This week we celebrate the death of our Savior. Today we're going to look at the crucifixion from its historical and physical realities. Next time we'll look at the spiritual meaning and the theological implications of the cross. But we begin with the simple and deplorable reality of this form of human extermination.

With that in mind, the following is a special reading for the Ask Pastor John podcast taken from Fleming Rutledge's book, "The Crucifixion, Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ." Pages 89 to 95. Her book is especially vivid and strong on this point. It is formidably difficult to understand the cross today in its original context after 2,000 years in which it has been domesticated, romanticized, idealized, and misappropriated.

Occasionally a modern interpreter struggling to find some correspondence that can be grasped by people today will compare the cross of Roman times to the American electric chair. This is an inadequate analogy for a number of reasons as we shall see. We can learn a few things from it. Imagine revering an electric chair.

Imagine using it as the focal point in our churches, hanging small replicas around our necks, carrying it aloft in procession, and bowing our heads as it passes. The absurdity of this scenario can readily be grasped. But other features in the comparison might help us too. For example, the electric chair, when it was still used, was almost always used for electrocuting the lowest class of criminal, a majority of them black, with no powerful connections or other resources.

Similarly, the Romans virtually never used the cross for executing people who had occupied high positions, and never for a Roman citizen. Another point of contact is the contradictory response of revulsion and attraction familiar to anyone who has ever slowed to look at a wreck on the highway. Even the most fastidious person, when confronted by a photograph of an electric chair, let alone the real thing, will experience a disturbing fascination.

There have always been people who specialized in coming to cheer and applaud executions when they took place, whether lynchings, hangings, or electrocutions. That is what undoubtedly happened on Calvary when Jesus was nailed to the cross and left there to die. Crowds of people, then as now, took pleasure in reviling the one who was being put to death.

When they became bored with this pastime, they went home safely to their comforts and gave the victim no further thought. But there are very important differences. Electrocutions were at least theoretically supposed to be humane and quick, but crucifixion as a method of execution was specifically designed to intensify and prolong agony.

In this sense, the cross was infinitely more dreadful than the electric chair. Odious, though, the chair was. Another difference is that the person to be electrocuted is permitted the dignity of a mask or a hood. But most important of all, electrocutions took place indoors, out of public view, with only a few select people permitted to watch.

Crucifixion, on the other hand, was supposed to be seen by as many people as possible. Debasement resulting from public display was a chief feature of the method, along with the prolonging of agony. It was a form of advertisement or public announcement. "This person is the scum of the earth, not fit to live, more an insect than a human being." The crucified wretch was pinned up like a specimen.

Crosses were not placed out in the open for convenience or sanitation, but for maximum public exposure. Crucifixion as a means of execution in the Roman Empire had as its express purpose the elimination of victims from consideration as members of the human race. It cannot be said too strongly. That was its function.

It was meant to indicate to all who might be toying with subversive ideas that crucified persons were not of the same species as either the executioners or the spectators, and were therefore not only expendable, but also deserving of ritualized extermination. Therefore, the mocking and jeering that accompanied crucifixion were not only allowed, they were part of the spectacle, and were programmed into it.

In a sense, crucifixion was a form of entertainment. Everyone understood that the specific role of the passerby was to exacerbate the dehumanization and degradation of the person who had been thus designated to be a spectacle. Crucifixion was cleverly designed, we might say diabolically designed, to be an almost theatrical enactment of the sadistic and inhumane impulses that lie within human beings.

According to the Christian gospel, the Son of God voluntarily and purposefully absorbed all of that, drawing it into himself. Anyone seeking to interpret Jesus' crucifixion must decide whether or not to include a clinical description. Since the New Testament writers are conspicuously silent about the physical details, it is legitimate to ask whether it is suitable or helpful to introduce them.

On the other hand, people in New Testament times had all seen crucifixions, and did not need a description. The evangelists and the other New Testament writers were able to assume a familiarity with the method that is unthinkable for us today. Most of us have never even come close to seeing anyone tortured to death.

For this reason, Martin Engel writes, "Reflection on the harsh reality of crucifixion in antiquity may help us to overcome the acute loss of reality which is to be found so often in present theology and preaching." The early theologian Origen called Jesus' death the "utterly vile death of the cross." Cicero, the great Roman statesman and writer, referred to crucifixion as the "supreme penalty" exceeding burning and decapitation and gruesomeness.

