It was a chaotic day. Afterwards his friends tried to say what had happened. But it was like piecing together the fragments of a shattered precious stone with only the thin and opaque glue of grief and regret.

Jesus was dying on the cross. The twelve were nowhere to be seen. Pilate had left the scene as soon as he pronounced his unwilling judgment. He was a harsh administrator, known for occasional cruelty – and no friend of the Jewish people. But Pilate had no taste for mob violence or street justice.

Pilate had tried to find some ground for convicting Jesus, but could only lightly parse the coarse hecklings of the crowd. It was almost as if someone had to die that day, driven by some strange alchemy of animosity in the public sphere. It just happened to be this Galilean religious teacher.

And had this teacher, Jesus, properly answered Pilate’s questions, he might be safely back in his lodgings for the night. But instead he had been driven to the cross, like a Passover lamb herded and sold to certain death. Pilate could see the irony in that.

But the reckless rage of the crowd needed a target. Let them have Jesus, and the rest of the Passover festival would unfold without further drama. Pilate ordered his soldiers to escort Jesus away and only to restrain the crowd from killing the man before his grim sentence had been fully carried out.

The women watched everything. Powerless in the face of the fury around them. They said nothing, even to one another. Theirs was a silent vigil. Not just for Jesus, but for every mother’s child stolen, detained, disappeared, trafficked, murdered. Only in their hearts did they cry out to God for justice.

Meanwhile those in places of security and power were already preparing their defense.

The scriptures foretold this.

This martyr will justify our revolution!

When God decides to do something, who can stop it?

What did those people expect would happen?

We didn’t have anything to do with this. Jesus brought it all on himself.

And so it went, as it still does.

Poet and Lyricist Susan Palo Cherwein wrote:

For the new to come forth, something must die;

For transformation to take place

something must be left behind;

the seed is no longer exactly what it was:

it has left its seediness behind

to become moonflower –

it has left its hard husk behind

to become vulnerable.

“I tell you,” said Jesus,

“Unless a grain of wheat dies,

it cannot bear fruit.”

Jesus set aside power

and became vulnerable.

Jesus left behind security

and became the Crucified One,

and ultimately, the Risen One.

And so we must ask, what must we leave behind?

And we must ask, what in us must die?

DYING WITH CHRIST from Crossings: Meditations for Worship

Copyright 2003 Morning Star Music Publishers