A Little Vegas at the Cross

There, at the foot of the cross, while Jesus hung suffering and dying, the soldiers turned the scene into a little Vegas. Gambling away Jesus’ clothes in a game of chance.

What do people do when someone is dying? It isn’t only first-century soldiers that do monstrous things. Sometimes while a mother is dying, the children outside the hospital door are arguing over who will get the china and jewelry. Family members will sometimes place mom or dad in a nursing home, figuring they are never getting out, they are as good as dead, and then strip the home of all the valuables and maybe even go so far as to sell the home and take the assets all while telling mom or dad nothing of their actions. As far as they tell them, everything is as it was when they left and one day, when they get out, they can return to their home. A home in which another person is now living in.

It is not just families that behave this way. We have seen the crowds behave monstrously as well. A city is devastated by a fire, flood or tornado, and people will come into the area to dig through the debris, break into homes and business to take what they can get. They compound the tragedy all the while seemingly oblivious to the suffering that is occurring around them.

When Jesus died on the cross, all of heaven and hell stood still and watched with wonder. Time stood still except for a group of men, gambling away his clothes at the foot of the cross. Jesus had only a few pieces of clothing, but they didn’t wait for him to die. They divided his meager estate amongst themselves and gambled away what could not be divided.

These soldiers were not the only people at the foot of the cross that day. As Jesus writhed in agony, and they gambled away his clothes, close by was Jesus mother. As a parent, I cannot imagine what it would be like to witness the execution of my own child. It is a place my heart and mind cannot go. But there she was at the cross. Suffering. Why couldn’t they have given the tunic to her? The only thing left to hold onto, to remember her son. Wouldn’t you think the soldiers would have shown at least some mercy to Jesus’ mother? This was not her plan for her son to die this way. She had even on one occasion tried to come with Jesus’ brothers and take him home, figuring he was out of his mind. Mary tried to protect her son.

If we had the chance to question these man afterward they likely would have responded with puzzled bewilderment at our offense. They had a duty to be completed and their years of being soldiers made them indifferent to the suffering and agony going on around them. They were practical men. For them, a garment represented several days wages. These were not wealthy men. They were grunt soldiers in the Roman army. For us, we have closets full of clothes and the thought of wearing the clothes of an executed man is repulsive to our senses. But these men had very little. Likely only one or two garments to wear themselves. Clothes were a big financial investment. Even if they couldn’t wear the clothes of Jesus, they could, at least, sell them.

We are not really that different than them. We have all trained our minds to see somethings and to not see others. Most of the time we live our lives with our minds on automatic pilot. Without it, we would go crazy. But what are we missing while we are not seeing? Those soldiers had become conditioned to the filth, agony, and brutality of death on a cross. So much so they could play games at the foot of the cross.

The more we watch violence. We become accustomed to it and we are no longer shocked or disturbed by it. Therefore, to grab our attention video games and television writers have to push further and further the graphically explicit and violent envelope. It is the only way to stand out, the only way to get our attention because we have all seen it before. Playboy magazine no longer has nude models in the magazines. I am going to have to take their word for it. I have never opened the pages of a Playboy magazine and I am certainly not going to start now. But in giving their reason for making the change it was simple. Nudity and sexually charged images have become so common in our society that the pictures in their magazine failed to excite and their subscriptions were dropping off. The prevalence of pornography free available on-line has the product they are selling no longer worth looking at.

It is easy for us to pass judgment on past generations. We wonder how it was that nations could have allowed child labor to take place. How could people have become so immune to the death and mutilation of children in the mills and factories as the industrial revolution swelled? We stand in confusion our a person could sit in church and hear the message of God’s love for all. How could they hear the story of the good Samaritan and then go home to torture their slaves? Or how could people stand by and allow the Holocaust to happen? How could they see the train cars of people and yet not see what was happening?

Sometimes the answer is as simple and as complicated as to say, they acted according to the way they had been conditioned, acted according to the way they had trained their minds to work. How have we trained our minds to see somethings and to not see others? What will future generations look back on us and ask how it was that we could not see the suffering that was right before our eyes? What will they say about our ambivalence to the unborn or say about our growing billionaires on the backs of workers not being paid enough to live on? How have we become indifferent to those around us?

Stephen
Giving credit where it is due:
The concept for this series of blog posts and its accompanying sermon series draw from the masterful work, Seven Words to the Cross: A Lenten Study for Adults by J. Ellsworth Kalas.