Revisit the Cross

 Revisit the Cross.

This is a practice of the Christian faith, to station yourself at the cross and “let the fountain of affection flow.” ~ Bob Sorge

You see, I am just a little girl, foolish, impulsive, uncontrollable, and passionate. My jeans are grass-stained, I can’t wear white, there is usually dirt under my fingernails, and I always have a lesson to learn. But finding myself a part of the crowd, watching a walk of suffering was highly unexpected, even for me. I did not think really. I just went there, to the crucifixion scene wearing a rough coat and sandals!

There were ruts everywhere where carts and livestock had worn crooked paths. Half-dried mud and little grass covered the ground. I kept tripping as I made my way around the people and through narrow ways. The chaos of a trial, verdict, and beating had subsided as the ringing peals of a hammer fill the air. Tortured screams that made my skin prickle invaded my ears. I kept moving and I soon made out the tops of three crosses being raised upright; one cross, two, finally three. When they settled in their mounts, the ground gave shudders that made me want to vomit compulsively; one thud, two, a third thunk hit the ground with sickening finality.

The crowd changed then. What had been rowdy and violent, unhinged even, was suddenly reality and grotesque. A wail escaped from someone watching as no escape became apparent. Horrific details became painfully obvious. The blood running down every inch of the man's face and body, his nudity and disgrace made you feel raw. His weeping and falling as they walked him to Golgotha, hadn't assuaged the masses’ blood-lust and cruelty. Yet the ground tremor of a cross going upright did silence most in the mob. Only when the cross was cutting off his air supply slowly, like a leak in a wineskin, leaving a red stain everywhere it went, did all those ruffians exhale and think. Cries, gasps, and garbled words choked out over our heads as the three condemned men faced imminent death. Strangled guttural groans at the pain beyond any endurance became louder than the crowd.

This is what the people had wanted. To suffocate him in agony. I could hear it all as the crowd gave up cheers or scorn or misery. After a minute of thought, the multitude started leaving. What had been a packed trial and impassable swarm for hours was now thinning. The rest of the execution would take too long for most to wait out. I could suddenly walk closer with ease. I slowly slipped to the hill where the three fresh crosses now raised ugly arms to silhouette against the strangely dark horizon. The hill itself was lit by torches and protected by armed Roman soldiers. To one side were women weeping inconsolably, held back by several men who also wept openly. On the edges of the crowd stood superior Pharisees looking proud and accomplished. They stayed back and looked sideways if anyone came too close. Eventually, most would slink away with only a spy left behind. The earth before me had obvious blood on it and unidentifiable matter in areas. It was treacherous to walk without getting something on my feet.

Then I looked up at the center cross.

The soldiers had hung a sign that said over and over, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”
The man's face was so bloody and it was collecting and drying in what remained of his beard. The eyes seemed to have sunk into their sockets and his mouth hung slack in pain, his head drooped on one shoulder. Suddenly his head lifted slightly and he alertly made direct eye contact with me. His eyes pinned me in shock.

“Daughter.”

I started, a little girl's fears sparking in me as I nearly fell into the muck beside me. The voice spoke from immediately beside me. I started, a hand to my chest, to look sideways at the speaker on my right. Disbelief knocked my jaw to my chest.

Beside me was the King of the Jews. I looked back at the disfigured, broken man on the cross, his limp yet spasming frame was still impaled to the rough structure. He still bespoke pain, anguish, pain, and torment I couldn't look at him without tears rising behind my eyes. Was he a god of wonders after all?

“What?!” I cannoned the word at the man on my right. He received it gently.

“Hello.” His face was clean, and smooth, with no blood in his beard. His eyes were only dark and warm. His hair was brushed clean and his clothes were an odd fresh white tunic and linen pants unheard of in Jerusalem. His feet were bare and he wore an odd smile. Not even the Pharisees smiled here. Faces were hard or evil or brokenhearted at the scene of a Roman crucifixion. Unless the people were mad!

