The Gospel According to the Son

48

They drove a spike into each of my wrists and another spike through each of my feet. I did not cry out. But I saw the heavens divide. Within my skull, light glared at me until I knew the colors of the rainbow; my soul was luminous with pain.

They raised the cross from the ground, and it was as if I climbed higher and into greater pain. This pain traveled across a space as vast as the seas. I swooned. When I opened my eyes, it was to see Roman soldiers kneeling on the ground beneath my feet. They were arguing how to divide my garment so that there would be a piece of cloth for each of them. But my old robe was without a seam, being woven from one end to the other. Therefore they decided: "Let us cast lots. It is only good for one."

The soldier who won took up the garment, and I remembered the woman who had been cured of an issue of blood by touching my robe. Now it hung from the arm of the soldier. And the cloth was as limp as the discarded skin of a snake.

Beside me someone groaned. Another man replied. I looked at the two thieves: One was by my right hand; the other, on the left. Below us, a man said: "He saved many; why can he not save himself?" Another said: "Since he is the Son of God, where is his Father?"

The thief to my right side now spoke: "If you are Christ, save me!"

I told myself: This man thinks only of his own life. He is a criminal. But the other thief said: "Lord, remember my face when entering your Kingdom."

I told him: "Today, you shall be with me in paradise."

I could not know if I believed my words, or whether the thief would hear them. My voice was less than a whisper. Even now, in the hour of my need, I was true to one poor habitùI kept offering my promises to all.

It was still morning, but darkness had come over the land; it was dark. Within myself, I recited a verse from the Psalms: "My bones are burned with heat; my bowels boil; my skin is black."

Yet as Job had passed from fever into that chill which is worse than fever, so I shivered in my loincloth. From out of my nakedness, I said aloud: "The face of the deep is frozen." I could not hear God's reply. When I said, "I thirst," one of the soldiers came forward to offer me vinegar. When I refused, for vinegar is worse than thirst, he said: "King of the Jews, why don't you come down from the cross?"

And I remembered what was written in the Second Book of Kings: "Hath he not sent me to the men who sit on the wall, that they may eat their own dung and drink of their own piss?"

I cried out to my Father, "Will You allow not one miracle in this hour?"

When my Father replied, it was like a voice from the whirlwind. He said in my ear, and He was louder than my pain: "Would you annul My judgment?"

I said: "Not while breath is in me."

But my torment remained. Agony was written on the sky. And pain came down to me like lightning. Pain surged up to me like lava. I prayed again to my Father: "One miracle," I asked.

If my Father did not hear me, then I was no longer the Son of God. How awful to be no more than a man. I cried out, "My Lord, hast Thou forsaken me?"

There was no answer. Only the echo of my cry. I saw the Garden of Eden and remembered the Lord's words to Adam: "Of every tree in the Garden you may eat freely, but from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, you shall not eat."

Let my Father's voice strike Golgotha and His thunder become as loud as His voice, but pain had driven me to believe what one must not believe.

God was my Father, but I had to ask: Is He possessed of all Powers? Or is He not? Like Eve, I wanted knowledge of good and evil. Even as I asked if the Lord was allpowerful, I heard my own answer: God, my father, was one god. But there were others. If I had failed Him, so had He failed me. Such was now my knowledge of good and evil. Was it for that reason that I was on the cross?

One of the soldiers took a sponge, filled it with vinegar, and forced it between my lips. He jeered at me.

The taste was so vile that I cried out with the last of the heavenly rage left to me, and I looked upon the face of the Roman soldier who had squeezed this vinegar into my mouth. "I have a prayer," he said. "I wish you were Barabbas. I would torture you. I would wipe my filth upon your face."

At that moment the Devil spoke. "Join me," he said, and his voice was in my ear. "I will introduce this bully of a Roman to a few humiliations I can lay upon men. There is no pleasure greater than revenge itself. And," said the Devil, "I will bring you down from the cross."

It was a temptation. Only one thought kept me from assent. Tears hot as fire stood in my eyes at this thought, for it told me that I must say no to Satan. Yet I knew. By these hours I had lived on the cross, I knew. My Father was only doing what He could do. Even as I had done what I could do. So He was truly my Father. Like all Fathers He had many sore troubles, and some had little to do with His son. Had His efforts for me been so great that now He was exhausted? Even as I had been too heavy to walk in the Garden of Gethsemane.

By the aid of such a thought, as sobering as the presence of death itself, so did the Devil s voice withdraw from my ear. And I returned to the world where I lay on the cross.

Yet now I felt less pain. For I had learned that I did not wish to die with a curse in my heart. I had told my disciples: "He who kills you will believe he is performing service for God," and those words came back to meùa comfort in this extremity. I said, "My Lord, they do not see. They came into the world empty and they will depart from the world empty. Meanwhile, they are drunk. Forgive them. They know not what they do."

The strength of my life passed from me and entered the Spirit. I had time only to say, "It is finished." Then I died. And it is true that I died before they put the spear in my side. Blood and water ran out of my side to mark the end of morning. I saw a white light that shone like the brilliance of heaven, but it was far away. My last thought was of the faces of the poor and how they were beautiful to me, and I hoped it would be true, as all my followers would soon begin to say, that I had died for them on the cross.