Hey my friends, it's Matt. This is a 10 minute Bible hour podcast and we get this

scene that's been playing on a loop for us here for the last few days from

Matthew and it's a grisly scene. Jesus who did everything right and

helped people and taught things that were true and stood up to institutions and corrupt politicians and twisted up fake religiosity who took care of the

needs of the outsiders and the marginalized and who spanned the seemingly unspanable boundaries that existed culturally between different groups,

that Jesus, he's been flogged.

His back looks like hamburger, it's ripped to shreds he's bleeding he's losing strength and he's on his way to be crucified but in the meantime a bunch of jackals a bunch of hyenas that is a bunch of Roman executioners whose job it is to yuck it up for the crowd so that they can both

set an example of what happens if you resist the government, but also give the people some

spectacle and some fun to keep them entertained so they won't have time to revolt and do things they don't like.

These guys are doing one of those medieval Jean-Gluor Jape kind of routines where they got some puppets with sticks and they move them around and they whack people on the head and they make fun of the fake king and do some mockery maybe right before an execution. It's that kind of ridiculous mocking scene

that we get here as these guys strip Jesus

and put a scarlet robe on him,

they twist together a crown of thorns

and set it on his head.

As they put a staff in his right hand,

and they kneel in front of him, and they mock him,

saying, hail, king of the Jews,

that's the scene we've been stuck on,

because it's the scene that looks like the point of no

return it looks like we've seen absolute defeat and it was a fun ride with Jesus

indeed if he was a normal human character this is the point where we start making plans for what we do after Jesus because that is usually the end of things.

But there's this recurring theme throughout the Bible where every

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