Day 45 - crucifixion

Jesus was naked.  He was beaten to a pulp such that he was barely recognisable as a human being.   He was hanging alongside dozens, if not hundreds of others in the heat of the day - some of those people had been there for three of four days.  The crowds were gathered because this was a public spectacle - people were shouting and laughing and wailing and crying.  Vultures will no doubt have been circling.  There were flies by the thousand.  People were passing by going about their daily business barely paying any attention to what was a common sight.  Others were standing around in

groups trying to offer comfort, water, food to those who were being crucified.  Roman soldiers were moving amongst the people keeping an eye out for any unrest and stopping those who would attempt to get too close to the condemned.  They were taking delivery of nails and rope ready for the next batch of prisoners to arrive.  Dogs and small children running around.  Donkeys braying and people arguing.  It was far from the scene we so often associate with that day - three crosses on a deserted hillside.

Into this chaos the sins of the world came creeping.  Every rape, murder, theft and act of brutality since the beginning of time.  All the greed, corruption , disease,  anger, hatred and jealousy began to assemble at Golgotha.  The skies became dark as the demons of violence, abuse, addiction, sourcery and arrogant pride swarmed to the cross on which Jesus was hanging and began to settle on Him with all their evil filth and slime.   From the future came the plague , the holocaust, Hiroshima , acts of terrorism, child abuse, AIDS,  pornography, blackmail, torture, cancer ,every wicked and depraved act which man has ever devised and committed - all of it swirled and swarmed into the almost lifeless body of The Christ. cutting Him off from the love of His father, drowning Him in evil and sin.

The skies became dark with the evil of the moment and finally Jesus yelled like a drowning man speaking His last word with every ounce of strength He could muster ' FORGIVE'.   And then He is overwhelmed.  God decides that it is enough and allows death to take Him.  Jesus leaves His body on the cross and His spirit is dragged down into hell where Satan is presumably throwing the mother of all parties.  They have Him.  He has been defeated.  God has relinquished His own Son to the power of death and death now has Him forever in its grip.

We dont know what happened on Saturday.  We only get the very briefest of hints about what might have been going on in hell that day when Jesus turned the tables on Satan, took the keys of death away from him, placed His feet on the neck of the devil and pronounced him finally and eternally defeated.  

“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine long-suffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water” (1 Peter 3:18–20).

Jesus said to the thief on the cross that they would be together in paradise ' today'  - so perhaps the defeat of Satan was instantaneous and Jesus was in heaven in the twinkling of an eye, the enemy defeated even as He was taking His last breath.  Perhaps Jesus took His time - it doesnt really matter much to me.  What matters is that on Friday, Jesus always knew that Sunday was coming.   On the cross, suffocating under the weight of every sin ever committed in the history of the world, Jesus saw the joy of salvation on the horizon and focused on that.   How great must that joy be if it enabled Jesus to go through all of that.