Easter.
He is Risen. He is Risen indeed.
On Friday we had over some new friends. They are Muslim. I met the woman in the play place at the mall the Monday of spring break. I felt very softly God telling me to scoot over and speak to her. So, I obeyed.
A warm conversation ensued. Sprinkled with laughter and mommy tales. Woes and wonder of the offspring of our wombs, my girls, freshly turned six and nearly three, played merrily with her only son, a tumbley 18-month old. In a span of less than half an hour we all seemed decided on friendship. She asked for my number, I gladly gave it. A few weeks later we had iced tea on a warm Sunday afternoon. She brought me daisies, I made scones. We talked freely about her faith. The five pillars were outlined, my understanding grew. Our friendship deepened.
Friday last, Good Friday, Sad Friday, she and her husband came to dinner. We broke bread together: salmon, couscous, glazed carrots, and greens. We passed the dishes and scooped hearty plates full of good food and feasted on even better conversation. Our children ate, we ate. The chaos of a table full of children’s chatter and adults trying to follow a thread of thought filled the house. My heart was full. This, our Passion offering. Sharing our table, giving and receiving love. Bread broken across lines of faith, dishes passed from hand to hand, in love.
Children wiped down and dishes cleared we moved easily into dessert and coffee. Warm, dark brownies topped with blackberry ice cream and fruit of the same, melting and pooling all together in a yellow fiesta bowl, chased by coffee, strong and hot. Offspring in the next room settling into movie night. A selection from the library lit up the screen and quieted their normal noise.
Our conversation turned to films. We discovered with delight the husband’s interest and study of all things film and his affinity to analyze and discuss his reaction, thoughts and insight into entertainment well done. James and I enjoy the same. All favorites were brought to the forum, all genres were game. We enjoyed opening up deep thoughts about themes, motives, acting, projections into the future, reliving old twists. The conversation danced over the melting dessert, our thoughts both aligning and playfully disagreeing. Worldviews came into focus.
“Have you seen the ‘Passion’”, he asks, when our thoughts turned to Mel Gibson and wondering what he was up to recently.
“Oh yes!’, I say, “We actually own it. We will watch it tomorrow, an act of remembering for us, on the eve of the day we celebrate the resurrection.”
“What did you think of it?”, he asks.
“I weep through it every time, it rends my heart. I truly believe that is what Jesus did for me, to save me.” I offer gently.
“I thought it was very well done,” he answers. “Very well done.” And we discuss the artists’ take on different angles and the use of original languages and other details that make it legit.
And that was all.
We breeze by the thing that separates us. We from our new friends. To them, Jesus was a prophet. Not Son of God. Not part of triune God. He did not rise again. He is not the truest expression of the Father.
Last night James and I sat on the couch together and witnessed again an artistic rendering of my Christ’s passion for mankind, for me, through that movie. I forced myself to watch and even count each blow to his back. I only looked away during the most evil moments, the moments that haunt me for it reminds me all too clearly of the sinister darkness that reigned that night. Darkness’s finest hour. All hell broke loose and wickedness ruled. We killed our God. Our selfish hands slapped him. Our wicked fists pummeled his face to pulp. The whips of our anger scourged him, the chains of our lusts bound him, the crown of our mockery ripped his brow, the burden of the whole of our wretchedness he drug inch by miserable inch, foot and foot, step by agonizing step to the hill where we stripped him, exposed him, laughed at scorned at his misery, and gambled away the only thing we thought had any worth, his robes. The nails of our ingratitude pierced his hands and feet. He thirsted and all we offered was rank and sour. He the Living Water, thirsted. And we offered up vinegar. Oh, how wretched we are. We have nothing of value to offer at the foot of the cross.
