Poem - "Oh the weight of the cross"

Oh the weight of the cross...

Piled and heaped high to the sky.

With a million, million sins and more.

Coveting leers, stinging hurts, rivers of tears.

The filth 2 zillion eyes have caressed.

All the lies you can find in every lexicon of death.

The buckets and vats and seas of blood sin has shed.

The tsunamis of tears wept for loved ones now dead.

Add the snide, the sniveling, the insults for fun.

The gossip mongering, the cursing, cutting lashes of tongue.

Throw on the blasphemy, the cacophony of all the silent, uncountable little gods.

All shame, all indignation, all mock outrage, all failures and frauds.

Oh, the weight. Smothering. Soul-crushing. Cosmic millstone. A singularity of pain.

I could go on, but I can't. But he does.

Oh the weight of the cross,

Pressing down on the Son, the One,

The only one with the shoulders holy enough to bear it.

The only one with the righteousness, the merit.

A spotless lamb, the world bearing down.

A perfect sacrifice, yet see the Father's frown.

For after all the abuse was taken.

Now even by his God forsaken.

He gives up his Spirit.

And.

It is finished.

Oh the weight of the cross,

All that he bore,

Sinks into the abyss,

To trouble us no more.

Down it goes, forever gone, gone...

But life springs up in him.

It can't hope to contain him.

Life bursts; it overflows to the world.

It is a fountain, a geyser, a mighty rushing flood.

Exploding supernova of light and hope and peace and beyond.

He lives. You live.

The weight of the cross is gone and forgotten.

It is faded to nothing and less.

Death's victory evaporates. It stings no more.

Sin is as far as east is from west. Death is as far as north from south.

And life is closer than you can see. It's in you. In Christ.

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Surely, with his stripes, we are healed.

Rev. Tom Chryst, Holy Week 2017