We want
Barabbas! We want Barabbas!
The sun is almost as blinding as
the noise is deafening as you stand on the balcony before the crowd shouting
your name, exhilarating and incomprehensible all at once amidst furious cries
for the crucifixion of the silent man standing next to you. You see his
broken body bloody, beaten, battered and bruised, all for nothing that you know
of, for no transgression committed and no law broken. You wonder why he’s here,
why he hasn’t stood up for himself, and the crowd grows louder.
We want
Barabbas! We want Barabbas! Crucify Jesus of Nazareth! Crucify him!
So this is him, you think to yourself. This is Jesus, the Nazorean. You’ve
heard rumors of this odd man walking about Galilee and Jerusalem pretending to
be God himself, and you chuckle at the absurdity of his story as you turn your
head again to study this lunatic. His eyes meet your gaze, and in an instant
you find that his eyes seem to see you more wholly than any others ever have,
seeing somewhere deep inside of you, seeing you to your core. You know at once
that his claims are true; there is something extraordinary about this man,
something that warms your innermost being and draws you to him. You find
yourself wondering if you’re gazing into the eyes of Mercy, Mercy that is
drenched with blood and lashed an inch away from death. You ask yourself if
you’ve ever looked into such divine eyes full of sympathy and grace and not the
last hint of self-pity.
Crucify
him, crucify Jesus! We want Barabbas!
You hear your name shouted over
and over but suddenly, after holding his gaze for only a moment and forced to
look away from a newfound sense of shame, you feel panicked at the thought of
his dying, something pure and just rising up within you and begging the crowd
to stop, to stop condemning this beautifully innocent man next to you who has
deserved nothing he’s received, feeling the need to remind them of your own
guilt and shame and the awful things you’ve done, feeling two feet small beside
this man from Nazareth, from the humble town of Bethlehem.
And as the crowd clamors for his
death and you panic on the inside, you watch in desperation as he says nothing.
You know that he knows. You know
he knows even your thoughts at that moment, the thoughts of everyone begging
for his murder in the crowd, and he says nothing. Surely he’s heard about your
rebellion, your theft, your murder, your sin. He knows. You can feel it. You
can see it in his eyes. Certainly he knows that if he doesn’t speak up that
you’ll be set free and that he will die an agonizing death.
And still he says nothing.
We want
Barabbas! We want Barabbas!
You begin to get angry, wanting
him to stand up and say something, to tell the crowd to shut up and declare his
innocence. Stand up for yourself, Jesus, you think frantically as
your own name grows louder in your ears. You’re sending him every nonverbal
signal to fight, to rise up against this unfairness, to silence the crowd and
smite them for their hatred. Isn’t he supposed to be God, anyway?
He looks at you again, and you
can’t bear it. Anguished tears come because you can’t bear the love in the eyes
that know you so intimately. Your guilt sears through your skin, seeping
through every part of you, begging him to say anything for himself and not to
save you.
I don’t deserve it! your inner self screams at him, angrier by the minute. Don’t do this,
Jesus of Nazareth, self-proclaimed Son of God, I’m not worth it! Call on some
angels and get yourself out of here. Save yourself! The tears coat your
cheeks now, desperate for him to be set free, about to speak up and refuse to
let him do what you know he’s going to do anyway, to stop what you know is inevitable.
We want
Barabbas! We want Barabbas! Crucify Jesus of Nazareth! Crucify him!
You can’t stand it any longer.
You muster the courage to speak up for this strange man who will not speak up
for himself, unsure why he seems to know you without saying anything and why
you feel so strongly that you should save him. You clear your throat to shout
at the crowd, when…
“Barabbas,
you’re free to go,”
you
hear Pilate say.
Your world stops. Joy takes over
your heart. Freedom is yours at last. Your spirit rises up in celebration and a
smile begins to cross your face in the moment that you never thought would
come! At last, you’re free from the prison, free to go home and resume your
life! Can it be? The crowd is roaring, your pulse is racing, you can finally
taste the freedom you’ve longed for.
Then, back to reality.
Back to remembering.
Back to Jesus.
You remember who’s standing
beside you. You remember that your punishment goes somewhere, that because
you’re not receiving it, someone else is. Your eyes cut to the side,
barely and tentatively meeting the gaze of this man whose innocent life hangs
by a thread, and you know.
You know he’s going to do
it.
He’s going to die in the place
that is yours. To walk the road with a cross on his tattered back that should
be yours to carry. This man who doesn’t even know you and has done nothing is
going to place himself into the hands of cruel, Roman murderers to suffer a
painful, torturous death on a cross that bears your name. The shame seems
harder to bear than an actual cross.
The pure side of you rises up
again just before you leave the balcony, and you consider saying something to
him. For a brief moment you think of refusing the freedom, but again, he looks
at you. Through the sweat and blood that trickles down his bruised face, a
road map of suffering up to the thorns piercing his brow, he peers at you with
lively, twinkling eyes settled inside an earthly body that’s as good as
dead.
And you swear that in that
moment, in that one gaze, you see a hint of a smile on his face.
Through the scars and cuts and
blood and tears, a smile tells you to stay silent, to walk away and to let him
do this.
A smile that hinted at the fact
that maybe he knew he was going to do this all along, and maybe it was his
great joy and delight to stand here in your place. Maybe he’d known since
before time that this would happen and he’d still chosen to come here just to
save you. Just to set you free, right here, right now.
A smile that suggests he’d heard
your name echoing in his ears since before time began, but not from an angry
crowd — from the angels in heaven who have been rejoicing for
eternity over your life that he was planning to save before you ever did
anything wrong.
A smile that holds more Love than
anything you’ve ever seen
in the midst of the most pain
you’ve ever seen.
So you take his eyes’ advice and
you walk away, never to see him again in your life, knowing that your life
means his death.
And as you lie down to sleep that
night in your own home in your own bed, your guilt still on your mind but your
sins very much pardoned, your mind still reeling from the gaze in the eyes of
this man, this Jesus of Nazareth, you swear you hear a voice cry out in the
distance, and you begin to weep.
“Father, forgive.”
m
