For me, the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus is the cataclysmic event in all human history – the moment when human redemption was enacted by the only one who could take the weight of evil and preserve the primacy of love: the incarnate Son of God.
Many other people have bravely sacrificed their lives in the cause of right, but only Jesus could gather in the totality of human sin and anguish, and let death do its worst, and being Life, be unable to be bound by death… It was a real suffering, a real death, followed by a real rising from the dead. For us, it is real redemption and hope of eternal life.
His
Physical suffering
Was extreme,
But the mental
And spiritual
Pain, still more obscene.
He
Took into Himself
All our wretched sin;
Every evil deed
And sad omission,
Came stabbing in.
He
Embraced every
Abandoned soul;
Every unloved life
And broken heart
Took its heavy toll.
He,
Atlas-like, bore
The crushing weight,
Of a fractured,
Fallen, failed,
Global reprobate.
He
Could have avoided
Such an horrendous end,
But chose instead
To surrender Himself:
No braver, truer, friend.
Quite
Beyond our
Ability to ken,
Accumulated
Desolation,
His loathsome portion.
All
That has driven
Folk to suicide,
Keenly felt,
By a tender heart,
As innocence died.
Perched
Painfully on
That cross, He yet
Accepted scorn,
Abandonment,
Every bruising threat.
No
Single sin, past,
Present, or to come,
Was missed out
By those cruel nails,
Hammered with venom.
From
The smallest lie
To the cruellest war,
Man’s malice
Lacerated it’s
Scapegoat blood red raw.
And
Not just the passing
Agony of that moment,
But an unending
Passion, and still
Repeating sacrament.
No
One to take His part,
To voice a word of love;
Utterly alone,
Tempted to wonder
If rejected by God above.
A
Terrible, lonely,
Ignominious death.
The Lamb of God,
No last minute reprieve,
Hung there to His final breath.
There
Are no sufficient words,
No mode of expressing,
What Jesus suffered
To make us whole,
And take away death’s sting.
Oh
My sweet Jesus,
How Your pure heart feels!
And what a depth
Of prodigality
Your glad sacrifice reveals!