Some rudimentary knowledge of what was taking place will help us to understand these terms. The first phase of a Roman execution was scourging. The lictors, the Roman legionaries assigned to this duty, used a whip made of leather cords to which small pieces of metal or bone had been fastened.

Paintings of the scourging of Jesus always show him with a loincloth. But in fact the victim would have been naked, tied to a post in a position to expose the back and the buttocks to maximum effect. With the first strokes of the scourge, skin would be pulled away and subcutaneous tissue exposed.

As the process continued, the lacerations would begin to tear the underlying skeletal muscles. This would result not only in great pain, but also in considerable blood loss. The idea was to weaken the victim to a state just short of collapse or death. It was common for taunting and ridicule to accompany the procedure.

In the case of Jesus, the New Testament tells us that a crown of thorns, a purple robe, and a mock scepter were added to intensify the mockery. The condition of a prisoner after scourging just prior to crucifixion would depend on several things. Previous physical condition, the enthusiasm of the lictors, and the extent of blood loss.

In the case of Jesus, these things cannot be known, but the fact that he was apparently unable to carry the crossbar himself would indicate that he was probably in a severely weakened state, and he may have been close to circulatory shock. Those being crucified were then paraded through the streets, exposing them to the full scorn of the population.

When the procession reached the site of crucifixion, the victims would see before them the heavy upright wooden posts permanently in place, to which the crossbar was to be attached by a mortise and tenon joint. The person to be crucified would be thrown down on his back, exacerbating the pain of the wounds from his scourging and introducing dirt into them.

His hands would be tied or nailed to the crossbar. Nailing seems to have been preferred by the Romans. Ossuary finds have given us a clearer idea of how this was done. Two thousand years of Christian iconography notwithstanding, the nails were not driven into the palms, which could not support the weight of a man's body, but into the wrists.

The crossbar was then hoisted on the wooden posts where the victim depended from it, and the feet were tied or nailed. At this point, the process of crucifixion proper began. Victims of crucifixion lived on their crosses for periods varying from three or four hours to three or four days.

Passive exhalation, which we do thousands of times a day without thinking about it, becomes impossible for a person hanging on a cross. The weight of a body hanging by its wrist would depress the muscles required for breathing out. Therefore, each exhaled breath could only be achieved by a tremendous effort.

The only way to gain a breath at all would be by pushing oneself up from the legs and the feet, or pulling oneself up by the arms, either of which would cause intense agony. Add to this primary factor the following secondary ones. Bodily functions uncontrolled. Insects feasting on wounds and orifices.

Unspeakable thirst. Muscle cramps. Bolts of pain from the severed median nerves in the wrists, scourged back scraping against the wooden post. It is more than any of us are capable of fully imagining. The verbal abuse and other actions, such as spitting and throwing refuse by the spectators, Roman soldiers, and passerbys, added the final touch.

The New Testament shows us life lived between two worlds, the Roman and the near Middle Eastern. Crucifixion was noxious enough in Roman eyes. Palestinian attitudes would have found it perhaps even more so. Middle Eastern cultures still have to this day an acute sense of personal honor lodged in the body.

An amputation, administered as punishment for instance, would be seen as much more than just physical cruelty or permanent handicap. It would mean that the amputee would carry the visible marks of dishonor and shame for the rest of his or her life. Anything done to the body would have been understood as exceptionally cruel, not just because it inflicted pain, but even more because it caused dishonor.

Furthermore, the Passion accounts reflect in part a very ancient ritual of humiliation. The mocking of Jesus, the spitting and scorn, the inversion of his kingship, and the studious dethronement with the crown of thorns and purple robe would have been understood as a central part of a total rite of infamy, of which the crucifixion itself is the culmination.

Another aspect of the crucifixion not widely noted is that a crucified person, gasping and heaving on his cross, is forced to be his own executioner. He is not even allowed the perverse dignity of having a human being corresponding to himself who hangs or decapitates him. He dies truly and completely alone, with the weight of his own body killing him as it hangs.

Causing his own diaphragm to suffocate him. This ends a reading from Fleming Rutledge's book, "The Crucifixion, Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ," pages 89 to 95.