Matthew under the arm 133

We came across a series of small houses built around a small loch, where I had imagined we could get some hot food and a wash. ‘We are about to meet someone who needs our help and support’ Columba said crossly. ‘The young man you will meet has been running from village to village hoping not to be caught. Remove your attention from your stomach and pay acute attention to what we must be and do!’ Columba had followed directions he had been given and quickly ushered me into a little stone bothy. There sat the young man shivering from fear. He had been wrongfully accused of raping a young woman in a hamlet back over the mountains. I was completely lost as to what we could do. Through the door came another young man who had been walking with us for days, also in silence. Columba obviously recognised him. ‘Go with Columba’, he said. ‘But you….They will come for…’ ‘Go’, said the young man.

Matthew 27:27-31.
Out of sight – out of mind. There would have been a sense of being in an exclusive situation – the Praetorium. No crowd here. Like all places of torture, it could be applied without censure. Here the expectation would have been to cause maximum fear and humiliation on Jesus. Those who were led to the Gas Chambers, were first stripped and left trying as best they may to cover themselves: a futile exercise. But Jesus remained in silence, fully exposed. Purple was thrown over him: the royal colour and ironically, the colour of healing. The thorns of the crown would not only cause bleeding but constant searing pain. Derision followed: which is designed to reduce and deny any respect. So here we have a bewildering collection of images: royalty, healing, physical torture, humiliation, defencelessness. His own clothes were put back on him in case the crowd grew angry with the soldiers for abusing the precious and expensive sign of purple royalty. With someone else’s phlegm dripping down his cheeks, the rest was inevitable.

I WOULD ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR LOVE WITHIN ME THAT I MAY SEE IT IN THOSE AROUND ME.

There is little necessity to imagine this appalling agony, perhaps because it is too easy to do so. What is almost impossible is to imagine Jesus’ composure. The Passion narrative is pointing us to who Jesus is. He is the Love of God in the darkest and most distant place imaginable from that love. Yes: this is the strangest of paradoxes. So, having read the passage carefully and slowly and briefly experienced it, move into silent prayer with the sentence and allow the positive regard of it to be the focus of the silence. Set a time for the silence and do not leave it until you have remained there with Jesus who remains with you, despite whatever agony we experience directly or indirectly.

+Martin
Bishop of Argyll and The Isles.