The Mock Investiture, and Bearing the Cross

S. Mark xv. 16–22

If we were reading the narrative for the first time, when we had reached this point, we should experience a great sense of relief; we should feel that now Jesus is taken out of the hands of His countrymen, with all their intense spite and animosity, at least He will be subjected to no unnecessary suffering. He had provoked no retaliation from the Romans: He had spoken no bitter things against them. No “Woe unto you, ye heathen!” had ever made them quail beneath His righteous anger. But prophecy must be fulfilled. It was ordained that He should drain the cup of suffering to the dregs; and so just when no cruelty was expected, there it was exercised upon Him in its most brutal form. All the agents of evil were let loose in that “hour and power of darkness,” and all alike, young and old, Jew and Gentile, became confederate against Him.

“The soldiers led Him away into the hall, called Prastorium, and they call together the whole band.” The headquarters of the Roman army of occupation were at Caesarea, but a detachment was kept in Jerusalem to overawe the populace, who chafed at foreign rule, and were always ready to rise in rebellion. This cohort had their barracks round the quadrangle of the palace. As soon then as Pilate’s body-guard had conceived the idea of ill-treating the Prisoner, they called out all their comrades to take part in their cruel sport. They had heard Jesus charged with claiming the imperial dignity, and they resolved to give it to Him in mockery, and see how He would bear His royal honours. They fetched from the guard-room some cast-off scarlet cloak of one of their generals, or perhaps from the Praetorian wardrobe a purple robe, such as Caesar wore when he took the field; whichever it was, it was intended to represent a royal dress. Then they crowned Him. We usually think of it as with an Eastern diadem; but it was far more probably in imitation of the victor’s wreath, which the Emperor of the time was so fond of wearing, as the statues of Tiberius abundantly testify. One of the soldiers must have run into the garden of the palace, or down the rocky valley hard by, and gathered a handful of thorny bramble; of what kind 3 it was, has been often disputed. Those who thought most of the infliction of pain fixed on an Acanthus, with long spikes that sting as well as prick; others who saw in the crowning more of mockery than cruelty chose the Nebk — the Spina Christi — which, with its pliant twigs and bright ivy-like leaves, best recalls the imperial wreath. Whichever it was, it is enough for us to feel, as an evidence of the restitution wrought by the Incarnation, that what sprang from the ground as a curse on Adam’s transgression, was woven into a crown, and worn by Christ.

Next a tall reed was brought and thrust into His hand for a royal sceptre, and the picture was complete — the mock investiture finished. Then the derisive homage began. It was not a single act of mockery; for S. Mark, who is so precise in his language, uses tenses throughout which imply repetition. Not improbably, therefore, the whole cohort passed by before Him, each one kneeling as he passed, and mingling some word or act of insult with his mock obeisance.

No sooner was this derisive exhibition concluded than Pilate led Jesus forth, wearing the mimic insignia of royalty, for his last appeal to the people. We have seen with what result. He was brought back only to be stripped of the scarlet cloak, and led forth to die.

Where the Via Dolorosa or “Way of the Cross” began we may conjecture with confidence, for the site of the Prsetorium, from which it led, has been fixed; but where it ended, is wrapped in obscurity. Tradition, however, has not hesitated to mark out the whole route. Particular spots connected with certain events — some recorded in Scripture, some not — are pointed out to the traveller; and many a pilgrim, believing that he was literally treading in the footsteps of our blessed Lord, has gone barefoot from the beginning to the end. But the path which those holy feet really trod on that terrible day is buried, and everything associated with it, deep beneath that which now meets the eye.

The scene of the Crucifixion was called by the Evangelists, in Aramaic, Golgotha, in Latin, Calvary, and, as interpreted, the “place of a skull.” Familiar illustrations, in which skulls and bones lie whitening on the ground, have led us to look upon it as especially associated with the dead. But we would notice that it is not called the place of skulls, but of a skull. It was not the custom of the Jews to leave bodies unburied; and we may be quite sure that a wealthy man, like Joseph of Arimathaea, would not have fixed his garden or pleasure-ground in close proximity to any spot ceremonially unclean. Golgotha was simply a rounded knoll, bare perhaps of trees and grass, in shape like a skull, lying beyond the gate in the suburbs of the city.

But whatever the road may have been by which Jesus went to the scene of His death, we know that those who led Him out compelled Him to carry the instrument of His execution on His Own shoulders. Christian Art has misled us in its representation of what it was that He carried. It was then the usual custom in cases of crucifixion to make the condemned criminal bear to the place of execution, not the whole cross — this in the majority of cases after the exhaustion produced by the scourging which preceded, would have been physically impossible — but only the two transverse beams. They were tied or lightly nailed together in the shape of the letter V, and placed like a yoke on the criminal’s neck. Crucifixion was borrowed, we must remember, from the Romans, and the Roman convict certainly so carried them, as we may gather from the name which he received in consequence, furcifer — 11 forkbearer pn — the most contemptible designation which a Roman could receive.

