The Passion Continues: From Agony to Scandal to Faith - Part 2: Mark 15:21-47

​The Passion Continues: From Agony to Scandal to Faith 
Part 2: Mark 15:21-47  
Mark does not draw out the journey to calvary. The Romans so brutalized Jesus that Simon of Cyrene needed to help  him carry the cross to the Golgotha (v. 21). That’s Mark’s account of the journey. This was not a triumphant stroll to the hill of skulls. The ticker tape parade of palm branches is long since passed for Jesus. A stranger carried his cross for him, he refused to take a wine mixture to ease the pain. They crucified him, exposed him before the weather and the crowd, placed him between two guilty robbers (to make him guilty by association). And, while taking his last breaths, Jesus was sneered at and mocked by “those who passed by” (v. 29), as well as by the robbers to his left and right (v. 32).  
Jesus quotes from Psalm 22 when praying his last words. It’s not a “pretty” prayer: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Psalm 22 does, eventually, end in a tone of praising the Lord for his deliverance. But Jesus isn’t at that point of the psalm, he’s in agony, surrounded by abuse, and even – somehow – feels abandoned/forsaken by his Heavenly Father. That’s about the closest thing to “Hell on earth” that anyone can experience, not only completely unjustified suffering but malicious torture, followed by utter rejection and revilement by friends and the crowd, then feeling as though God has  abandoned you. Jesus’ pre-Resurrection life and ministry ends in the silence of a corpse, with tears and sobs wrapping Jesus’ pallid body in a linen shroud, and finally the sun’s light winks to darkness as the tomb encrusts him in rock (v. 46). 
Mark does not linger over the details of Jesus’ execution. He journeyed to Golgotha. Most scorn and mock him. He prays in the agony of abandonment. His death brings about a miraculous scandal, however. After Jesus “breathed his last...the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom” (v. 38). A miracle, because veils in temples don’t randomly split in two. A scandal, because the veil kept secure the Holy of Holies and its rupture allowed the unholy light and other’s gaze to  penetrate that most sacred space. This strange detail coincides with a centurion declaring Jesus “the Son of God” in faith (v. 39); a pagan (one considered profane by the Jewish people) is then brought into the sacred space of faith in Jesus at the tearing of the veil. The death of Jesus brings life to a pagan, Gentile who formerly stood outside of the promises of the Old Covenant but is quickly ushered into the New Covenant.  
 
Reflection Questions: 

1. What role does mockery play in Jesus' execution? How does mockery bring people “together”? Where else do we see this type of mockery taking place as a quasi-unifying principle in society today?  
2. Read Psalm 22. Which verses of the psalm touch upon Jesus’ life and death and resurrection? 
3. Chapter fifteen ends with a simple verse: “Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he [Jesus] was laid” (v. 47). Why would Mark want to emphasize the Marys’ knowledge about Jesus’ entombment? What transition role does such a simple verse play when spying ahead to the next chapter?