Sixth Station: Jesus is scourged and crowned with thorns

Then therefore, Pilate took Jesus, and scourged him. And the soldiers platting a crown of thorns, put it upon his head; and they put on him a purple garment. And they came to him, and said: Hail, king of the Jews; and they gave him blows.
(Jn 19:1-3, Douay-Rheims Version)

The Gospels do not say much about scourging. The Gospels only say that Jesus was scourged. There are no details. Was it as cruel as that depicted in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ? Objectively, we cannot say. There are records of the way Romans scourged their prisoners. Yet they are so varied that we cannot simply state that Jesus had the most severe of the scourging. However, scourging is not the same as receiving the rotan when I was a child. Scourging was definitely excruciatingly painful and it was definitely injurious. It was a punishment dealt to criminals. Jesus was not a criminal. Pilate did not find any fault in Jesus and yet he ordered Jesus to be scourged. Furthermore, the soldiers seemed to have enjoyed torturing their prisoners. They crowned Jesus with thorns to mock him. Even if a prisoner deserved his punishment, was the mocking a part of the punishment?

In this station, my meditation will neither be on how terrible the scourging was, nor how painful the crown of thorns was. Instead, my meditation brought me to a single point: justice.

Pilate had Jesus scourged to placate the Jewish authorities who had also riled up the crowd. Instead of using the normal Roman way of quelling an unruly but unarmed crowd, Pilate had a man whom he had declared innocent scourged. I am just as guilty the soldiers when I did not speak up for a person whom I knew did not deserve a reprimand.

The Romans had a reputation for liking violence. It can be deduced from the way the gladiatorial games were conducted in the Colosseum. In the case of Jesus, the soldiers did not think anything of mocking Jesus. I suspect that many just joined “for fun.” They were the typical bullies. Bullies do not serve justice, they serve themselves. Those with authority can often end up as bullies. I can sense this keenly because I am given authority as a parish priest. It would be easy for me to use my authority to thumb people down and keep them down. When this happens for a selfish reason, I am unjust. There are times when I might need to assert my authority to stop a person from harming others. I know that I must consider the common good. If I were to assert my authority just to keep things easy for me, it would be unjust.

In the world today, there are many who resent authority and are anti-institutional. They consider authority to be an illusion and constantly mock legitimate authority. In one extreme, they claim that they would rather have exercise of personal responsibility than enforced order through an external authority. This ideal would only work if there were neither sin nor selfishness in the world. Let us consider the present situation in Singapore. We are asked to exercise social responsibility and I have personally experienced those who do not think much about social distancing. They flout the guidelines when the authorities are not around. When reminded by their peers, they throw daggers with their eyes.

The scourging of Jesus and the crowning of thorns remind us that there is a lack of love of neighbour in Pilate and the soldiers. It shows us how much Jesus was willing to go through for love of all humanity. We must learn from Jesus and not to be like Pilate and the soldiers. I am reminded of what St. John wrote: We love, because he first loved us. If any one says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. (1 Jn 4:19-20, Revised Standard Version)