Easter Uncut: What really happened and why it really matters by Laferton Carl

Author:Laferton, Carl [Laferton, Carl]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781909919327
Publisher: The Good Book Company
Published: 2016-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

> Why it really matters

There was nothing particularly abnormal about Jesus’ crucifixion, in many ways. To our 21st-century Western ears, the details of crucifixion are shocking. The condemned man (women were executed in a relatively more humane way), who had already been tortured by flogging, would be stretched across the beam, probably having his shoulders dislocated in the process. Big nails would be driven through his wrists. The beam would be attached to a pole in the ground, and he would hang there, his feet either nailed to the wood or resting on a small ledge, and he would push himself up on the nails or ledge to breathe. Every breath was agony, but it often took days to die, usually of heart failure.

It was a cruel way to die—deliberately so. Crosses were mounted in the most public places, as a way of the Romans saying to their conquered subjects, This is what happens if you oppose Rome. Do you really want to take us on? The cross was meant to scare people; but it would not have shocked people. 2,000 years ago, crucifixions were a part of everyday life—not a pleasant one, but a normal one.

And so if you had been a first-century passer-by and had glanced at three men dying on crosses just outside Jerusalem, you wouldn’t have given them much of a second glance, or very much thought. You’d have reacted as we do when a prison van drives past. We think, I wonder who that is? I wonder what they’ve done? and then we get on with our day.

You’d have seen a man carrying his cross-beam to his execution site; soldiers gambling to see who would keep the valuable items of clothing; a criminal touchingly ensuring his mother was cared for once he’d finally breathed his last, agonising breath; the man in the middle shouting something and then dying, surprisingly quickly; and then soldiers breaking the legs of the other two so that they died and could be taken down before the Sabbath day of rest.

This was an everyday event.

But if a passer-by had stopped and looked more closely at the man on the middle cross—at what happened around him, and what he said—they might have realised that this was, in fact, a death like no other.

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