by Donna Poole
I turn aside and weep. I cannot look. I sit and bury my face in my knees trying to block the sharp, metallic smell of blood. I cover my ears to mute the jeers and laughter, human cruelty at its worst. Even above the raucous crowd, delirious with blood lust, I hear the piercing, agonized, screams of the two crucified on either side of him. The crowd ignores them and hurls taunts and insults at the silent, suffering one.
I raise my head, look into his eyes, and glimpse what he’s enduring. I bend over and retch; my fellow soldiers laugh. One of them kicks me.
“Some soldier he is! Look at him vomit his breakfast!”
“Leave him be,” an older, gentler voice says. “He’s but a lad. He’ll toughen.”
When I looked into the eyes of that man on the cross, I saw something I’ll never forget. I saw pure innocence suffering guilt. I saw him feel my guilt for the first sin I can remember, when I was just a little boy and angrily pushed my baby sister and heard her arm snap before her screams started.
You think it’s impossible that I saw that in his eyes? I did though. I saw him feeling that shame and carrying the guilt for everything I’ve done since, secret things no one could have possibly known.
In a split second, I saw all the other sins that innocent man was carrying as his own, terrible, unspeakable things, things people had done even my corrupt heart had never imagined.
Let my friends laugh. I sprawl face to the ground and weep for the crushing pain that man is feeling! At night, sometimes, I wake, and I can hardly live with my own guilt. And that man has somehow taken into his own heart the sins of all mankind and is feeling the crushing, unbearable weight of guilt for them all?
Who is this man? Why is he doing this? Never mind the skin flayed to the bone, the nails pinning him to the cross in ancient, barbaric torture, the mockery of the jagged crown of thorns spilling blood into his eyes-the guilt, the guilt, the guilt! How can he bear it?
After six hours that seem like sixty years, I hear his strong, triumphant shout, “It is finished!”
A fellow soldier says, “Truly, this man was the Son of God.”
I believe! For the first time in my life I feel no guilt. That man somehow took my sin and guilt into his heart and undid it all. He didn’t just cover it up; he made it not to be. I have no idea how he did it, but my sins are gone! Why did he do it? As crazy as it sounds, he did it for love.
With different tears, forgiven tears, I raise my face and arms to heaven and shout, “Praise God!”
A strong hand grabs my neck, and a rough voice says, “Let’s get him out of here. He’s a disgrace!”
The older, gentler voice says, “Leave him be. It’s his first crucifixion. Can’t you see he’s but a lad?”
The strong hand violently shakes me; I hear a stream of curses and feel more kicks. I don’t care. I’m staring at the man. The Son of God.
A soldier pierces his side and says, “He’s dead.”
I don’t know what it means, but a phrase comes to mind, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming.”
Some man, they call him Joseph, is taking him away now. I must follow and see where they bury him.
I think of something Mama often said, “Sometimes, things that look like the end are just The Beginning.”
