JESUS DID NOT WANT TO DIE ON THE CROSS

Jesus, who is hailed by his followers as the Christ, the Messiah, did not want to die on the Cross. The whole process meant that Jesus would have had to endure the humiliation of being naked on the Cross, as well as being spat upon and railed against by the canaille and the soldiers. In turn, he knew that he would have had to undergo the pain of being whipped, beaten with other objects and nails stuck into him. In addition, should persons who were being crucified on the eve of the Sabbath not die of their wounds before the Sabbath, their legs would have been broken to expedite their deaths. Jesus, after all, was only human.

Had Jesus wanted, in those carefully recorded closing hours of his life, to die on the Cross, and this is something that has provoked questions through the years, why then did he say at the Mount of Olives, on the night before he died: “O, my Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me: Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.” Matthew 26:39. It is a cri de coeur that would be repeated in the book of Matthew three verses later. The phrasing does not strike as that of someone who had either resigned himself to death for a cause, nor indeed wanted to die for it. He wanted out, provided it would have been acceptable by a higher authority. But if not then...  There are so many pieces to this puzzle, which tend to lead the disinterested observer to believe and advance that far from wanting to die on the Cross Jesus had hoped instead for delivery. For example, on the following day while on the Cross, Jesus would cry out in desperation, as though protesting at needless suffering: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Matthew 27:46.

Why should Jesus have seen himself as having been forsaken if he wanted to die on the Cross. Admittedly, he was intent that the “Scriptures should be fulfilled” as the prophet had said, fascinated almost. But when the time came and with it the intense pain, he clearly had second thoughts and believed that he should have been rescued from the intense pain and hurt. I have not been to the movie, The Passion of the Christ, and neither do I intend to do so. But the reviews, whether simply gut reactions voiced in Letters to the Editor, in Man on the Street comments or in contracted commentaries, all centred for the most part on the incredible violence to Jesus before and on the Cross.  You had the feeling that it was savagery at its highest point, or was it really lowest? But when you read the newspapers, listen to the radio and/or view television, particularly within relatively recent times you understand the mentality that would have delighted in subjecting Jesus to this insane torture. I must confess that I am not a church-going person, preferring instead to see in what way I can be of meaningful assistance to my fellow human beings.

I recall well at the funeral in 1940 of one of my favourite teachers, Miss Mary Alexander, a former Head Teacher of the primary school I then attended, St Paul’s EC, the late Mr Lindsay Francis, in delivering the eulogy would say: “Be good, unto others be good, then let others be good: That was Mary Alexander.” Individual religions and religious sects with their conflicting approaches take second place, as far as I go, to the concept of being good unto others and then letting others be good. It is interesting that Mary Magdalene, who was dismissed as a prostitute by Jesus’ disciples, jealous of her closeness to him, was in his final hours the only one of those who knew him to have remained continuously with him on the road to his being killed.  But I have strayed. Whether Hollywood romanticises the Crucifixion of Jesus or tells it in brutal and gory detail, I maintain that one needs neither, but rather the Biblical version, to come to the conclusion that Jesus, clearly by his own words, did not want to die on the Cross.