A little hill outside Jerusalem
The other day the following thoughts struck me during the Communion and I decided to share them with you. Jack Close
There is this little hill located on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
I staggered up the path to the crest of that hill and I could see two crosses with their human cargoes already in stark relief against the late morning sky. As I reached the summit, I saw a third roughly hewn cross lying on the ground – waiting for me. Forcefully I was thrust down on top of it. Two soldiers pinned down my arms while a third sat straddle my legs making any struggle useless. Frantically my mind flashed back to the screams of anguish I had heard while I was struggling up the hill when the other two criminals were being nailed to their crosses. Their screams had been followed by muted thuds and tortured groans as each cross had been raised and dropped into its anchor hole
What had brought me here flashed through my mind: the lies, the bitter, caustic words hurled in anger, the selfish choices, the hidden dishonesties, the secret blasphemies, the silent mental adulteries, the carelessly procrastinated or ignored acts of kindness, and all the other sin that had accumulated during seventy-three years of my self-centered life.
Then I felt the point of a cold iron nail pressed cruelly against the softness of my flesh. My stomach knotted. Every muscle in my body tensed. And as the executioner raised the mallet to drive in the nail, a cry froze in my throat.
But hazily through the sweat seeping into my eyes, I glimpsed the form of a man in a dazzling white robe. He stepped forward, gently grasped the upraised arm of the soldier, and whispered something quietly in his ear. The soldier stared at him in disbelieving bewilderment. Then he just nodded his head, dropped his arm and stepped back.
The man in the white robe reached down, took my hand and lifted me gently up from the rough timbers. After a tender love-filled hug He guided me reeling back into the arms of my family who were sobbing among the crowd of onlookers.
Dazed and shaking, I glanced back over my shoulder and saw my rescuer purposefully taking my place on the cross. I looked down into his eyes and saw tears of inconceivable sadness – for me – and a consciousness of the scope of his love for me swept over me like a tidal wave.
I watched the nails being driven first into and through his wrists – and then his feet. I could almost feel the anguish that I knew should have been mine. While the brilliant crimson blood gushed from his wrists and feet, I noticed the dazzling white of his robe had faded to a dirty gray. His cross was slowly raised and then plunged violently into the remaining hole between the crosses of the two criminals.
Immediately, silently a formidable darkness began to creep over the whole land and for the next three hours it hung there, bearing down on us with an oppressive heaviness. After what seemed like an interminable pause during which time seemed to have stopped an anguished cry from his parched throat sliced through the uneasy silence. “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
Finally, his head dropped to his chest and he murmured, “It is finished”
At that moment the curtain in the sanctuary of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, rocks split apart, and tombs opened. The bodies of many godly men and women who had died were raised from the dead. They left the cemetery after Jesus’ resurrection, went into the holy city of Jerusalem, and appeared to many people. The Roman officer and the other soldiers at the crucifixion were terrified by the earthquake and all that had happened. They said, “This man truly was the Son of God!”
(The New Living Translation: Matthew 27:51-54)
Sunday morning His tomb was empty. But my mind will never be empty of the images of that Friday morning on that little hill outside Jerusalem.
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