“You...”I didn't have words to say he was supposed to be dying. Maybe it was his spirit I was talking to! My neck had been sweaty, but now a breeze blew and my skin went clammy. He reached for my wrist. He pulled it up and flipped my hand to cup his left hand in mine, palm toward the sky. 

“It's me.” He pointed to the crease marks, behind the heel of his hand where the hole of the nail that had been driven through his limb. The dark hole still existed halfway between healed and raw wound. “Or it was if we think of it in terms of time. Do you need time and space for this to make sense?”

I simply stared at him. I didn't know what to think. I looked at the cross of a man slowly dying and then back to the same exact man also standing beside me. I looked at the man dressed in skin and blood on the cross above me and then at the man in white and brightness beside me. He was much taller than me but he still looked me straight in the eyes. Every time I looked, he met my eyes squarely and kindly.

“Yes...” I answered.

“Very well. I am in all time and space. I can visit any moment or time I need to at a second's notice. Since you are beholding my cross moment, I came to share it with you.” He seemed very cheerful, or glad at least. I pointed to the cross.

“So you are both there and here?”

“Well, only you are aware of me right now. I am here and there, but my human, son-of-man time stands still. It can't be moved or undone.” He smiled invitingly and I felt at ease as he continued.

“What brought you here today?”

“I heard someone say 'revisit the cross.' I've never literally been to the real cross once so I thought what it must have been like... so here I am. Not sure why I imagined so much mud and nasty though.” The King of the Jews smiled at my explanation.

“It was gruesome yes. That's my blood you're walking on, about on the ground.”

“How did you do it?” I asked quietly. Amid the scene itself, I couldn't fathom his human feeling at that moment of submission and death. I couldn’t look at him rightly on the cross. What little girl could imagine his situation?

“How did you bear it? The beating, the pain. This is torture for goodness sake!”
“You won't like the answer, little girl.” I made a face at his seemingly mocking reply.

“Why not?”

“Because you women are all the same. You won't believe me.” He had that odd smile again. He was teasing me! The King of the Jews was teasing me!

“Tell me! How did you stand it?” I demanded.

“I thought of you.”

I was silent. I did believe him as he’s that sort you believe completely, but it was a lot to take in. I didn't know how to respond. We both looked up at the cross and viewed his struggle with death and sin. After a moment, he jerked to point at his dying form.

“There! Did you see that twitch? That's when I thought of you and endured. That's when I knew I would inherit you and call you sister forever. And it all became worth it.”

He smiled at me with his whole face. His tone was so real and intense with such words no one had ever spoken to me before. I turned away from the Jesus beside me and traced a drop of blood with my eyes as it tracked down the ribs of the King of the Jews above me. I closed my eyes. So much of this moment didn't make sense in my little head. Yet, I was in this moment before now. I had been considered in his dying moments. I'd been here before I'd imagined him dying. 

Jesus spoke again.

“I can peg the microsecond each person fell on my heart; when every sin exacted its cost; when every soul was saved for my family. When wrath was poured out on that body, I thought of you while on the cross, my darling.”

I couldn't take my eyes from the broken king now. People below would mock or taunt him while he was truly doing a kingly work they knew nothing about. Few remained after the first hour, but the weepers still watched him under Roman supervision. I looked up and again, his drooping head lifted just so his eyes could lock with mine and I knew the Son of Man was looking across time and space to see me. Because, apparently, those don't constrain him.

“I've loved you so, I'd do it again if needed. And it's not like childbirth. You don't forget that kind of pain.” I blinked at his smiling face – not knowing how to laugh or scold him for teasing at this point.

“I told you. You wouldn't believe me. You go on and stare. I love you so.” He seemed to think of something.  “Will you come with me?” he asked. I shrugged a nod. I wasn't sure of anything anymore. Why not follow?

“Come.” He walked toward the cross but as we did, everything froze. Time froze. Bugs, breeze, and breaths, all halted at an invisible command. We were at the base of his cross and he reached up and shrunk the cross so his feet were right before us. Again, time and space suddenly meant nothing and I could stand at the very feet of Jesus on the cross, near enough to touch him now.

