawfully. They need to outsource this to the Romans; in this case it’s Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea. The passage says he’s the governor but his full name and title sounded cool so I chose to include it now. A study I read said that this fulfilled Jesus’s predictions but… this is kind of an easy one. Every Jew would know that the priests didn’t have the authority to kill and would need the Gentiles. It’s like prophesying that IHOP would have pancakes in the morning. See, even official Bible studies make weird points. Pontius wasn’t a nice guy in general and especially not sympathetic to the Jews. You get the sense that it was not the Roman’s first choice of duties and eventually his pattern of violence and cruelty got him replaced. He didn’t stop by Judea very often and it was really only for mass gatherings such as feasts (it’s still Passover) or other occasions where violence might break out, so the timing of this is spot-on (because it’s ordained by God).

Scene moves to Judas who it witnessing this and changes his mind. Yeah, NOW it’s real, buddy. Unbelievable. Except it’s not. Again, a lot of the lessons to be pulled from the Bible come from historical retellings. People treat the Bible as an instruction manual or book of stories meant to teach lessons, but more than anything, it’s just a collection of things that happened. Sure, there’s the occasional parable to convey a lesson or just a period of direct teaching, but by and large, it’s a history book as published by God. Thing is, you can still pull lessons from history and I think the biggest sources of sin and error can be incredibly instructive with the right mindset. In this case, Judas has betrayed Jesus for a small sum of money. He wasn’t tempted by a huge bounty, he just wanted to stab Jesus in the back and the money was the icing on top. It’s not explicitly stated but his actions give huge cause to believe his motivations were primarily personal. With this in mind, how many times have we let a personal grievance control our decisions to the point of irrationality? Jesus knows this is a human instinct which is why He wants us to remain humble, turn the other cheek if it’s safe to, and flee when it’s not. What He doesn’t tell us is to let resentment eat away at our soul like an acid until we do something stupid. I promise everyone in this chat has said something to someone in a moment of emotional outburst and come to regret it. So is it really that absurd for Judas to act out in resentment and hatred and not realize the error until the irreversible consequences are in motion? And can we stop to appreciate that if the speculation about Judas’s motives are true–if he was disillusioned by Jesus not being the warrior king Jews were expecting–that this hatred was driven by misunderstanding and false expectations? Do you, beloved reader, have any idea how many personal conflicts are born from misunderstanding, bad communication, and holding people to expectations completely out of line with reality? All this to say, how many times will we have a Judas moment in our own lives before the end? Any time I see some villain in the Bible, I ask myself how different I really am from them, especially through the lens Jesus might see it from and I’m not so much better than I can look down my nose.

Judas brings the money back, like that’s going to do something. It’s a desperate play but it wasn’t about money to Judas and it’s certainly not about money to the priests. He admits to sinning by betraying an innocent man, which actually does merit the death penalty, and they seem to just dismiss him. First of all, they really don’t care, they want Jesus gone. But the “See to it yourself” is morbid considering it merits the death penalty and the next verse is Judas hanging himself. …Did the priests tell him to kill himself? Wild. Anyway, barring anything beyond our mere mortal knowledge, we have every reason to expect that Judas is in hell. Could he have been redeemed if he came to a true saving faith in Jesus following the betrayal? Maybe, but the suicide means damnation. Never kill yourself. You think this life is bad? Imagine hell. If this life sucks, I can’t imagine your desire to rush to something worse. The priests take the silver and say they can’t put it with the temple treasury because it’s blood money. Oh that’s cute. So you can PAY blood money to hunt someone but you can’t accept it. How very lawful of you. They engineered this whole scenario but now it’s “eww blood money how not moral, get it away”. They got rid of it by buying a burial plot for foreigners. Serves a dual purpose of getting rid of some evidence too.

Back to Jesus. Pilate asks Jesus if He’s king of the Jews. This is an odd first question since this wasn’t the focus of the trial. The blasphemy charge would be related to Jesus claiming to be God, which Romans wouldn’t have much issue with but claiming rule over citizens of Rome? That’s a problem. So clearly the elders and priests spun a different narrative before this investigation. Jesus replies “you have said so”. And the priests and elders hurl accusations again, to which Jesus offers no reply, because Isaiah prophesied the Messiah would remain quiet. And really, what’s the point of drawing this out? Jesus needs to go to the cross, that’s why He’s not defending Himself. Pilate loses patience and asks if Jesus is hearing the accusations and understands the magnitude of what’s taking place here. Pilate doesn’t really seem to like Jews or having to get dragged into their squabbles and actually seems somewhat eager to defy them by not dropping the hammer on Jesus who is helping by not seeming like some violent rebel leader.

