Brief Description of Station 6 and the reason why the secondary images are included
Station 6 – Jesus is mocked, whipped and crowned with thorns (Matt 27:27-31; Mk 15:16-20; Jn 19:1-3)
a. Jeremiah put in stocks (Jeremiah 20:1-2)
b. Boys mock Elisha (2 Kings 2:23-25)
Reason – Jeremiah was put in the stocks, which was a great humiliation, for being faithful to his calling, as Jesus was mocked for being faithful
Elijah was mocked by the teenage boys (acolytes at the local shrine to Baal) because he was the prophet of the true God.
Meditation
What is it about being righteous that brings out ugliness in others? I guess the unrighteous simply despise the contrast. They wish to cover their unrighteous acts or pretend that it is something that it really isn’t. So they ridicule those who walk in the steps of Jesus.
Of course Jesus faces this same ridicule. No surprise. Some of these unrighteous people called Jesus Beelzebub, the devil himself. We will be so treated, as Jesus once said, “If the head of the house has been called Beelzebub, how much more the members of his household” (Matthew 10:25).
We see this in the Old Testament time and time again. Jeremiah stood up for Jesus and identified Pashhur, a priest, as a false prophet who was teaching lies in the name of God. In other words, Pashhur broke the Second Commandment. Jeremiah was righteous. Pashhur was unrighteous. But who wound up in the stocks? Jeremiah. In those stocks Jeremiah was humiliated, but he remained faithful to his calling.
Elisha was a mighty prophet and stood tall for our Lord Jesus. One day, as he went towards Bethel, the sight of a major Baal worship center, the prophet of God was ridiculed by a band of “small boys,” as our English translations read. These were hardly innocent children. The word translated “small boys” is the same word used to describe David when he went out to face Goliath. They were young, vicious, late teens or early twenty year-olds, who despised the true God and mocked his preacher.
If they had been alive when Jesus was on trial, they would have gladly joined in insulting him and putting the crown of thorns on his head. Whether it is the rejection of the word spoken through Elisha, or the word spoken through Jeremiah, or the word become flesh, rejecting the word, mocking the word, is the foolish way of the world.
But it is through the word that God acts. It is through the word that God calls us to faith. It is through the word that we are cleansed. It is through the word that we are sustained. And it is through the word, made flesh, that we receive what we could never merit, forgiveness and a home in heaven.
Oh Lord Jesus, though the fallen world rejects you and your word, grant that we may ever hold fast to it, for in doing so we hold fast to you. Amen.