Abhorred, rejected, ridiculed, and harmed,
This son of man familiar with our pain.
A god enfleshed and by his flesh disarmed,
A god of nerve and sinew, skin and vein.
We hide our faces so to shield our shame
That the lord of heaven and the lord of earth
Was so debased, polluted, wrecked, and lame;
Could undergo the injury of birth.
We so enthralled to power and to might
Did hold this man in lowest of esteem,
We want for gods who fight, resist, and smite,
Not cower, bend, submit, and bear the beam.
We soap and sud the tales and scrub them clean:
No blood and waters, neither vulvas torn,
No ashen face, no rind of clotted cream,
No shit, no afterbirth, no cord is shorn.
Yet this was first as it would yet be last,
The truth was always in this fragile meat,
So prone to harm and hurt and grief so vast.
It hides away its dawning in deceit.
What will we see when all the veils are drawn?
What is exposed to anxious, flighting eyes;
When we peel wide the horror, let it yawn
Open how our lord, how we are brutalized?
His passion, it began on Christmas morn,
His passion was the passion of all men,
Born of a woman in anguish, and forlorn,
To live by death and die for life again.
That final peak was merely a reprise,
Of every heckling crowd, derisive word,
Of any who tormented or despised,
Who violated, pierced, and beat, and spurred.
The crowd was all us, but victim too,
We injure and are injured — bleed, draw blood,
We heckle, jeer, we punch, and kick, and spew,
And so are taunted, beaten, smeared with mud.
The rabid mob aswarm in laughter slings
Its insults and all its discontents,
Unloads upon the man its stripes and stings,
And flings its bowels and pisses its intents.
The soldiers throw him shackled on the ground —
Their task is nothing shocking, nothing new —
They strip him of his robes to soaring sound,
His shrunken nakedness laid bare to view.
The crowd, it howls and thunders, squeals with glee.
Bowed, bent, and prone, the soldiers take in turn —
Unman him by his every whimp’ring plea —
His virtue taken with each thrust and churn.
Despoiled and spattered, cast their lots, convulsed
With laughter at their chance to own the clothes
Of such a mighty king — this lord repulsed!
Upon his brow a bramble plait compose,
And in his fist a flowering reed-mace place,
Array him in the mantle of Jove and Mars,
And genuflect and nod and rap his face,
Slobbering, “My imperator! My stars!”
The august potentate is raised, processed
To stand before a pillar caked in black;
Cinched wrists lashed to, regalia repossessed,
The knuckled-thongs betokening with a crack.
Those studded bands peal sharply in the air,
Collide with sweat and grime slicked skin
Slice, pierce, and bruise, and welt, and tear
Until his back is plowed with furrows thin
And welling up with yestereven’s wine;
His crumbs cast out upon the ground for curs.
Those friends full-bellied with himself resign
And hide their faces, flee the flying slurs.
Now forward pushed, to bear his own disgrace,
He stumbles ’neath the timber’s brutal span.
The bloodied sweat streams down his hollowed face,
This lamb of god made sacrifice for man.
Each staggering step, a hymn of muffled groans,
As weight and wounds conspire to bring him low.
His trembling form, a symphony of bones —
His splintering gait — each stumble, heave, and throe.
The women weep; the children gape, aghast,
Yet he, unyielding, meets their tearful gaze.
“Daughters, mourn not for me, but for the vast
Destruction wrought in sin’s unceasing blaze.”
Upon the hill, where carrion wheel and cry,
He founders, crushed beneath the grave beam’s weight.
A stranger steps in, summoned, walking by,
To shoulder now this burden birthed in hate.
The soldiers drag him limp and soiled and lame,
His rude undress an obloquy of power —
With ruthless hands, they fling him on the frame,
A twisted mass of limbs and filth acower.
The hammer strikes; the nails bite flesh, grind bone.
His hands, outstretched, embrace the yawning vault.
Through wrist and foot his agony is sewn
And threaded through with iron’s cold assault.
Borne aloft, undraped in gelid air
Hangs — slumped in torment, pierced by cruel decree —
His battered form, his visage pale and bare —
Pours mercy out despite all enmity:
“Forgive them, Abba,” gasps with labored breath,
“Forgive — they know not what their deeds have wrought.”
Through blood and bile confronts unfeeling death,
“Shalém…” and in it, its undoing bought.
His lungs expel one final wheezing whine,
His mutiliated flesh, bespattered, torn —
The scent of blood and excrement entwine,
And in this end, unendingness is born.
Upon the tree, his body stretched and taut,
His bowels released and manhood gorged,
Eyes glazed, tongue lolled, and oozing snot,
All Death’s humiliations on him poured.
The heavens darken, the temple veil is torn,
Creation groans beneath the weight of loss.
The son of god, for all our sorrows born,
Displayed, abased by us, with us, for us upon this cross.