1Early in the morning the Jewish council men talked about what they will do with Jesus. That council mob were the leaders of the Jewish ceremonies, and the law teachers, and the elders. They tied Jesus up and made him walk over to the big government boss, whose name was Pilate. They asked Pilate to judge Jesus.
2So Pilate asked him, “Are you the big boss of the Jewish nation?” Jesus answered, “Those are your words.”
3Those leaders of the Jewish ceremonies blamed Jesus and told Pilate he did a lot of bad things, but Jesus didn’t say anything.
4Then Pilate said to him, “Listen to what they say. Why don’t you say something for yourself?”
5But Jesus said nothing, and Pilate was really shocked.
6Something special happened every year at the ceremony time called Passover. Pilate always did something special for the people in Jerusalem. He let one prisoner go free from the jail.
7At this Passover time some of the Jerusalem people came to Pilate and asked him to let one prisoner go. They came up to Pilate while Jesus was still there. At that same time there was a murderer called Barabbas in jail there. Before this time Barabbas and his gang fought against the government and killed some of the government people, so the soldiers grabbed him and put him in jail.
9Pilate knew that the leaders of the Jewish ceremonies were jealous of Jesus and that was why they brought him to Pilate. They wanted Pilate to kill him. So when those Jerusalem people asked Pilate to let one prisoner go, he said, “All right. How about I let Jesus go, this man you say is your big boss. What do you reckon?” But the ceremony leaders stirred up all those people, and the people told Pilate, “No. Not him. We want you to let Barabbas go out of jail.”
12Pilate said, “So what do you want me to do with this man you call the big boss of you Jewish people?”
13They all yelled, “Kill him. Nail him to a cross and leave him to die.”
14Pilate said, “Why? What did he do that was so bad?” But they didn’t listen, they yelled even louder, “Kill him. Nail him to a cross.”
15Pilate didn’t want any trouble, so he did what that mob wanted. He let Barabbas go out of jail and he told his Roman soldiers to whip Jesus a lot. After they finished whipping him, Pilate told them to nail him to a cross and leave him to die.
16The soldiers took Jesus outside into the yard of the big house where Pilate lived. They called out to the rest of the soldiers there to come out into that yard.
17They put a purple coat on Jesus. They found some prickly branches and made those branches into a thing that looked like a crown. Then they put it on his head
18and rubbished him. They got down on their knees in front of Jesus and said, “Hey. Your Majesty. You are the big boss of the Jews.”
19And they kept on hitting him on the head with a stick, and they spat on him.
20When they finished making fun of him, they took off the long purple coat and put his own clothes back on him. Then they took him out to another place to kill him.
21A man called Simon came walking along at that time. He was coming into the town from the bush. (Simon is from a country called Cyrene and he is the father of those 2 men Alexander and Rufus.) The soldiers forced Simon to carry the cross for Jesus.
22Then they came to the place called Golgotha in their language. That name means Skull Place.
23Then the soldiers tried to give Jesus some wine to drink. This wine had some medicine called myrrh mixed in it. Jesus wouldn’t drink it.
24The soldiers nailed his hands and feet to the cross, then they stood it up, and left him to die like that. They put up a piece of wood above his head with writing on it to say why they killed him. The writing on it said, “The big boss of the Jews.” It was 9 o’clock in the morning when they nailed Jesus to that cross. After that the soldiers gambled with each other to get his clothes.
27The soldiers nailed up 2 criminals to crosses next to Jesus. One criminal was on his left-hand side and the other was on his right-hand side.
29Some other people walked past Jesus and rubbished him too. They stood there and shook their heads to shame him, and said, “You reckon you can knock down God’s house and then build it again in 3 days, do you?
30All right, come on, save yourself. Get off the cross and come down.”
31The leaders of the Jewish ceremonies and law teachers joined in and laughed at Jesus. They said to each other, “He saved other people, but he can’t save himself.
32So he thinks he is the one that God sent. He reckons he is the big boss of us Israel nation. No way. We will not believe him unless we see him come down off that cross.” The other men on the other crosses joined in too and rubbished Jesus.
33In the middle of the day, about 12 o’clock, the whole country got dark, like it was night time. It stayed dark for about 3 hours, till 3 o’clock in the afternoon.
34Then Jesus yelled out loud in his language, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” That means, My God, my God, why did you go away and leave me all by myself?
35Some of the people standing around heard the words that Jesus said. They thought that he called out for Elijah to come to him from heaven.
36One man ran and got a sponge and filled it with sour wine, and he put it on a stick and held it up to his mouth so he could suck a bit of it. That man said, “All right. Just leave him. Let us wait and see if Elijah will come and get him down.”
37Jesus yelled out again, and then he died.
38Over there in God’s house in Jerusalem there was a big curtain that blocked off the sacred place. At the same time when Jesus died, that curtain just ripped into 2 pieces, right down the middle from the top to the bottom.
39At the cross, the boss of those Roman soldiers stood near Jesus, and saw the way he died, then that soldier said, “I reckon this man really was the son of God.”
40Before this time there were some women that walked everywhere with Jesus in Galilee country. They looked after him there, and after that they came with him to Jerusalem. While Jesus was dying they stood looking from a long way off. They were Mary Magdalene, and Salome, and that other Mary that was the mother of young James and Joses, and some other women.
42Jesus died on the day when the Jewish people got everything ready for their special rest day, called Sabbath. When it was nearly night time,
43a man went to Pilate. His name was Joseph and he came from a place called Arimathea. Everyone said he was a good man and he was one of the Jewish Council, too. He was waiting for the time when God will get all his family together and show everyone that he is the biggest boss. He stood up strong and wasn’t afraid to go to Pilate. He asked him, “Can I get Jesus’s body to take care of it our way?”
44Pilate was shocked. He said, “Is that man dead already?” He sent somebody to get the boss of the soldiers and asked him, “Is it true? Is that man properly dead now?” That boss told Pilate, “Yes, it is true.” Then Pilate told Joseph, “All right, you can take Jesus’s body.”
46So Joseph bought a good sheet. He took Jesus’s body down from the cross and wrapped it in that sheet. Some time before this Joseph cut a cave in the side of a hill to make a place to bury a body in. So he took Jesus’s body and put it in that cave to bury it. Then he rolled up a big rock to block up the cave.
47Those women, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses, they saw where Joseph put Jesus’s body.
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