The Bone-Breaking Bureaucracy of Religion

Hello. This is Michael Charles Olson from the front room of the Jacksonville House. I’d love to wish you a belated happy Easter. I started writing this post this morning, Easter Sunday morning. It’s now Easter evening as I read it. Over the last week I’ve tried to quiet myself down to sit in front of what the four gospel writers present as they describe the events of Jesus’ arrest, trial, crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. I guess I was trying to nurture a desire to hear God’s voice for myself, to believe that He is still speaking to me and that his desire is for me to hear what He has to say. For me, and in this season, it’s been an exercise in deepening the roots of faith in my own life. By God’s grace, a few things illuminated themselves to me along the way. I’d love to share the most profound of them in hopes that it might move your heart toward the reality of who God is in Christ the way it moved mine.

This post is called “The Bone-Breaking Bureaucracy of Religion and the Beautiful Brotherhood of Grace”.

Luke’s account of Jesus’ crucifixion is the only one that shares the details of the interaction between the three men being crucified at Galgotha that Good Friday. Jesus of Nazareth was hung between two criminals with a sign over his head which read “King of the Jews,” per Pilate’s instruction. The Jewish authorities tried to get that sign edited so that it was less of an overt statement of Jesus’ identity. Pilate refused to acquiesce to their demands. In reality, Jesus had done nothing but remain faithful to His Father to land himself there. He had been sentenced unjustly. The other two men, however, knew they were there as a consequence of their transgression against the laws of Rome. Here is Luke’s account of their conversation as they hung there to die together:

“One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:39-43 ESV)

Luke goes on to tell us that Jesus took his final breath at the sixth hour (noon) as the land was covered in darkness and the curtain in the Jerusalem temple was torn in two. As I stopped and considered what I was reading, I was (and still am) taken aback by the level of detail Luke’s account afforded in understanding what all was occurring that day. Think about it…Luke is giving us a window into a personal conversation that was shared amongst three men as they approached death by crucifixion. It’s astounding.

Parallel to Luke’s account of this interaction, John highlights that these men were being crucified on the day of preparation for the Sabbath and that the Jewish leaders were particularly attuned to this fact. So much so that they approached Pilate with a particular request. Here’s John’s words:

“Since it was the day of Preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away. So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first, and of the other who had been crucified with him.” (John 19: 31-32 ESV)

As I read these words, I was stopped dead in my tracks with the realization of the brutality of what was on the page in front of me. Let me try my best to describe why. As biblical archeologists and roman historians have studied the horrific nuances of death by crucifixion, they have concluded that the most common cause of death of those crucified was asphyxiation. They would drown as their own fluid filled their lungs. The only way those nailed to the cross could survive was to use whatever diminishing strength they had in their legs to push up on the nails which held their feet to the vertical wooden cross beam to catch a breath.

Now the full scope of the brutality of the Jewish authority’s desire begins to reveal itself. They approached Pilate with a request. “Break their legs, let them die, and take them away.” Why? So that they won’t be at risk of being unclean and in violation of the laws surrounding the observance of the coming Sabbath.

I stopped to place myself in the story, putting myself in the place of the criminal who was promised paradise. There I hang under the dark sky in excruciating pain. I’m trying to push up on the nails impaled through my feet just to breath and stay alive. I am in full knowledge of the transgression I had committed to place me where I am. I’m guilty. I’m going to die, and I deserve it. I turn to the side and see Jesus of Nazareth, whom moments earlier had made an otherwordly promise next to me. His physical frame is being pulled by the weight of gravity to the earth as he had just breathed his last moments before. Just then, in the middle of my struggle to stay alive, a roman guard approaches me with a club in his hand. The soldier raises the club toward my body and begins to strike my weakened knees over and over until by bones begin to shatter. There, in my vulnerability, I no longer have the means to bear the weight of my own body on my nail-pierced feet. I notice that the religious elite are nodding in approval at what is transpiring as I begin to lose my ability to breath.

This is the picture that John paints as he presents the reality of the crucifixion scene to us, and in this picture, we are led to some truths about the nature of humanity, religion, power, and the purity of God’s heart for us. Here are the truth’s:

-We are all transgressors—we are all guilty. Each one of us is deserving to be nailed to the cross like a criminal because of the sin curse we were born under and how that curse has played out in our lives. Romans goes so far as to tell us that the wage of that sin curse is death.

-We are all confronted with a cross to bear. For some it is the cross of self-justification, the futility of trying to keep ourselves alive by sheer determination and self-will while operating under the inevitable curse of death. For others it is the daily cross of self-denial that comes at the request of Christ himself. This cross presents itself to us in grace and with an otherworldly promise, but make no mistake it is a cross nonetheless.

-Religion and the bureaucracy it creates is a brutal killer. It will present itself as the moral high ground for the good of rule keeping, but under its shallow veneer is a diabolical spirit that will stop at nothing until it has stolen your ability to breath. It will break your bones as you bare the weight on whatever cross you have chosen.

Here’s the striking truth about God’s heart to us in Christ.

-In the middle of all of this Jesus is next to us on a cross of his own. His cross is the cross on which he bore the weight of all of sin’s wage, including our own. He stands in stark contrast to the spirit of the religious bureaucracy. Colossians tells us Jesus is the image of the invisible God and the exact imprint of his nature. Hebrews tells us that he is a compassionate high priest, a brother who made us a paradise promise, and he’s already gone before us to keep it. The power of his self-sacrificial love leads us to an indestructible life in the face of inevitable physical death. That life is more powerful than the power of religious bureaucracy and its desire to steal our very ability to breath. It’s potency is proven in the reality of an empty tomb on the other side of his cross.

This is good news. It is the good news. As God led me into the discovery of these truths through his illuminated word it made a difference in my heart and mind today. The exercise of trying to put all of this into words for you to grapple with feels like a gift to me. I hope this Easter season the beauty and purity of Jesus’ brotherhood toward you, and the power of his indestructible life in you overshadows the brutality of the spirit religious bureaucracy around you…In Jesus name, Amen.