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CHAPTER X Wrath Exhausted
"You who were going to destroy the Temple and build it in three days, save yourself!"
"Come down from the cross if you really are the Son of God!" It would be a mercy that the insults went unheard, but Jesus heard them. To him, they were like spear points brilliant with white heat. He had given the best he had to these people. He had healed their sick, comforted and encouraged, and raised their dead. How often would he have gathered them to himself. How much he had loved them. Words are not supposed to hurt, but they do.
Asher and the most prominent priests, the legalists and the elders of the faith he loved, mocked him. "He saved others," they laughed, "but he can't save himself! Now observe this presumptuous king of Israel! Let him come down from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God. Let God rescue him if he wants him. He said, 'I am the Son of God.' Then let the 'Son of God' heal his own wounds. Let him blunt the thorns. Let him rip out the nails. Look at what mere men do to the almighty Son of God!"
The four Roman soldiers also mocked him. Leaning a ladder against the cross, one of them climbed up to offer him a flask of soured wine. "So! king of the Jews, save yourself!" Soured wine! Good for nothing but a corpse. His companions thought this hilarious.
One of the criminals also being crucified hurled insults at him. "You claim you are the Christ? Then save yourself and us!"
The insults were withering. Remarkably, relief came from an unexpected source. The other criminal shot back, "Have you no fear of God, man? Look at you! You also are condemned! You and I suffer the consequence of our deeds. But this man is innocent. He has done nothing wrong." Turning his head to Jesus, he pleaded, "Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom." The sight of these three nailed to their respective crosses was macabre and grotesque. Jesus, in the middle of the other two, was the only one whose body was beat up, bruised and streaked with blood. Their bodies heaved each breath in staggered cadence, their rib cages surging beneath clammy skin. Pushing their bodies against horribly secured feet, allowed them to breathe and as they grew weaker and weaker, each breath became shorter and shorter, until breath eluded them--until they could not breathe at all. Crucifixion is by far the cruelest approach and denouement of death, excruciating pain in each breath, finding relief only in the brutality of forced suffocation. As his lungs filled yet one more time, Jesus spoke, "I tell you the truth . . . my friend . . . today you will be with me . . . in paradise." Knees buckling, the weight of his body fell again against blood-saturated wood. The words emitted a hoarse whisper, but loud enough to be heard by those nearby. It was noon. He had been borne on the cross, impaled, for three hours.
Near the cross on which Jesus writhed, pushing himself up and down to capture each breath, stood his mother. Mary could not take her eyes away from her son yet could not bear to look at him. She remembered the verdant hills of Nazareth where first she heard the angel speak to her. She recalled the sounds of his gentle sucking at her breasts. She could see his toddler legs running through the meadows and his smile as she kissed and lullabyed him to sleep. The brief thought of having lost him in Jerusalem flitted anxiously through her mind. Had she known her son would end like this, had she known what it would mean for him to leave home, had she known, would she have let him? Could she have stopped him? When Jesus saw his mother with John standing at her side, he said to her, "Mother, look, take unto yourself a new son." He tried awkwardly to nod his head in John's direction. His body sank to its lowest extremity and then raised again as thigh and calf muscles strained upward. "John," he managed to speak again, "please take my mother as your mother, too." John put his arm around Mary and with great pain looked up at the crucified form, his Lord, his friend, and nodded assent. For the sake of this word, Mary chose not to live with any of her children. From that moment, Mary would be an honored member of John's family. He took her into his home of wealth, comfort and prosperity where she spent the rest of her days, knowing that her beloved son wanted this for her.
Dark, foreboding clouds blanketed the expanse above. The noon of day had turned to night. Heat lightning snapped through the billows giving rise to distant rumblings. It seemed it was going to rain, but not a drop of revitalizing liquid fell from the sky. Like an Angel of Death, darkness crept over the land shaken by an occasional thunderous streak of dancing white through the morass of black and grey. The winds lifted; debris rolled along the fields of Golgotha, urged on by invisible but powerful forces. The body of Jesus rose and fell with each strained, excruciating breath. The sun hid itself from the shame. "Unhh!" groaned his cross. "Unnnhh!" louder. His jaw distended, moving as though trying to form words . . . "Eli!" The Name escaped his lips in whispered longing. "Listen!" said a voice in the crowd. "I think he calls for Elijah!" A moment passed. Jesus labored each painful breath. Silence as he hung there. Flies, braving the wind, licked hungrily at his blood. "Eli - i-i-i-i!!" The sound exploded from the depths of his nearly dead body as he screamed for the first time. He sank again upon the cross. His breath evaporating, diminishing . . . "Eli . . ." "lama sabachthani?" It ended on a soft, whimpering upnote. Confused. Pleading. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" The meaning was unmistakable. Could it be? Could God the Father actually turn away from God the Son? That his Son thought so is clear. Could not even the eyes of omnipotent, unmitigated love behold such agony? Such shame? Or did this selfsame agony so derange the thoughts of Jesus that he merely felt forsaken? How does one fathom such terrible rage? For rage it was. I came to understand. I came to know, far later than I should have, that eternal Holiness was exhausting its wrath, exhausting all of the pent-up fury, taking violent vengeance against evil in the miserable souls of humankind. There was Jesus, the solitary focus of the wrath of God, exhausting it, draining it of force, emptying it of meaning, sucking it of relevance. Only God could exhaust the infinite wrath of God, and on that day of morbid darkness it happened. The terrible wrath of God . . . exhausted!
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