Daily Devotion for April 6, 2006

To Jerusalem with the ComPassionate Christ
Day 37

 

Casting Lots

 

And they crucified him. Dividing up his clothes, they cast lots to see what each would get. Mark 15: 24

 

Mark draws a veil over the actual crucifixion of Jesus as too horrifying to record. He rushes on with his stark depiction of the incidental events surrounding that watershed. We may date our days from the supposed year of Christ’s birth, but in some ways it would make more sense to honor His death. He was, after all, born to die, to give His life as a sacrifice and to break the power of the grave.

 

To those whose vocation was the oversight of execution, the hours spent waiting for death must have seemed interminable and terribly dull. Nothing more could be done after the victim was hauled upright on the cross, it was just a case of waiting for the inevitable. One of the ways in which the soldiers got paid for “working” an execution was to divide the garments of the executioned, and then cast lots for any article of clothing that could not be divided.  In Jesus’ case, the article of clothing that could not be divided without destroying its value would be the “tassel” that every Jew had as part of their dress.  This tassel, commanded by Mosaic Law, would have been made from the dye of a snail from the Mediterranean Sea.  It was for most the most expensive part of one’s dress.

 

Jesus did not have much, although a seamless robe was not cheap and would have been worth something. If the family wanted a keepsake they would have to buy it back from the soldiers, and a little money could be made that way. Little did they know that the God who had acted in Christ for the redemption of souls had foreseen even this, through tears. Psalm 22 (v.18) is a prophecy of the casting of lots. Jesus would well have seen what was happening and remembered Psalm 22. which starts out with “My God, My God…”   Even there, on the Cross, through the excruciating pain, He could trace His Father's hand.

 

Prayer
Dear Lord, as I look at the Cross and Your death, I see the fulfillment of the script that was written 800 years earlier in Psalm 22.  Actually Lord, it is because of the fall of man in Genesis that you came to begin with – to die for sinful man so that we can live.  Amen

 

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