Come with me, if you will, and consider: Are we living people with dead memories of mob and mockery? Try to remember .... if you can ... it wasn't pretty, or antiseptic, or lily-white .... Listen ...Listen to the rabble scream and curse, "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!" Cringe with every lash ... count them up to forty ... if you dare .. forty heavy, searing lashes ... raw, bleeding skin .. pulverized misery .. agonized brutality!
Feel the thrust of thorns, piercing splinters, pushed down, gouged in, twisted on His brow. Taste the blood and salty sweat mixed with slimy spit.. feel them scald His festered flesh, see Him turn the other cheek.
Lift the massive cross .. if you can .. try to drag it through the crowd, that mad, jeering, taunting, hate-mongering mob ..Try to bear its crushing weight. Strain with every weakening fall and all the while endure the scorching thirst .. thirst that never ceased. Go with Christ the second mile. Plod ever upward to the skull .. Golgotha! ... where ridicule, sarcastic jibes besieged the Son of Torture ten-thousand times ten-thousand!
Crucifixion! Spike nails ... jarring plunge of cross set upright deep in earth .. agony .. nausea .. relentttless heat of sun .. dry, parched throat, cracked lips that whispered "father, forgive them, they know not what they do .." (did you hear Him?)
Stare at His body haging there for all the squalid mass ... called humankind... us! Gaze on His face, if you dare ... God's only Son who knew no sin... who took children on His lap. Christ, Son of God and Son of man, who healed and comforted others. Christ, our Lord, hanging there bereft! Dying between two thieves .. and all the while .. we watched .. or hid .. or ran ....
No, it wasn't pretty, or antiseptic, or lily-white .. that first Easter Season, was it ? Listen .. feel .. taste .. see .. touch. Remember Christ, crucified .. for us.