For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
(Romans 8.7-8
NRSV)
Philip Yancey in his book, THE JESUS I NEVER KNEW, tells a heart-breaking story very much like Christ's humiliation. The story comes from a memoir by Pierre Van Paassen about the years before World War II. In this memoir Van Paassen tells of an act of humiliation by Nazi storm troopers who had seized an elderly Jewish rabbi and dragged him to headquarters. In the far end of the same room, two colleagues were beating another Jew to death, but the captors of the rabbi decided to have some fun with him. They stripped him naked and commanded that he preach the sermon he had prepared for the coming Sabbath in the synagogue. The rabbi asked if he could wear his yarmulke, and the Nazis, grinning, agreed. It added to the joke. The trembling rabbi proceeded to deliver in a raspy voice his sermon on what it means to walk humbly before God, all the while being poked and prodded by the hooting Nazis, and all the while hearing the last cries of his neighbor at the end of the room.
"When I read the gospel accounts," says Yancey, "of the imprisonment, torture, and execution of Jesus, I think of that naked rabbi standing humiliated in a police station. Even after watching scores of movies on the subject, and reading the Gospels over and over, I still cannot fathom the indignity, the SHAME endured by God's Son on earth, stripped naked, flogged, spat on, struck in the face, garlanded with thorns.
As the little girl said, "Who could forget something like that?" Jesus totally submitted himself to God's will. I wonder what would happen if you and I were to submit ourselves totally to God's will? More miracles would take place, wouldn't they?
Dear God, may I more fully submit myself to you. Amen.
Ron Newhouse
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