JOHN 19: 1 “Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged.” Put yourself in the position of a petty dictator who had designs on higher office. If there was an insurrection, you might never have that laurel wreath put on your head and be crowned Caesar. Pilates’s first pronouncement of finding no guilt in Jesus, did not work with the crowd. The “Let’s give them a choice between a murderer and Jesus,” didn’t work. So, let’s beat Jesus and see if that quenches the crowd’s blood lust. Flogging consisted of leather strips studded with shards of metal, bone, or rocks. When receiving forty lashes a person’s back would be do shredded that in many cases you would see their spine, kidneys and other internal organs. It was ghastly and Pilate hoped this would fulfill their hunger for power. As the prophet said, some seven hundred years earlier, “…he was wounded for our transgressions,…and by his bruises we are healed.” The beating that Jesus took that day, that was our beating. Thanks be to God that our big brother took our punishment upon himself. Amen.