My pastor says this is God’s greatest miracle.
You know the story called Good Friday. God incarnate is crucified to save man from themselves. He is whipped, thrashed, and beaten. Humiliated, forced to carry his cross, he walks a mile over difficult terrain, limbs aching, lungs straining, dripping blood, sweat, and tears, to the crucifixion place: Golgotha.
Looking around, from bloodshot eyes, he sees his persecutors. Mockers and defilers. He feels their hands tearing at his clothes, stripping him nude. Their wrath through whips, stones, and spears. Hatred oozing from their eyes, their pores. Demons rejoicing. The absence of anything holy and good. He sees the Roman centurion, teeth bared. Hammer raised towards a silent heaven. Its head reared back as if ready to pounce, and then it does, over and over and over again, heavy nails piercing, gnawing, until flesh and sinew and timber become one.
Reading the story, I want to hate the mockers and defilers. I want to condemn the centurion. I wish to take my place at Jesus’ side, to take up my shield as his defender. But this is fantasy: a delusion I conjure to shield myself from the awful, horrible, but honest realization that when Jesus gazes upon the centurion, he is gazing upon me.
He sees my sin. My mistakes and errors. My ugliness. All the grotesque things of which I’m capable. He sees humanity through time and space, of which I am an infinitesimal blip. Nothing is hidden; all is known. Yet he remains at the cross.
Heaven’s silence is his choice. Jesus could choose, at any moment, to renounce humanity and summon the angelic cavalry, a choice that would result in humanity’s annihilation. Our destruction. Any whisper uttered, prayer offered, or fleeting thought in his mind would have sufficed: instead of “it is finished,” a simple, “let it end.” And it would have ended.
But that didn’t happen. He remained on the cross and was crucified. It was his choice, leading to a more painful, more wonderful, almost unbelievable realization… in choosing the cross, God chooses me.
All I can do is tremble and weep. All that is left is acceptance. I am changed.
My pastor says this is God’s greatest miracle. I think he is right.
May God bless you.
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