For Passover it was the custom for the governor to release one prisoner for the crowd. Pilate uses this opportunity to free Jesus. Whether he wasn’t convinced of His guilt or just wanted to keep the peace by not killing a popular man doesn’t matter, but it’s clear the priests have a vendetta against Jesus and Pilate isn’t interested. Pilate lets the crowd choose between Jesus and an actual confirmed scumbag criminal, Barabbas. Even Pilate’s wife is having dreams saying he needs to steer clear of this Jesus drama. It’s such an airtight plan of rigging the free prisoner selection in Jesus’s favor that it could only fail if the priests had already conditioned the crowd to reject Jesus in advance. So anyway the priests had conditioned the crowd in advance so they demand the release of Barabbas and the death of Jesus. Not expecting this, he clarifies and the crowd responds yeah, crucify Him. He tries to plead and reason with a mob, which is foolish on its face, and they’re just demanding blood. So here’s the thing, Pilate sucks. You might say “but he tried to spare Jesus” which is something I thought during my first couple reads, but he really didn’t. He KNOWS the religious leaders are out to get Jesus, he KNOWS Jesus is innocent, and he does nothing. But Pilate was a harsh and unpopular ruler due to his poor leadership so turning on the crowd now was scary. If he had ruled properly in the past, he could’ve more easily had integrity in this moment. In either case, he STILL should’ve had integrity even if it cost him an uprising. Instead he does this pathetic gesture of washing his hands and saying he’s not involved.

Yes you absolutely are. You are in charge. You have a responsibility to do what is right regardless of the consequences and to mask your failure, you’ve decided, somehow, it doesn’t concern you. The blood is on his hands whether he would admit it or not. The crowd cries out “His blood shall be on us and on our children”.

Alright, here we go. So, some people have referenced this verse to suggest that Jews have called down a blood curse on the whole Jewish people for the killing of Jesus. Alright well they sure did. It’s right there in black and white, they did call for it. This is not an indicator that God honored it. We have reason to suspect that God didn’t honor it because literally all the apostles save for possibly Luke were ethnic and religious Jews, Jesus and His mother Mary were Jews, Paul is a Jew, and none of these people seem uniquely cursed by God. You know, especially not Jesus. Paul will later go on to discuss how God definitely did not reject His people. For this reason, any Jew who submits to Christ is saved, not afflicted by a curse. And another thing, they called for JESUS’S blood to be on them and their children? ….Wasn’t that the deal? Wasn’t that the point of the New Covenant? Aren’t we all washing our sins in Jesus’s blood here? What are we really talking about? Look, you can hold whatever view you want about whatever people you want, I’m not here to debate that, but the Bible isn’t going to be your point of reference for it, so don’t bother. St. Chrysostom says this in the Catena Aurea by St. Thomas Aquinas:

“Observe here the infatuation of the Jews; their headlong haste, and destructive passions will not let them see what they ought to see, and they curse themselves, saying, His blood be upon us, and even entail the curse upon their children. Yet a merciful God did not ratify this sentence, but accepted such of them and of their children as repented; for Paul was of them, and many thousands of those who in Jerusalem believed.”

Neat. Moving on.

He released convicted murderer Barabbas and has Jesus scourged. We are officially in the Passion of Christ. Passion comes from “passio” which means “suffering”. Letting the word take form to our modern understanding as passion to be an intense love still works because it was God’s true and enduring love for us that allowed this plan to work. The Roman scourging was brutal. The instrument was a multi-thronged whip that had small iron balls or sharp pieces of bone attached at intervals. The victim would be stripped naked and bound to a post and be beaten along their back, buttocks, and legs. The iron balls would hit like clubs, causing deep blunt injury from bruises to rupturing organs. The sharp bits would cut the skin and muscles down to the bone and remove ribbons of bleeding flesh at a time. The purpose of this beyond mere torture was to weaken the victim to a stage of collapse or near-death, the amount of blood loss probably determining how long they’d last on the cross.

