dark saturday

Yeah, I'd hung around for the trial and the long, agonizing walk down Pennsylvania Avenue to where they crucified him.  Right on The Mall.  Thousands of tourists strolled by, arms stretched and curled with shopping bags from the gifts shops at The Smithsonians, cradling leftovers from The Circle Cafe, or juggling overpriced hot dogs and lemonade from the vending carts.  They shielded the eyes of their children in strollers from the view of him hanging there crucified, right in front of the Capitol steps.

They nailed him to a cross.

I still can't get over that.  As if he wasn't in enough pain already.  They'd whipped him with everything you can imagine: bicycle chains, dog leashes, bona fide bull whips, punk rocker jewelry with hooks and pins and spikes.  I don't know how I kept from throwing up there at the Washington Monument where they scourged him.

I'd heard of him, sure.  Who hasn't?  The Post loved writing about him.  Not many people really understood him in a town like DC.  The Right Wingers thought he was too soft on issues of social justice, claiming he was the type to give away the farm.  The Left Wing proclaimed he would mess with the whole separation of church and state thing if he ever got elected the way he talked about His Heavenly Father all the time.  The only time I heard him speak he told people to pay their taxes and give to God what belonged to him.  They tried to make him a political figure, but he never played their game.

They tried to make him a celebrity.  After the first widely publicized miracle -- and I'm telling you, raising someone from the dead is unbelievable, you know? -- they offered him a seven figure book deal, and his own talk show.  "Widen your audience," his closest friends told him, "it's a step in the right direction, right?"  But he only said he had a job to do and that fame and fortune had nothing to do with that.   Those with ears to hear his message would someday hear it . . . period.  It had always been that way.  His Father wasn't one to be stingy with the good news.

They tried to get him to tour with that well known TV preacher.  Go to all the big churches!  Drink coffee in their atriums and their activities buildings.  But he just said something about prostitutes, sinners, and the rowdy bunch found downtown at Joey's Bar.  He was always downtown in the "bad section" of town. He said, "You guys seem to have it all figured out here anyway, right?"   Maybe I'm wrong because I'm not religious, but I can't imagine they really wanted him to go on tour "as is", and I can't imagine him in a suit and tie, or dockers and a polo.  He was always in jeans and sandals.  Kinda like me, actually.

A guy like that in DC?  No wonder they strung him up.

This friend of mine, a guy named Vic, said his friend had AIDS.  And one day he and his buddies were sitting around a park, a place for "guys like the friends of Vic" and he came walking by with his little entourage.  So he healed these ten AIDS patients out in the sun.  Vic said the guy was so excited he ran home to his mom and when he thought to go back and thank him, he was gone.  Vic never saw him again.   There are stories like this going around like crazy today and I wonder, "Where were you people yesterday when he was hanging there looking like a human shaped piece of meat?"

Really, he didn't look human anymore.  Black, white, Asian, take your pick of the world -- he could have been of any race as he suffered quietly.  This was like nothing Hollywood could have ever dished out no matter how much latex and fake blood they used.  I wouldn't have believed a human could live through what he lived through, ended up in that condition, and still be breathing up on that cross.

I sat there longer than most did.  And I knew he saw me and because of that, I stayed.  I watched him die and I said, "God, I'm glad."  I felt such relief that he wasn't feeling that pain anymore.  I watched them take down the body and I watched his mother weep with her son in her arms.  I think she saved up all the tears he should have cried and blessed his body with them right there.

And they took him away.

I followed slowly on my bike.  No one told me not to.  But I could do nothing else. 

These calm, graceful women cleaned him up and I smelled the spices they used there at the open door to the small mausoleum, engraved with someone else's name.  A bunch of guards came and I guess it had to be that way.  There are too many crazies around these days.

I rode back to my room at G.W.  And I can't tell you why, but I cried myself to sleep.

So today, I'm back at the cemetary.  The guards are playing cards and they eye me every so often but I guess I don't look like a threat as I sit here with my lunch and regret not getting to know him when I had the chance.

Comments

[Don]

Thanks!

Honestly Lisa, this was wonderful. Thanks for this timely reminder. "that human shaped piece of meat"....ugh! And He did that for you and me.
Oh what a wonderful incredible feeling of redemption just reading this and knowing He loves us NO matter what. AIDs, greed, avarice, lust, money-launderers, unfaithful, liars, cheaters, humans...that's me and you, no?

Bless you for taking the time to write these thoughts. And now, I, like his mother, will just quietly weep at the thought of this incredible sacrifice.

- Don

[sam parker]

Thanks for writing this, Lisa. I'm happy I found it -- it made a difference.

[si johnston]

Lisa...thanks...v.helpful and thought provoking.

[Brad]

wow. no words.

[Alison Strobel Morrow]

Beautiful. Well done, Lisa. Praise God for the sacrifice, and praise God for the talent He has bestowed on you to bring it home to us.

[Heather]

Thanks, Lisa

[Lisa]

Lisa-
As you can see I'm behind in my reading, but this was so good I just had to say thanks! This was very much in line with what Maggie Dawn wrote..."Sometimes I think knowing the end of the story ruins us for entering into the sense of what Holy Saturday was all about. Holy Saturday, for the disciples, wasn't a brief pause to do a spot of shopping before the celebrations begin on Easter Sunday.  It was a shell-shocked, dark chasm that opened up and swallowed them."

I hope all is well in the Samson household. We love you guys!