He bends, protecting His loins,
thorns gouge His forehead,
and His legs are stippled with dried blood.
the part of us that is Pilate says
“Behold the man!”
We glare at that bound, lashed, and bloody part of us that’s Christ.
we laugh,
we howl,
we shout “Give us Barabbas!”,
not knowing who Barabbas is,
not caring.
A thief? we’ll take him anyway
A drunk?
A murderer?
who cares?!
It’s better him,
than this pale, ravaged thing, this god.
Bosch knows.
his humans waver, laugh, then change to demons,
as if they’re seized by epilepsy.
It spreads from eye to eye,
from laugh to laugh,
until incited by the ease of going mad,
they go.
how easy evil is!
Dark voices sing,
You can be evil or you can be good,
But good is dull my darling, good is dull!
And we’re convinced:
How lovely evil is!
How lovely hell must be!
Give us Barabbas!
Lord Pilate clears his throat and tries again:
I find no fault in this just man.”
It’s more than we can bear.
In gothic script,
our answer floats above our upturned eyes,
Oh crucify, we sing, oh crucify Him!
Ecce Homo is a painting of the episode in the Passion of Jesus by the early Netherlandish painter Hieronymus Bosch, made sometime after 1475. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecce_Homo_(Bosch,_1470s)
Reading this poem by Andrew Hudgins, I just wonder how often I scream "give me Barrabas!” in the times that I take the easy way out and refuse to do the right thing, how many times I've denied Him, not just with my words but by the things I've left unsaid, how intoxicated I have become with the 'life' I'm living, how I have allowed the subtlety of evil to dull the edges, and I know that if I look closely enough, I'll find myself right there in that crowd… I think that this Easter, I should really take time out to decide which side of that cross I'm going to be on and if I want to keep my lovely illusions of evil or if I'll live the truth...