“Will you wash my feet?” he asked when the world stopped shifting and hung still around us.

“What?!” I was so confused. Where was Peter when you needed a blunt person to ask the right questions of the teacher?

“Will you wash my feet? They're very dirty here.”

I looked at the frozen-in-time feet of the mid-crucified King of the Jews. They were less appealing than most feet I'd seen. They also had a stake driven through them and blood was still oozing out around the nail, even with time suspended.

“But this already happened. It's old, ancient history and you're clean now. When they prepare you for burial, you'll be washed.”

“What does it matter that it already happened? You're here now. Will you wash my feet?”

“I can, sir. But with what? All I imagined here was mud and I don't have a towel.”

“What do you have, child?”

“My coat,” I reasoned at what I possessed at the moment. “I can use the sleeves to wash and save parts with which to dry them.”

“Good. Then here's some water.” He suddenly had a glass pitcher of clear water. I took off my coat and he soaked the sleeve for me, the overflow wetting our own feet. I stepped closer and began to wash the feet of Jesus. It didn't do much good. The more I washed, the more blood there was. It never stopped flowing from the nail or his wounds higher overhead.

“It's not working!”

“Try rinsing with the water pitcher.” I took the pitcher and poured over the feet of Jesus endlessly – much more than the volume of the pitcher. It kept coming but it turned pink as it poured over his feet and I was soon drenched in the runoff.

“It's not helping.” I was frustrated and wanted to cry. Why did I want to cry? I was just washing a near-dead man's feet. I stopped at that thought. Maybe clean wasn't the point. He's going to die. Washing his feet was futile. Maybe it's more comforting. Maybe it's to not be alone at this moment. Maybe it's just to serve.

I stopped pouring and used my coat sleeve to wipe the heel gently where they rested against the cross. Too much pressure might hurt. I rubbed the ankles softly. I wiped away the dirt as well as blood. I was able to remove several splinters. I took my time. Not trying to clean or fix his feet, I couldn't. Every time I brushed the top of his feet clean, a new rivulet of red would course down from the nail wound. I just kept washing. I'm not sure when, but I looked up at Timeless Jesus and he was beaming joy and his eyes were wet with tears. He saw my gaze and locked a hand behind my neck, pulling my head toward his, to touch his forehead to mine.

“Oh, my beloved. Thank you.”

I realized I was crying now, but so was he. I just stood there, wet, covered in blood and dirt, standing in frozen mud and time with both the slain and risen King of the Jews.

“Not your best king moment, I suppose,” I said. “I'm sorry you were so alone.”

Jesus lifted his head away from mine, a warm and comforting presence departing with the movement.

“When you wash my feet, it's not so lonely. When you revisit the cross, it doesn't remain a darkness. This was the moment I stopped being a king and had to be the sacrificial lamb. I had to do it to end the cycles of sin and religion. I had to wash you in my blood to cleanse you and now I can speak to you as a friend. I can present you to my father whose delight is no minuscule smile. I will be there when he sees you. I want to see both your faces when the time comes for you to be presented to my father.”

“Why not now? You're outside of time I thought,” I said with a smirk.

“But you are not, my dearest. You still have to finish your own human timeline.” He pulled my forehead close again and placed the sweetest kiss of all upon my face, between the questioning creases.

“I must go, darling girl. Revisit as much as you wish. And when you think of me, will you wash my feet? With whatever you have. Just wash my feet.”

His hand weight left my neck and I suddenly knew he was gone. It was just me and the feet of Jesus running red onto the ground. His broken body still struggled in death, recalling all he would ransom. There was a strange peace upon me, just for a moment as Human Jesus paid it all.

“Get back! You're too close to the 'king!'” mocked an armed soldier. “Get away from 'his majesty,'” I was forced away by a sword and scowl, but I was done for today. I'd seen enough and had much to ponder. I'd revisit the cross another day.