Dressed Down, Crossed Up

"Dressed Down, Crossed Up" "He went out carrying his cross." Don't want to disturb us -- or do I? -- but somebody somewhere is making more crosses right now. More nuclear missiles, automatic weapons, electric chairs, lethal injections, means of establishing all executions, churched and stated, marketplaced sanctions, systems, of violence, of death. Crosses not simply appearing, serenely selected, like coffins, for self-immolation. Crosses hand-rendered, designed, constructed, assembled. Jesus carrying only the crossbar! And falling. After scourging. Uphill to garbage dump. Where trunk of the cross once and always in place. Someone not cutting a cross for us even now? What does it look like? What form does it take? What will it say? Where on Jesus' is written, "The King of the Jews?" What charges leveled on us? What threat of us worthy to sentence to death? Threat to what system? Complex of systems? What organized power against the people are you and I possibly seen as opposing?

Following Jesus confronting perpetual posing, Who are our Romans? What our imperial context? Policy of Deterrence? Destruction? "Why do we kill people who are killing people to show that killing people is wrong? What a foolish notion!" (Holly Near)

Crosses all over us all all the time; two others booked at same moment as Jesus; unoverestimable, Passover (National?) Liberation Front, carnage to wrap up by Sabbath . . . Not to be too Jesus-centric: Jesus but one among some 250,000! Making Third Day reporting all that more perplexing! Resurrection of such anonymity? Ignominy? Commonplace brutalization?

"Is it nothing to us, all we who pass by?"

* * * * *

"I am thirsty." Guards, soldiers around him soaking sponge in bitter wine,

attaching it to stalk of hyssop; could have been using for anesthetic, for deadening dumbfounding pain.

Vinegar, hyssop usual props by the cross? Crucified's own family, friends, if any, administering as permitted? Some sign of shared fellow-feeling somewhere this day? Like "No More Deaths?" Haphazard hydration, randomly left, just as randomly found, midst of mind-frying, hunting-down, lip-sealing deserts?

We are such watery beings. I am acquainted with anesthetics -- accompanying me through pains I need to get "better." Hope it's occurring to Jesus his pain's worth enduring for something better finding way out of it? Yet what if he wants to just get it over.

Do with me what you will, this is the offering up of my life, for better, for worse, the best I could do with what, and with whom, you gave me, and time.

About noon. Sunlight completely annulled. World, as much as one can be aware of it, plunged into post-nuclear darkness: "A darkness more enduring than that on a long-ago Passover would come across the world, after a more ominous quaking of earth and disintegration of rocks. From innumerable parched lips would come some echo of the cry, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?'" (anonymous)
Three crosses, three hours, three days, "three persons of God" -- and counting.