With Jesus brutalized, a battalion (600 soldiers) is there to meet and humiliate Him. Post-scourging mockery was a common Roman practice. They strip Him of whatever clothes are remaining and dress Him in a scarlet/purple robe (the color of Roman officials), make a twisted crown of thorns and force it on His head, and hand Him a makeshift royal scepter made from a reed to complete the look. They kneel before Him and mock Him for His charge “Hail, King of the Jews”. Done amusing themselves with the barely living prisoner, they take the reed, beat Him with it, and spit on Him. Time to carry the cross.

Let’s learn about crucifixion, which the Romans didn’t invent, but they refined. This will not be pleasant. This sentence was reserved for slaves, foreigners, and those guilty of the most extreme crimes. Usually Roman citizens were protected from this by law, except incases of treason or desertion. A Roman crucifixion would make use of a vertical post that was permanently in the ground at the execution site, so the condemned would just carry the horizontal beam that their arms would be attached to. This would be carried from the flogging site, so they would typically still be naked. Jesus was provided a small amount of clothes to not upset people otherwise celebrating Passover. One soldier would carry a sign with the condemned man’s name and crime on it which would be nailed to the top of the cross. To prolong a death, they could attach another plank would be attached midway down the post as a sort of seat. The victim would be given a mild pain reliever drink (wine and myrrh) and be thrown to the ground on their back to have their hands nailed or tied to the crossbar. The nails would most commonly be driven through the wrist, not the palms. Damage here would crush, but not sever nearby nerves, resulting in persistent and excruciating pain in both arms. The bar would be lifted along with the prisoner nailed to it so the crossbar could be attached to the post. Feet would be nailed or tied to the post and the sign would be posted above their head. The crowd would taunt them and the soldiers would divide up the belongings among themselves. Survival ranged from hours to days based on damage received during scourging but the Romans could speed things up by breaking the legs below the knees. It would not be uncommon for insects to open wounds, eyes, ears, and nose of the dying and birds would tear at these sites while they remained there still living but unable to do anything about it. All the care and attention to avoid major nerves and blood vessels meant that death would come as slowly as the body could handle, and while the end death would be a result of a number of factors, this positioning of the body was designed to engage in a slow and agonizing suffocation. Think of it as drowning ashore. Death would be confirmed by a soldier piercing the body with a spear to the heart from the right side of the chest. Once dead, bodies would usually be left on the cross to be eaten by animals but if you got permission from the judge, you could take a body down for burial.

This is what Jesus knew His future to be this entire time. Jesus received a more severe than average scourging so He was unable to carry the cross the whole way so the Romans conscripted someone to carry it for Him, as Roman soldiers could order anyone to carry something for them for up to a mile (recall Matthew 5:41). They travel with this new guy Simon to Golgotha, which means “Place of a Skull” for reasons that should be obvious. This site has been translated as “Calvary” (note: this is not cavaLry but caLvary) so if you see a church named after that, that’s what it’s in reference to. Jesus is given the pain killer wine and refuses it once He knows what it is. He’s raised to the cross and the soldiers divide up His things, fulfilling the prophecy in Psalm 22:18. The Romans kept a careful watch which was not only normal operating procedure to prevent rescue, but also refutes the idea that Jesus was saved by someone else. The sign went up over His head: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. In Latin this is Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum, so when you see I.N.R.I. on a crucifix or painting, that’s what it means. Ironically, this title on His sign is one hundred percent accurate, if not glorious enough. The chief priests got mad and asked Pilate to change it but his reply was “What I have written I have written”. Well, he got one thing right, I guess.

Jesus got some company up there, not that it would’ve been of even the slightest comfort to Him but will be of importance in another gospel later. It’s a pair of thieves, so if you’ve heard of “the thief on the cross”, it’s referring to this. Passersby make comments and mocking gestures. One remarks that if He could destroy the temple and build it then He should use such incredible power to save Himself. This mirrors the temptation of Satan at the start of Jesus’s ministry: “if you’re the Son of God, conjure some bread. Throw yourself from this high place”. Now it’s “come down from the cross”. It would’ve been all too easy for Jesus to pop off the cross fully healed like it was nothing and order angels to set fire to the entire Roman empire but He had perfect self-control and perfect obedience to God. Priests and elders, proud of their work, come to join in the mockery. “He healed others but can’t save Himself,” they jeer. Astonishingly, the robbers on the crosses next to Him have enough presence of mind and energy to join in. Really?

