Once Pilate gave in to the wishes of the Sanhedrin and the cries of the people that had been “stirred” by the chief priests he turned Jesus over to be scourged and then to be crucified. In this text Mark walks us from Jesus’ scourging to being nailed to the cross. We don’t know how long it took but we know that the time, however long or short it turned out to be was filled with suffering, humiliation and mercy. We have a tendency to spend the bulk of our attention looking at what was being done to Jesus. This is important, as Isaiah prophesied, Jesus the Messiah would be “despised and rejected . . . acquainted with grief . . . despised and believed to be stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.” The evil done to Jesus was enormous but it is completely surpassed by the mercy that Jesus showed. Rather than being humiliated He kept His dignity, rather than responding to the mockery He kept His course, rather than crumble under the pain He endured to the end. Yes, we are supposed to see the evil of men, we are supposed to see the deceitfulness of sin, we are supposed to see the foolishness of pride and we are definitely supposed to see the physical and emotional suffering of Jesus but we are supposed to see all of that in light of the incredible love of God and mercy of Jesus; if not for God’s character the resurrection would have turned into a story of revenge because of what was done to Jesus on the cross but instead, because God is good and His love endures forever, the cross and the resurrection has become the story of our redemption.