Good Friday: On the Cross

It hurts. As I hang here with ropes biting into my forearms, nails tearing at my wrists and ankles and blood pouring from the welts on my back and the scratches torn by the thorns pushed into my head, it hurts.

The pain began last evening when I knew it was the time to say goodbye to my friends, my companions of the last three years. I tried to make it special. I tried to make it memorable. I tried to show them just how important that meal was for them. Somehow, even after everything I had said to them, they still didn’t understand what was about to happen. That’s when the pain began.

It grew over the passing hours, becoming more intense as each inevitable incident came to pass. It got stronger in the garden when I faced my final personal point of decision. It got bigger when even my closest and most attentive of companions – Peter, James, John - could not stay awake with me through that fateful night. It reached an agonising climax when they came to arrest me – as that angry mob emerged out of the darkness.

There – right out in front – stood Judas. He came towards me and kissed me – betraying me with that sign of greeting that we often exchanged as friends. That hurt – not just me but the rest of us all gathered there in that garden. I could bear that pain but they could not and suddenly that night was filled with shouts, swords and a servant’s blood.

Somehow the severed ear brought some sort of relief to the pain. This was familiar territory. I knew what to do in circumstances such as these. My simple act of caring and healing brought an end to the fighting. But not to my pain. For as the fighting ceased my friends fled into the night, leaving me in the hands of my enemies, hurting and alone. I didn’t think it could get any worse but I was wrong.

Over the next few hours events took their inevitable course that led me from Council to Governor to King, back to Governor and to this place of execution. Stage by stage, encounter by encounter, action and reaction, my pain started to grow again. Now, as I hang here, facing an excruciating death with my family and friends looking on helplessly and my executioners gambling for my possessions, that pain is ever more intense.

It is the pain of separation. It is the pain of isolation. It is the simply being alone, totally alone.

All this started in a river. As I came up out of the water I heard that voice saying that in me he had a son with whom he was well pleased. Since then I have tried to do what he wanted me to do. I’ve tried to take his message to his people. With his help I have overcome the temptations that come with power, I have shown that all things can be made new – no matter what barrier of tradition, race or infirmity might seem to exclude you, I have shown that by acting in his power even death can be conquered and I have revealed my true nature to his people in triumphant procession at the very centre of their faith. And he has been with me on that journey.

But now, as the final act of my ministry is played out – the climax I committed myself to last evening is reached – he has left me. I am left all alone hanging here to die. After everything I have done, after everything I have seen and felt, all that is left is this all consuming pain of total isolation. I can’t bear it any longer. My strength is gone.

Father! Father! Why have you forsaken me?!

Nothing. Only the silence, and the darkness and the pain. There is nothing I can do about any of them.

It is finished. Father! Into your hands I commit my spirit!

Where do I go from here?

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