 As we keep the Lenten journey, we follow Jesus in the way of the cross, sustained by the Scriptures, and moving towards Holy Week as we follow through the purposes of God. John's Gospel chapter 19 verses 1 to 6a. So Pilate then took Jesus and had him flogged. The soldiers wove a crown of thorns, put it on his head and dressed him up in a purple robe. Then they came up to him and said, Hail, King of the Jews, and they slapped him. Pilate went out again. Look, he said to them, I'm bringing him out to you so that you'll know I find no guilt in him. So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple cloak. Look, said Pilate, here's the man. So when the chief priests and their attendants saw him, they gave a great shout. Crucify him, they yelled. Crucify him. Here's the man, says Pilate, or in the traditional translation, behold the man. John, as usual, does nothing by accident. He has introduced his story of Jesus with that extraordinary prologue where he says, the Word was with God, the Word was God, and the Word became flesh. This is the story of the genuine human being who was and is the embodiment of the living Creator God. And it's as though Pilate now says far more than he knows, here is the genuine human. This is what it looks like. You might think that a genuine human being would be some great hero figure to be put up on a statue to dazzle and amaze people, and instead Jesus is brought out as the suffering human being. The one who's just been flogged and when Roman soldiers flogged people, they knew about it. They could hardly stand afterwards as we find Jesus needed somebody else to help him carry the crossbeam to the place of execution. He's been flogged, he's been mocked, he's been spat at, and one of the mocking things that soldiers did, we know this from other sources as well, when they were taking somebody down in this way, was to dress them up as though they were somebody special. Oh, call yourself a king, do you? Okay, we'll put a crown on your head. We'll give you a nice royal robe. So out comes Jesus as the would-be king of the Jews, being mocked rotten by Pilate and by the soldiers. And Pilate says, here's the man. Can't you see he's just a pathetic figure? And John is saying no, he is the genuine human being because in the Creator's plan from the beginning, in Genesis chapter one, everything that the Creator wanted to do in and for His world, He was going to do through His image bearing human beings. We are created in God's image to be those who look after the garden on God's behalf, those who take forward His purposes. And when humankind turned away and when the garden produced thorns and thistles instead, God's modus operandi, God's way of doing stuff, didn't change. God was going to rescue the world through a human being. But it needed an obedient human being. So he called the people of Israel, Abraham and his family, to be that obedient human. They were unable to sustain that vocation for five minutes, it seems, in Genesis and beyond. But the purpose continued. God did not slacken that purpose. And eventually the purpose was fulfilled when God Himself came to be the obedient human being, to take the sorrow and shame and hatred and violence of all the world upon Himself and to deal with it once and for all. That is what John 18 and 19 are all about. Jesus had talked to the disciples a couple of chapters earlier about when the Spirit comes, He will convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. He will put the world on trial. Then Jesus Himself faces Pontius Pilate, the kingdom of God facing the kingdom of the world. And Jesus argues with Pilate about kingdom and truth and power. And Pilate, despite Himself, hails Jesus as king of the Jews, hails Him as the truly human being, behold the man. This is, after all, the Friday. We know that from the sequence of events leading up to Easter Sunday. Friday is the sixth day of the week. When we go back to Genesis chapter one, it is on the sixth day of the week that human beings are created in the image of God. John has been tracking with Genesis all the way through, ever since he began his gospel by saying, in the beginning, so now on the sixth day, we have the fulfillment of creation. Behold the man. And Jesus, the man, the king, goes to his death. With his last words, again, echoing Genesis, it is finished. It is done. It is accomplished. And then on the seventh day, the Saturday, God rests in the tomb. And then on the eighth day, very early in the morning, something new happens, the beginning of new creation. And then Jesus is mistaken for the gardener, not surprisingly, because that's what he's turned out to be. John has told his story in such a way as to make this perfect combination of God's purpose for his own very self, God's purpose for his human creatures coming together in the person of Jesus and coming together in forgiveness, in healing, and in hope. So we pray, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, King of the Jews, the true human being, we thank you for all you did for us in your whole life and on the cross. And we pray that we may be faithful followers, that we too may share the glory and the victory of the eighth day of your new creation. Amen.