He could barely breathe. He panted with short labored gasps
to grasp at whatever meager volume of air His starving, craving lungs could
receive. And He couldn't even get any respite from dreaded suffocation unless
He would muster up whatever strength He had in his legs to support all of the
weight of His torso in ever increasingly futile efforts to expand His chest
wide enough to receive the life preserving vapor. I'm sure He gladly would have
made His legs straight so as to enhance His breathing but the resulting
increased weight of His body would only magnify the intensity of the sharp,
searing, inexplicable pain that resulted from the cruel iron peg that impaled
his feet and pressed against the naked, exposed nerve that communicated nothing
but agony to His wretched body. The intense pain was unrelenting but it shot
through His entire person with even greater intensity, if it were possible,
when He made His pathetic attempts to capture only a wisp of the life
preserving gaseous elixir.
Like a living butterfly whose wings had been pinned to the
display case of a collector, He was affixed helplessly to a wooden shaft with
His arms outstretched and bones out of joint. His hands were skewered by rods
of iron, in like manner as his feet. They seared with s hot excruciating agony
that was rivaled only by that of His feet. The welts and torn flesh on His back
and on the backs of His legs, the result of whips whose injury was augmented by
the addition of sharp bones or shards of metal so as to mercilessly tear open
His flesh, rubbed excruciatingly against the wooden "pegboard" upon
which He was matter-of-factly mounted.
His loss of blood made Him woefully thirsty. His lips were
parched and His tongue almost stuck to the roof of His mouth. He could barely
speak. Naked, defenseless and exposed, He'd been beaten and nailed to a wooden
execution stake by tormentors who callously taunted Him as He endured His last
moments of life. There was nothing and no one to give Him comfort. The only
thing that could rescue Him would be death.
But how did He wind up in this predicament? He was a good
man. He'd taught people how to be good people and He was not only their supreme
example of what goodness was but He was perfect in everything He ever said or
did. He was the ultimate Tsadik as we like to say in Hebrew, or righteous
one. So how could such a man ever find Himself in these circumstances? He
certainly didn't deserve this! Yet He accepted His death and the agony that
came with it willingly. In spite of His circumstances and the intense pain of
His last moments, there was not one ounce of panic or apprehension in His soul.
Even in the midst of this torment, aside from His
relationship with God, not once did He give thought to Himself. He thought only
of the needs of others even to the end. His best friend and His mother stood by
helplessly and with great sorrow, apprehension and an overwhelming sense of
hopelessness. He gestured to His friend to see to His mother's needs
while He was gone. Even those who taunted Him, He was quick to forgive desiring
only their eternal well-being as of paramount importance. He looked beyond His
present state with its unbearable agony with a different sort of eyes into the
millenniums that would follow that fraction of a moment in time. His mind
dwelt upon every soul destined to live and to die... Billions upon billions of
souls... each one of infinite importance, He knew each one by name.
He saw 21st Century Gaza with the little Kaddan boy and his
Palestinian family under the siege of an Israeli army bombardment. He
envisioned the shell from a tank hitting the home in which he'd lived his
regrettably short life, snuffing him out and strewing his body into a million
inanimate pieces.
He saw Daniel Tregerman, a young Jewish tot with a promising
future blown to bits by a Palestinian mortar, leaving an emotionally scarred
family in his wake. The man on that cross knew that all of this would happen.
He was the way that God would be if He should ever choose to become a man. And
He knew that mankind, in its foolishness, would try to make God to be something
that He's not. They would pin God to a cross so as to reshape Him into
their own depraved image.
He knew that the Kaddan family would fall victim to a belief
system fomented by a false, power hungry prophet who said that God was aloof,
stern and demanding. Furthermore, their god would use the poor Kaddan family
simply as disposable pawns by which their false prophet could posthumously
further his perverted doctrines. But God is not aloof, stern and demanding. He
is more like that man on the cross... good, kind, gentle, not enabling evil and
yet willing to forgive. Many who hold to the belief system enjoined by the
Kaddans also hold to the notion that the Middle East is no place where a Jew
may live. They have a sign engraved in their hearts... "Jews not
welcome".
