Jesus Before Pilate
In Mark 15:1-5, we have a brief account in this Gospel of Christ's time before Pilate. Other accounts provide more detail of this part, but the extra details really don't impact the end result. In Mark's account, many of the important Jews got together, bound Jesus, and took him to Pilate. They weren't at liberty to kill him themselves, and and in addition, they didn't want to incur the wrath of the people.
They told Pilate of their accusations, and this account begins with Pilate asking Christ if He was the King of the Jews. Christ replies that Pilate has just stated it, which wasn't really an answer, but did prevent Him being in competition with the Romans and the Jewish leaders the Romans had placed over the people. After that, Christ was quiet and said nothing regardless of what the Jewish leaders said. It amazed Pilate that Christ was quiet.
I suspect that Pilate had heard many cases and rendered many judgments in his time in office. I'd be willing to believe that of all of those cases, any person who was on trial where the result could be death would speak in their defense. It is what you would naturally expect to hear. And yet Christ was quiet.
Saying the right thing at the right time is considered a hard thing, and you feel really good if you get it exactly right. But not saying the right or wrong thing when it is most tempting is the hardest of all. God knew the hearts of the Jewish leaders. He'd communicated to Jesus through the Spirit what was going to happen (and much had been written down in prophecy in Jewish books long, long before). So I'm sure that nothing that Jesus would have said would have made any difference, and His silence perhaps did more to convict the Jewish leaders than if He had spoken. But how hard that must have been to stay quiet. It was only going to get harder for Him over the next hours.
The People's Court
The custom of Pilate was to release a prisoner for the Passover festival as a gesture of good will to the people he governed. I'm sure that mostly, he'd offer someone who wasn't a real danger to the Romans and who maybe he felt had been wronged in having poor representation or a weak case against him. But in this case, I think he really wanted to let Jesus go. In Mark 15:6-15, Pilate offers the people a choice between Barabbas who was a murderer and an insurrectionist, and Jesus. He was aware of the ministry of Jesus and made his own judgment between Jesus and the Jewish leaders and realized that pride and envy were at the heart of their case against Jesus.
But the chief priests led the people to shout for Jesus to be crucified and for Barabbas to be released. To make the people happy, Pilate released the murderer and had Jesus taken away to be scourged and crucified. It's hard to imagine just how much change a week or so of elapsed time made in the hearts of the Jewish people. It's also instructive of mob mentality (both at the triumphal entry on a colt with palm branches strewn in front of Him for the good, and this time of the people's judgment for the bad).
In the movies, it is always portrayed as a large crowd, but the Bible doesn't really give any crowd sizes. Maybe the crowd was just the leaders that had taken him to trial and their faithful. Perhaps it was many more than that. Had the disciples gotten brave to go and stand to see what would happen? Or are the accounts just eye-witness accounts that they related? No matter how many there were, the loudest voices prevailed and Christ was doomed. If several had yelled in support of Jesus and asked to release Him, would it have made a difference to Pilate? Prophecy would say no, clearly, but you have to wonder.
For us, we need to think about both of these court sessions, both before Pilate and before the People. Bearing false witness is a sin. The chief priests knew this and the majority went ahead and did it anyway. Paying attention to the Spirit today as He prompts us to speak or not speak is also just as important for us as it was for Christ. People's lives hang in the balance. When prompted to say the right thing, we need to do it. When told not to say the wrong thing or even the right thing, we need to do that. But we also need to do it regardless of who is around us. Don't give in to peer pressure and be silent when wrong is occurring unless the Spirit tells you to do so. Speak up otherwise. Don't worry if you are in the minority if God is with you. Just realize that you will pay a price in friendships, relationships, perhaps work, political friends, religious friends and others when you say what God has laid on your heart to say.
The church has fractured into many denominations over the years. I'm not a fan of the splits as every split gives Satan an excuse he can promulgate that Christians aren't perfect and can't even get along with each other. And he is right. We don't do a very good job of working together. But how many splits might have never happened if more people had spoken out against wrong doings by leadership earlier on. Could the first big split of Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics have been prevented? If more had spoken up about doctrinal problems and abuses from the top could the top have changed and prevented the splintering off of Protestants from Roman Catholics?
