I cannot bear to watch what happened at The Cross. Movies like The Passion, or last week’s episode of The Bible make me sick to my stomach. The cruelty, the torture, the shame, drive me to tears. Because frankly I’m not worth it. I can make it balance out in my head. If I had been brave enough to go to Golgotha I think I would be pleading with them that there had been some terrible mistake. This couldn’t be the plan. Jesus couldn’t be going through this nightmare for me. Knowing myself, I would have told them something like “I’ll figure out another way to make this work.” The futility of that insidious pain could not be about bringing eternal life.
However, I think I would stayed true to form and been one of the unrealistic optimist.
Yes, Jesus may have died on the cross but that can’t be it. Ok, they are preparing Jesus for burial but that can’t be the end. He’s going to wake up at any minute and tell us the real plan. No really, I see them rolling the stone in front of the tomb but seriously, He’s the Son of God, something good is coming from all of this, I’m just sure of it.
But when day after day of staring at the stone I think my heart would have been completely devastated. After waiting in such anticipation for goodness I think I might have been in the fetal position for a while at the foot of the tomb and then I would have started hurling rocks at the stone. I would be so angry at Him raising my hopes for better things and then abandoning me with His humaness rather than His promised holiness. The empty pit of my stomach would have risen into my heart and the hollowness of hopelessness would have crippled me forever.
But the coolest thing ever is when they least suspected it, when all others had lost hope and direction, when fear and death was ruling God’s creation,
THE STONE WAS ROLLED AWAY!!
And the hollowness of the tomb became HOPE!
Everything God had said was true. Everything Jesus had said He would do He did. He was who He said He was. Even in death Life could begin again.
If you have given up all hope, take some of my hope today on a stone. Better yet, let’s find our hope on what wasn’t there when the stone was rolled away.
The Rabid Mime 