There is a lot of shame attached to this mystery – shame that when God Himself humbled Himself to take human form to save us we repaid Him in scorn. Perhaps what should be there is less general shame in our natural tendencies as a people – to cast out those who are the best of us – and more personal embarrassment (and shame) that we continually echo that cry out to Him, “Prophesy! If you are the Messiah then prophesy! Who is it that hit you?”
We demand proof of Him – ‘God, if you are real, then help me now.’ ‘God if this is what you want from me, send me a sign.’ Our constant demand for proof, when he told us again and again that it is faith that is the most precious gift we can have. Not for Him, for us. And we hurt Him so many times every day because we can’t believe without help or we don’t want to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that our sinful world throws at us or because we can’t find the way to discern right from wrong, our own vocation and call, on our own.
He suffers so much at our hands, not just once the night before Calvary but every day across the Globe from dearest of His followers, the abuse of disbelief and anger – all of which He could have erased. He lets us crown Him with thorns, beat Him and demand of Him, so that we can have the gift of true faith. Blessed are they who have not seen and believe. So that we can choose to love and fear Him rather than simply knowing that He exists – God as the tyrant, as real as the mailman, dictating and ruling through fear of hellfire, able to rain down at any moment.
So that we can choose to believe, so that we can have that wondrous blessing of faith, He must suffer our disbelief, our doubt, or petulance and fury. He must hear our cries and feel our blows, “Prophesy! Who is it that hit you?”
He pays the price so that we might have the gift. This suffering is still happening now. We are still beating Him and placing a crown of thorns on His head.
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