The recording starts 1 minute in, so please read the notes below before listening: ...As we’ve worked our way through Mark we’ve see, haven’t we, that Mark is a man of action and his gospel is a gospel of action, as he writes he skilfully draws in, to help us see and feel and hear the action, so we can almost feel that we’ve been there. As he comes to the crucifixion, if anything, he seems to crank it up a notch. Mark divides his telling of what happened here into two 3 hour blocks, and I wonder if as you heard it read, did you notice that we didn’t so much see:

Jesus on the Cross; as what Jesus saw from the Cross.

So in the first block there’s what Jesus saw and heard as He looked out on humanity.

Then in the second block we join Jesus as He looks up to heaven.

Now I know Jordon and Michael are into gaming, are any others here into pounding away at an Xbox or PlayStation, whatever those things are called? Well as you can gather, whilst I know I’d enjoy it, I don’t have the time or knowledge to get into it, but I do remember that when I played with Sarah and Grace on a PlayStation, in some games you become the character, obviously not literally… but as you play the game you move around seeing from the characters perspective – looking out of the characters eyes, so this morning, I want you to think of yourselves as gamers – I can see for some that might take a serious leap of imagination, but try it, in this scene, I can’t call it a game, because it’s far from that, but in this scene look out from the cross – in this scene look out with Jesus’ eyes…

But before we do that, it’s probably also worth noting that often, as I and others here have preached on this awful scene, we’ve given quite a bit of time to discussing, and describing, the practical process and the physical pain of crucifixion, and we do that to give some background and set the scene, but interestingly not one of the gospel writers felt the need to do that...