Now we are told that for some reason or other, the soldiers “pressed into the service” one Simon, to help to bear the burden. He who was thus honoured above all men — who alone was permitted to lend any human aid to the Great Sufferer in that awful hour — was one of the African Jews, of whom there were sufficient in Jerusalem to have a synagogue of their own. He was returning from his work in the field with his two boys, Alexander and Rums, when he was rudely seized and compelled to aid in bearing the Cross. In all probability he manifested some sympathy for Jesus, which drew attention to him; and there is a most touching representation of this feeling in one of a series of well-known pictures in Antwerp Cathedral. No sooner have they arrived at the place of execution than Simon, having done all that lay in his power, and seeing that they are about to nail Jesus to the Cross, unable any longer to endure the sight, takes his frightened boys by the hand and hurries them from the spot; and theirs are the only faces which, in that vast crowd on Golgotha, are turned away from the Cross.

And now we come to the point where, we think, the teaching of Christian Art is at fault. Knowing how much sacred painting has done in bringing the Life of our Lord home to the hearts of men, remembering too out of our own experience the lasting, the ineffaceable impression which certain pictures have made upon the mind, we almost hesitate to say a word in disparagement; but it does seem that in one important point the great painters who have treated the subject have missed the truth. It all turns upon the reason why Simon was compelled to bear the Cross. Was it because our Lord was unable to bear it Himself, because, in short, He fell, as a late tradition says, three times prostrate beneath its weight? or was it only because the soldiers were impatient, and though Jesus was Himself equal to the burden they had laid upon Him, they thought it would expedite matters to call in the assistance of another! Men have learned to believe the first, but, in our judgment, erroneously. Christ taught mankind by example almost more than by precept. Many of His great acts were, so to speak, typical, and the way in which He bore His Cross was to be an example and encouragement to those whom He told again and again to take up their cross and follow Him.

Now if He had succumbed to the burden and sunk helpless to the ground, the example would have lost more than half its force.

Christian Art, though probably it would have excited less compassion for the Sufferer, would have taught a truer and deeper lesson, if it had embodied the sentiment which prevailed in the earliest ages of the Church, when, under a profound sense of His all-sufficient power, men held that from the moment that the Cross was laid upon His shoulders till it was removed by other hands, He never proved unequal to the burden He was called on to bear.

But though the lesson we ought to draw from this is that the faithful Christian must never lay down his cross, too many of us need to be reminded that it is incumbent upon us all to take it up. “Whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after Me, cannot be My disciple.” He does not say will not, but cannot be. It is as much an impossibility that we should be recognised as Christ’s servants without discipline and self-denial, as that any man shall be able without holiness to gaze upon the Beatific Vision hereafter. We are all from our very birth apt and prone to sin; and mortification of self is one of the great correctives placed within our reach by Him Who would have all men to be pure, even as He is pure. To crucify the flesh, then, with its affections and lusts, is a necessity of our being, and to take up the cross on our own shoulders is the first necessary step in the execution of our purpose. It was the realisation of this truth which gave birth to the watchword of the martyrs in an earlier age: “No cross no crown.” Bear the cross, and bear it bravely, till God’s Own hand shall take it away; then at the last we shall be able to say with all the confidence of S. Paul: “Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me in that day,”

Note: The whole detachment numbered from 400 to 600 men.

Note: S. Mark speaks of it as ’ purple: “S. Matthew as “scarlet:” possibly it was scarlet with the purple “laticlave.” The ancients did not distinguish colours very accurately.

Note: In Christian Art it is usually represented by a wreath of leafless twigs with long thorns. S. Chrysostom favours the idea that the coronation was for mockery: “they insulted Him with the crown of thorns.”

Note: The imperfect, Ztvtttov, heirrvov, irpoaeKvvovv.

Note: Cf. p. 358.

Note: S. Luke says, “the place which is called ‘a skull,’” not, as the other Evangelists, “of a skull.” The Hebrew word is derived from a root signifying to roll, hence “round.” There is nothing in the Gospels to indicate that it was a “mountain.” This is traditional.

Note: It was used like the English “gallows-bird “or “hang-dog.”

Note: It is a coincidence that S. Mark, writing especially for Romans, mentions the sons, who were probably well known to them, for S. Paul salutes Rufus in his Epistle to the Romans xvi. 13.

Note: There is an expression in S. Mark xv. 22 which may favour the idea that He was sinking beneath the burden — cptpovaiv avrbv — which may be, but is not necessarily, “they bear Him.” In the A.V. it is “they bring Him.” But even on the supposition that they actually carried Him, it is no proof that He could not have struggled through, had they not been so impatient to get the execution over.