I sat and experienced that “well done” film all over again. A scene struck me anew. As Jesus is being beaten, scourged, after they change from rod to cat of nine tails, Mary cannot bear to watch any longer. She begins to walk the perimeter of the courtyard, and collapses in glazed sorrow against a column. Mary Magdalene finds her and falls, weeping into her arms. The sounds of the whip hitting and flesh tearing, the deep groans of my Savior continues as the tissue is ripped from his back, Pilot’s wife approaches the women, face contorted with fear, sorrow, and remorse. She hands them a stack of folded white cloth. Perhaps linen? Cloth meant to bandage his back? Or perhaps a shroud for the body?
When the scourging is complete and Jesus’ limp body is drug off, leaving a trail of blood marking its path, the Marys and John are left in the desolate courtyard. They approach the whipping post. A bird’s eye view shows the terror of splatter marks, fanning out, a painting of pain on the dusty cobblestones. Mother of God drops to her knees and takes pure white linen cloth. Costly. She begins to mop up dark, near purple pools of the blood of the Lamb. Priceless.
James says, “I never understood what this is about. What is she doing? Why did Pilot’s wife give her cloth, why is she cleaning the blood…?” This scene has actually played in my head for nearly a week now, from my memory. I have chewed on it. And now I see it again. And it rends me.
I am a mother. I have an only son. He lies next to me on the couch this very morning. Resurrection morning. He awoke with a fever so this meditation is my act of Easter worship. Joshua and I are home, in our pajamas and thunder rolls, rain pours down into our dry, dusty, thirsty earth. His breathing is uneven and husky, from throat thick with sickness. A few moans escape from his sleeping mouth. I type in the dark on the other end of the red leather couch.
This is the child who nearly two years ago split his forehead, about a third of the flesh laid open. James brought him to me (man who is the Understater of the Universe), hand over the bleeding wound, and said with pale face, “This is BAD.” I knew it to be so before he took his hand away. The white of his skull showed, and the skin of his forehead gaped open, it was hard to believe the skin had ever been able to cover the expanse of bone now left exposed. I have this one image of his wound in my mind. Only this one, because I could not bear to look at it again.
There was a trial of blood from the site of injury to the tile of the kitchen. Head wounds bleed a lot. I was a burn/trauma nurse before I stayed home to raise my babies. But nothing I saw there ever undid me like seeing the blood, the exposed bone, the agony of my own son.
I do not remember mopping up the blood of the accident. I think my sister did it for me while we waited in the emergency room for the codeine to take effect and his head to be put back together one stitch at a time. His long, four-inch scar tells the story.
But back to the Lamb. And his mother, on her hands and knees, freewill offering of white linen in hand, slowly sopping up the pools of crimson that catch and reflect the glint of the morning sun. So deeply red, they look near purple. The freewill offering of a bruised reed, yet not breaking (Isaiah 42:3). Bleeding, but not crying out. Silent as a sheep before his shearers, and led like a lamb to the slaughter (Isaiah 53:7). This Mother, who also had to look away, so terrible was her agony in witnessing the agony of her Son, is steadfast enough to kneel prostrate in the pooling evidence of her Son’s humanity, urgently wiping up the precious evidence of her Son’s divinity. He took each blow, and even stood up for more, knowing full well that every stripe on his back would bring our healing, every drop of crimson on the dirty cobblestones of earth would purchase another life from the snares of hell. She knew this. That blood is precious. And she gathers it in her arms, soaked into a costly garment, now made priceless.
My son is now awake next to me. His throat still dry, his fever still burning. ‘Shaun the Sheep’ is now tootling across the screen across the room, a distraction from the low burn of fever. Thunder still rolls. Rain still soaking into our dry, parched, drought afflicted red clay. All across this town, this state, this country, this world, sinners open sick, hot, dry throats and attempt to croak out the depths of our gratitude, for the bottomless mercy of the Gift. It is unfathomable. I open my hands and heart and dry, cracked, parched throat and receive it again. The Bread. The Wine. Again. And I am made whole.
He is Risen. He is Risen indeed.
