Sneering

The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.” The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar and said, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.”

Luke 23: 35 to 37, NIV

I don’t know about you, but I find these sentences utterly repulsive. It’s not bad enough that they subjected Jesus to a kangaroo court and condemned him, but while he was on the cross, they sneered at him. It’s simply appalling. The contrast with the previous verse is striking. Jesus, dying on a cross, forgave his executioners, but these people, with their lives still ahead of them, sneered and mocked Jesus.

Luke 23:35-37 illustrates how the rulers, crowds, and one of the criminals mocked Jesus on the cross, taunting him that he saved others but could not save himself. This mockery is seen as a fulfilment of prophecy.

A thousand years before Jesus walked on the Earth, David wrote the prophecy in Psalm 22, “All who see me mock me. they hurl insults, shaking their heads.” (Ps 22: 7, NIV) Further on, David wrote, “All my bones are on display; people stare and gloat over me.” Again, God used David to reveal the mocking that Jesus would face when he wrote, “I am an object of scorn to my accusers; when they see me, they shake their heads.” (Ps 109: 25, NIV) You can see God was actively informing the world of what he was going to do, giving us the warning well in advance. It is for us, as God’s followers, to watch and understand what He is telling us and what He is doing.

Moving on, if we read the First Book of Samuel, we see that Saul is Israel’s first king, but by the 15th chapter, he had already been rejected by God, and in the 16th chapter, Samuel anointed David to be king (though he was still a young shepherd living with his father, Jesse). Interestingly, in chapter 17, when we read about the fight between Goliath and David, we instinctively knew that David would win, as he had just been anointed by the prophet Samuel.

David did indeed win the fight, and at the end of chapter seventeen, with the Philistine camp plundered, Abner, the Commander of Saul’s army, brought David, still holding Goliath’s head, and presented him to King Saul.

What follows can only be seen as an exaggeration by the people; whatever mission Saul sent him on, David was so successful that the people began to chant, “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands.” To put it mildly, “Saul was very angry.” From that moment, this young upstart became a target for Saul. Saul sent him to the front line twice with a promise of marriage to Saul’s daughters. But when David was challenged to bring him a hundred Philistine foreskins as the price of marrying the king’s daughter, he rose to the challenge and killed not one hundred but two hundred Philistine men. David was now Saul’s son-in-law.

Now that he was part of the Royal household and living in the royal house, it was easy for Saul to target David. On one occasion, Saul himself threw a spear at David but missed. David climbed out of a window and escaped, yet he was now on the run. Despite being on the run, he was still expected to attend a New Moon festival, and it was at this point that Jonathan, Saul’s son, realised that his father was serious about killing David.

David, fleeing from the king, escapes to Gath, and the servants of King Achish remind the king that David was renowned as the slayer of the ten thousand. The problem is that Gath was in Philistine territory, and the Philistines wouldn’t take too kindly to the person who had killed their own kinsmen. David would again be a target. David, pretended to be insane in their presence, and while he was in their hands, he acted like a madman, making marks on the doors of the gate and letting saliva run down his beard. Achish said to his servants, “Look at the man! He is insane! Why bring him to me?” David was now a target of both Saul and Achish, but he escaped again and regained his freedom.

You can imagine that David would be desperate, and while he was feigning madness, his Philistine captors would be mocking and sneering at him. “Is this the one who relies on the Lord? Then let the Lord save him! If the Lord loves him so much, let the Lord rescue him!” They may have mocked and sneered, but he did escape because he was anointed to become King. David was being mocked and sneered at.

The mocking of Jesus exposes the hardness of heart and spiritual blindness of those who rejected Him, despite His miracles and teachings. Jesus healed people, yet they could not see beyond the Law. The crucifixion scene emphasises the paradox of the cross: it was the moment of Jesus’s complete physical weakness, yet also the moment of ultimate victory over sin and death.

The rulers mentioned here were probably the Jewish religious leaders, such as the chief priests, scribes, and elders. They stood and sneered, but the crowd simply watched. Their taunts of “He saved others; let him save himself” revealed a deep hatred of Jesus and an ignorance of his global mission to bring mankind back to Father God, their creator. They were unable to see that his ability to save others was connected to his sacrifice on the cross, the essential act of human redemption. Their disdain highlights the spiritual blindness and hardness of heart that Jesus often confronted in His ministry. This is in stark contrast to the women—the daughters of Jerusalem—who loved Jesus.

The rulers said, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.” The rulers actually acknowledged that Jesus saved others. They admitted that the blind received their sight, the lame walked, those with leprosy were cleansed, the deaf heard, the dead were raised, and the good news was proclaimed to the poor. They saw and agreed that so much good was being done, yet they could not take a step forward. They could not recognise that it was God’s anointed one performing these miracles. This crucifixion story is the irony of ironies. Jesus was and remains the Messiah and the Chosen One.

And so, as followers of Jesus today, expect to face mockery if you are open about your faith. Remember that Jesus told His disciples they would suffer as He did. Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self? Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.” (Luke 9: 23 to 26, NIV) It is important to note that the theme of suffering appears in all four gospels, highlighting its significance. We cannot claim ignorance of this expectation. It is how we respond to being mocked that truly matters. Do we retreat into our shells, or will we be like Peter and John, who told the Sanhedrin that they would ignore the leaders’ orders not to preach that Jesus Christ is Lord and Messiah?