Only God knows the answer to these questions. But I'm sure His heart despaired of all the things that have gone on in the name of Christ over the centuries that He didn't instigate. Sadly, the Christian church is made up of people. And when poor Christians are elevated to high places of power in the church and the church gets political, bad things happen. The Church of England versus the Catholic church is a good example of political pressure causing a split. And look at today and judge for yourselves whether politics is helping or hurting the church. I certainly have my opinion.
Stand up and speak the truth. Back it up with scripture. Let the chips fall where they may. Don't be swayed by peer pressure. Surely Christ has been through enough over the centuries. Get back to common doctrine. Call sin as the Bible sees it. It's what God is going to use at the White Throne judgment anyway. He won't be using our modern standards.
The Crucifixion
Finally, in Mark 15:16-39, Mark culminates his gospel with the most important point. Christ came for a purpose, and that was to live a sinless life and to be crucified to be a sin offering that would suffice once for all time, past, present, and future. No more sin offerings, trespass offerings, and the like had to be made to pave the way for your path to heaven. All you needed to do was accept Christ's sacrifice for your sin and repent. A free gift, freely given, that only has to be accepted in order to be right with God. We are saved by grace, not our works (Ephesians 2:8-9). If you haven't made this decision, the read The Gospel Message and make your choice today, while you have time.
Before the crucifixion, he Roman soldiers mocked Christ by dressing Him in purple and putting a crown of thorns on his head. They smote Him with a reed about his head, spit on him, faked worship, and other things. The prophecy says He was disfigured to an unmatched extent. They put His clothes back on and took Him away and crucified Him. They fulfilled prophecy by gambling for his garments. They put a sign on the cross identifying Him as the king of the Jews and crucified Him between two thieves. And the Roman soldiers and the Jewish leaders kept on mocking Him, on, and on, and on.
At that point, it got dark for a three hour period. Most eclipses don't take that long. Totality runs from about 10 seconds to maybe 7.5 minutes according to Google. Although the total duration can extend to hours where the range of dimming varies. But it isn't really stated whether or not this was an eclipse or not. There have been other times in history when darkness was a curse from God. You can see this in Genesis 1 where the effects of Lucifer's judgment are seen, in Exodus with a plague on Egypt to break the will of the Pharaoh and show God's dominance over their sun god, and also prophesied for the future for darkness at the heart of the anti-Christ's kingdom.
Since Romans and Greeks both used eclipse data, my vote is that the darkness was supernatural. The guards would have surely commented if the darkness was expected due to an eclipse. And yet, after Jesus death when He cried out with a loud voice and died, the centurion who was there declared that Jesus must have been the Son of God. Also in the passage, Mark records that the thick veil of the temple that separated the Most Holy Place in the temple from the remainder of the temple grounds was rent from top to bottom, signifying that God's presence would be among the people for the future and the Jewish religion was no longer valid or needed.
Christ had won the battle. He was the declared victor. Satan had been defeated - he might not be off the battlefield yet - but he was defeated. If the centurion was quaking at what he had had a part in, so too would the Jewish leaders have been quaking at what happened both in nature and in the temple. And yet at least the Jewish leaders hearts remained hardened.
His Burial
The remainder of this chapter (Mark 15:40-47) records that Joseph of Arimathaea came to claim Jesus body, and Pilate was surprised that He was already dead, but when he confirmed it with the centurion, he released the body to be buried.
The only point that needs to be made here is that it was the day of preparation before the sabbath. This was not the normal sabbath, but the High Holy day sabbath of Passover which would have run from Wednesday evening to Thursday evening. This gave them Thursday evening to Friday evening to gather up all they needed to finish the burial customs before the normal weekly sabbath from Friday evening to Saturday evening. Then After the first day of the week started on Saturday evening, Christ arose, and when the women came to the tomb on Sunday, they found it empty.
This fulfills all of the scripture and had Christ's body in the tomb for the full three days as prophesied, and as the example of Jonah was given as well. He didn't die on Friday and then be resurrected a day later. The timing of the Passover and its high holy day make it clear that Christ was crucified at the specified hours on the day starting Tuesday evening before that High Holy day. He truly was and is our Passover Lamb.