He knew that the Tregermans were among a people who held to
the notion that their identities as Jews depended upon their refusal to accept
the possibility that the Man on the cross could be the Messiah. Yet those
people also held tenaciously to the notion that they needed their own place to
live because a 2000 year history of persecution showed that they definitely needed
a place they could call their own... where they would be free to live in
safety. Furthermore, the very book that describes the nature of the Man
on the cross declares that their own land, contrary to the view of the people
of the Kaddan family, is specifically located in the Middle East. They
have a sign engraved in their hearts... "The land is ours but Jesus is not
welcome".
In essence...
The people of the Tregerman family believe the part of their
holy book that talks about the land but rejects the part that tells about their
Messiah.
The people of the Kaddan family reject the Tregermans holy
book altogether, give token allegiance to the man on the cross, and replace it
with a different (and dare I say false) holy book.
Furthermore, both families are confused by a group of people
who claim to believe in the Messiah part of the holy book but refuse to believe
the land part of the holy book and actually refuse, as well, to believe that
the Tregermans have any place in God's plan either (but the holy book says that
they do). They've spent two millenniums persecuting the people with whom the
Tregermans identify. So, every ones understanding of the holy book and
the man on the cross is skewed. And as the holy book says "There is
none righteous. No... not one."
Each of those groups of people is dominated by what we call
“religions”. They are led by people who claim to be experts. But how can
"experts" disagree with one another in the way in which they
do? Actually religions with their dogmas and rituals only lead people
astray. The only expert is that man on the cross and the holy book that
gives an accurate account of who He is. Oh, perhaps you may doubt the
veracity of that book but it has endured the test of the most intensive
scrutiny of science, archaeology, scholarship and time and still
survived. Interestingly, if an individual is to be faithful to that holy
book, he or she will likely experience some level of ostracism from his family
of origin. It's not easy pursuing the truth. But such a person can
be credited as the type of person who thinks for him or herself and is bold
enough to endure the consequences of his or her faith decision. He is not part
of a religion but has a vital and living personal relationship with that man on
the wooden cross... the man who would be the kind of man that God would be if
He would ever choose to reveal Himself as a man.
This man loves both the Tregermans and the Kaddans and all
the people that they symbolize. But His love demands that each individual among
them has the free will to choose to love Him back. Unfortunately thus far the
Jews and the Muslims have, for the most part, chosen not to love Him in return.
And their free wills have led to what we see today... the deaths of two
innocent children among myriads upon myriads fallen victim to a history of war
and human misery.
I regret to say that absolutely nothing will get the human
race out of this quagmire of death except that man who died on that cross long
ago. The world is not intended to be the way that it is. We were not made to
hate and kill one another. Death itself was not ever intended to be normative.
Our problem is that we've gotten used to death and war and the general
condition of the world as it exists. We cannot imagine our present state,
uncomfortable and foreboding as it is, as being anything other than normative.
Certainly politics won't help us. And, to be honest, religion won't either
because it gives us a false understanding of God. Furthermore religion divides.
We blame one another rather than blaming ourselves. We say “it's the other guys
fault... never mine”. We refuse to say “Hey, I could be responsible for some of
this mess”. We are enamored with ourselves and how good we are. But
the man on the cross sees otherwise. He sees us for whom we are, loves us
anyway and is quick to forgive us if we simply ask Him.
Most of we humans have big egos. We think we're God in
a strange sort of way. We might say that we're not, but don't we respond
with anger when we get insulted? The man on the cross didn't. There,
dying, in the midst of His agony, He knew who He was. He was the way God
would be if He should ever choose to be a man. And if we would ever want
to be like God, we should want to be like Him.
By the way, that man? He rose from the dead. He's alive! One
day He's going to make the world into the kind of place that it was intended to
be. And inhabiting that world will be people who've asked God to make
them into the kind of people He wants them to be without being “religious”...
sort of like that man on the cross. They will all come from extremely diverse
backgrounds but by being the type of person that that man on the cross is,
they'll be the only types of people who will be able to get along with one
another.
And there will be no more wars, or sickness, or death or,
most importantly, guilt or tears... only good stuff.
I don't care if you're Jewish, Palestinian, or ISIS for that
matter. I want that for you and especially that man on the cross wants it for
you.
