Luke 22:63-71

It starts to get more brutal from now on. It begins with mockery and grows into beating, bullying and insults. A beaten and sleep-deprived Jesus is then brought before the Council again and questioned further. The religious leaders are looking for any hint of a reason to take him to the Romans: can they portray him as a revolutionary, a troublemaker, or a threat to public order? Jesus would not play their games.

Jesus finally spoke the truth about himself – a truth he knew that they would not believe – and the Council decided that he had condemned himself. He was indeed guilty. He was guilty of being the Son of God. He was guilty of not conforming to human expectations. He was guilty of speaking the truth.

Have you ever been unjustly accused of something? Have you ever felt misrepresented or hard done by? Jesus knows what that is like.

Injustice is still rife in our world. This is taken from the website for International Justice Mission:

Today, millions of lives around the world are in the grip of injustice.

More children, women and men are held in slavery right now than over the course of the entire trans-Atlantic slave trade: Millions toil in bondage, their work and even their bodies the property of an owner.

Trafficking in humans generates profits in excess of 32 billion dollars a year for those who, by force and deception, sell human lives into slavery and sexual bondage. Nearly 2 million children are exploited in the commercial sex industry.

In many countries around the world, paedophiles find that they can abuse children with impunity. And though police should be protectors, in many nations, their presence is a source of insecurity for the poor. Suspects can be held interminably before trials, imprisoned for crimes they did not commit.

The land rights of women are violated on a massive scale worldwide, but with particular ferocity in Africa, leaving widows and other women in vulnerable positions unable to care for themselves or their children. Around the world, women suffer the double trauma of rape – and seeing their perpetrators face no consequences.

Often lacking access to their own justice systems and unable to protect themselves or their families from those more powerful, it is overwhelmingly the poor who are the victims of these brutal forms of abuse.

What can we do? Pray. Campaign. Lobby. Act.