From the 6th hour to the 9th can mean one of two things: from noon to 3 or it started at 6am to 9pm. The distinction is related to a difference between Jewish and Roman time keeping but in either case, a darkness swept the land like it was midnight, so completely out of sorts. The darkness ends when Jesus shouts “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me”. Hmm… That’s troubling. You know, that would kinda make it seem like Jesus… didn’t have the relationship with God He claimed… So clearly our understanding is wrong.

Alright lets look into this. First we need to accept that the human understanding of the trinity is weak in the best of cases. We really just can’t wrap our heads around 3 Persons in one Being. We don’t know how infinite Jesus’s knowledge and power remained while incarnated. We know He experienced emotion though. Bystanders thought He was calling out to the prophet Elijah to save Him. We know it aligns with Psalm 22 which is a psalm of lament and grief. In many protestant traditions (I was taught this) Jesus has absorbed the sins of all humanity and as such, God cannot look upon Him in this moment, so He is abandoned by God until the mission is over. Reading on the Catholic angle it’s more that He is engrossed in Scripture, the whole chapter has been functionally a retelling of Psalm 22 and Jesus, while definitely feeling pain and suffering, shouts this not because He’s having a mental breakdown but to reinforce the understanding of scripture and prophecy and demonstrate the need to cry out to God when we’re suffering. We should recall that Jesus was not actually asking information. He knew precisely why this was happening and He spent most of the Book of Matthew trying to convince the disciples it was coming. He condemned Peter for trying to prevent this. He also knew and foretold that He would be resurrected and completely vindicated when He saved all mankind. Psalm 22 ends on a happy note. By invoking the beginning of the psalm, He invokes the whole of it, the same way when someone says “Our Father,” the rest of it autoplays in your head. It was another powerful gesture of hope and defiance against evil.

Someone runs up to give Jesus wine, but everyone else stops him and wants to see if Elijah really will come to save Jesus, but Jesus cries out again and gives up His spirit. Note: He doesn’t DIE, He GIVES up His spirit. He died because that was the mission and His choice. A deliberate act of will and a gift to humanity given freely. The moment He died, the curtain of the temple was torn completely in half. Mind you, this curtain was the height of a 6 story building and thickly woven. It’s more like a huge carpet, designed to separate the average Joe from the real living presence of God. Only the high priest and only once a year could go in there on behalf of the people. The barrier between man and God had been destroyed with the death of Jesus. We have free access to God anywhere at any time now with Jesus as our escort. Earthquakes start and tombs are flying open and the soldiers are freaking out, saying maybe this guy WAS the son of god? I leave in lowercase because looking at this, it seemed unlikely that the Romans were converted on the spot to the faith of the Jewish messiah and more likely He was the son of a Roman god, since Heracles and the like were already part of their pagan tradition.

A group of women is present for this event. We have Mary Magdalene, Mary (mother of James and Joseph), and the mother of the sons of Zebedee (James and John) possibly named Salome. Some think Mary, mother of James and Joseph, was the same as Mary, mother of Jesus. If you are Catholic, you absolutely do not count yourself among the people that believe this. Joseph of Arimathea, a rich man and a member of the Sanhedrin who opposed the ruling, had become a disciple (not apostle) of Christ and came to help. He negotiates with Pilate for the body of Jesus because it’s against Jewish tradition to leave it to rot as the Romans do. Joseph wraps Jesus in a fresh cloth and deposits Him in a brand new tomb that’s been cut out of a huge rock in a garden. Joseph rolls a heavy stone over the entrance to seal it for the night and goes home. The women are there to see this apparently. Some more priests and Pharisees go to bother Pilate again about Jesus’s body and the promised resurrection. They want the tomb under watch so that no one steals it and claims that He has risen. Pilate wants to minimize his headache so he sends guards to watch for the promised 3 days and they seal the heavy stone door so it can’t be secretly opened using tripwires and wax seals.