Saturday 13 April

JESUS IS CONDEMNED TO DIE

Read Mark 15: 1-5, 15

“Don’t say a word!”.  How often have you been told that, or even told yourself. There is a time for staying silent, but how hard it is to hold our tongues, sometimes. But Jesus could.  

When he was arrested, he knew that the journey was taking him where it was always going to. No number of wily words or platitudes or apologies was going to change anything now, and even if it could have, it would have diverted him from his true course.  

Christ had no need to defend himself. He had lived a life purer and more righteous than any other before or since. He had nothing to apologise for, but that’s not how society saw him. So Jesus said not a word and let things run their God-directed course, down the road of the city and up the hill to the place of execution. But his eyes weren’t fixed on the road, or the cross; they were fixed on the people he encountered – those for whom he was willing to die; they were fixed beyond the cross,  somewhere no-one else could glimpse at the moment. They were fixed on heaven, and the door that he would open for all humankind.

Alison Britchfield