Mark 15:16-20

The Roman soldiers were a rough lot, at best, but in their treatment of Jesus they were never more cruel nor less sensitive to the laws of common decency. It was not enough that the soldiers who were on guard in the Praetorium (the palace of the governor) at the time would make sport of Jesus. They sent word to the whole band or cohort, all of whom would number upward of four hundred men, and, like the soldiers of Herod Antipas before them1, they laughingly robed Jesus in purple garments ~ the insignia of royalty ~ and derisively saluted him, even as they would have saluted their own emperor, shouting, Hail, King a/the Jews!2

For the soldiers, it was an impulsive period. For those of us who read the story, it is the very essence of blasphemy, a shocking demonstration of the depravity of the human heart.

The soldiers did not stop with that. They placed a reed in the hand of Jesus to represent the scepter that he claimed the right to carry and, to add to their merriment, they snatched it out of his hand from time to time and struck him over the head with it. Then, to make bad matters worse, they spat upon him. This was the strongest expression of contempt that the Jews knew. As a crowning act of blasphemy, they knelt down before Jesus and assumed a posture of worship and adoration3.

The physical sufferings of Jesus on the cross were unspeakable. His emotional sufferings on the way to the cross, surely, were equally difficult to bear. They were the sufferings of a broken heart, broken by this further demonstration of human sin and depravity.