Rather than Jesus in his divinity suffering for us,
this poem emphasises Jesus in his humanity suffering with us.
The events of Passion Week
loom large in the Gospel narrative.
The betrayal, the mocking, the scourging,
and the cruelty of the cross
with its humiliation and pain.
And the even more painful separation
from his Heavenly Father -
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
What did it mean, that cry?
We cannot know his mind.
All we can do is give a particular emphasis
from the way we see it.
Yet is not this perhaps
where Jesus most closely identifies
with each one of us?
A sense of the absence of God?
it's our common lot, the place
where we most often are.
But it was something
Jesus had never known.
And now he knows the pain of it
to a depth we never could.
It is love that is torn and bleeding;
love that in anguish stretches out its arms
to bridge the gap, the separation
between us and God.
And not even the power of darkness
could stand against it.
For the joyful witness
of those first Christians
was that death could not hold Jesus.
And they went out in his risen name
with an offer of God's comfort and peace.
God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself (2 Cor. V19)
YOU ARE READING
Behold The Man*
SpiritualThis is mainly a five part idiosyncratic reflection on the life of Jesus of Nazareth; someone whom many people with little time for religion still find attractive. It is mostly from a talk I gave in 1988 while visiting a church in Pennsylvania. Plea...
