on my way in, fresh from the country,
to Great Jerusalem, the Holy City
to celebrate Passover, thinking of freedom
and feasts and those deep songs,
ah those deep songs, the deep songs of Zion…
singing of our God’s core act in our history

when our sins were placed on that innocent lamb
and we huddled safe ‘neath that thick crusty blood
drying over our heads on the lintel…
and dripping down over us…
But I didn’t know what this day held for me!

A burden offensive I did not deserve,
A shame I did not seek to bear for myself!
I was suddenly thrust in the middle of angry men
and wailing women rushing to Golgotha,
the place of the Skull and such sinister lack!
I was seized from the crowd! What the fuck!

Take your hands from me!
Who are these crowds and who is this crushed Man?!?
Lynch mob?  A Riot?  What! A crucifixion!?
Take that crossbeam off my back and unhand me!
Why do you hurt and defile me with this offense?
Oh…cus my skin is black.  That’s it…again

Black and dishonored, blatant offensive
and reeking with less than, no station in your sight
you burden me with this beam meant for that broken king
staggering there right in front of my eyes
so bloody, so beaten, such shame and affront!
I reject your hate burden and wash my hands clean!

But the soldiers and swords at my neck said otherwise,
and I walked behind the condemned shameful shamble
who clearly was cursed and would hang from this tree,
dishonored by Rome, so repugnant to me…
and then back we went, outside the city walls
climbing that desolate hillside so distant!

Wrong place, wrong time, how did I get here,
walking behind this weak beaten Jesus
and my beautiful Passover torn from my hands
in stark interruption and shadows of crosses?
There I walked, behind him and lost in my thoughts
and I ate the dirt gritty outside that great city.

Then Jesus stopped, His chest heaving in agony
and dripping blood, He turned to the women
who mourned there and wailed, and He spoke to them
something so strange and unusual, mayhap just farcical
In this absurd tableau, in this mockery here
of the beautiful Passover there!

“Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me;
weep for yourselves and for your children.
For the time will come when you will say,
‘Blessed are the barren women,
the wombs that never bore

and the breasts that never nursed!
They will say to the mountains,
“Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!”‘
For if men do these things when the tree is green,
what will happen when it is dry?”

I recognized these lines as the words of a prophet
and spoken of old by our God Who would show heart
with love that would not quit or come to an end…
and then Jesus walked on, up that hill on that path
to the place of the skull where they stripped Him stark naked
and took His piece and mine, and nailed them together
and propped that cross in the sky and nailed Him there to die…

and me, stood there, dumbly
looking on stupidly
not understanding
this rank act so coarse
and bloody and final

Then I was shoved to the ground and they kicked at me,
told me my work here was done and it wasn’t
my problem or burden to bear, it was all on His shoulders
so get out of here!  But I stayed, and I saw how His red Blood ran ragged
and dripped from those beams, His and mine there united
I heard Him cry out to His Father in Heaven,
I wondered if that was Our God of Passover???

I saw Him speak to a criminal there right beside Him
He told this man Paradise waited! He spoke to His mother,
He suffered in agony, said He was THIRSTY, so thirsty for comfort!
“Father, forgive them, they know not what they do”
and then they mocked and called Him King of the Jews!
Then He gave up the ghost to the Hands of His Father
And that lamb then, this Lamb now, merged one with the Other!

Now, these years later and older (and younger)
I think of the words of a poet disturbing
the beginning is often the end, and I think of that Cross
such a stumbling block to every toe of the living and dead,
and the Man who had hung there, and died,
and the earthquake that followed and the curtain of Presence
was torn from the Top to the bottom (just like my heart).

Twisting inside me, entwined there in red and white
lamb and Lamb, Passover and that odd “Pass-Under”
knitted together and stuck in my craw
in the echoes and memories of that long walk
that I took, there behind Him, and His piece and mine
and the stories of death conquered, stones rolled away
and a risen sun dawning on Risen Lord Laughing!!

I was on my way somewhere else…
the cross, this shocking interruption
on that day, on that red death day…
and so it remains now
and forever more.

“The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood-
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.”  T. S. Eliot