Reliving The Passion #33

Mark 15:34–36

And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabach-thani?” which means, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

And some of the bystanders hearing it said, “Behold, he is calling Elijah.”

And one ran and, filling a sponge full of vinegar, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait. Let’s see whether Elijah will come to take him down.”

Shh! Be quiet! Listen! Who is that?

Listen: somebody’s running. You can hear the mudguzzled footsteps. A fast potching sound. You just can’t see. It’s too dark to see. It’s night in the midst of the afternoon.

And who could understand the cry of “the King of the Jews,” Jesus of Nazareth, him in the middle? Nobody knows his trouble. No one can make sense of that wailing: Eloi! Eloi!

But someone’s running downhill, toward the supplies the soldiers brought. A man—it might be a woman—squats. A splashing, a thrusting of something into liquid in a jug. Then dripping—pulling something out of the liquid again. Holding it over the surface, drip, drip. Ha! Do you know what you’re hearing?

The dark figure now lifts a long stick—a staff? a reed, perhaps?—from the shadows on the hillside, and rises, and runs back toward the central cross, all the while trying to balance a floppy object the size of a hand on the end of the stick, murmuring, “Wait, wait.” The whispering figure extends the stick up to the beard, up to the mouth of Jesus. “Here. Drink this.”

Well! Do you understand? In the middle of his agony, someone seeks to soothe him. It’s a sponge, sopped full of vinegar, a sour wine. It’s a pitifully poor medicinal, to be sure, but a gesture of kindness nonetheless—and the best this minister could think of.

And, as Jesus makes hungry sucking sounds at the sponge, the good Samaritan says, “Let’s see if Elijah will come to take him down.” An empty piety, a very old legend: that the prophet would rescue righteous people in their distress. Worse than empty, it’s a blunt misunderstanding of Jesus’ cry and of his passion—of Jesus himself. Nonetheless, it is the desire of a kind soul, however ignorant.

Who is this? Who responds with such a pitiful ministration? There was a woman who tried to give him this same drink six hours ago, just before they hoisted him aloft. He refused then. He accepts now.

Whose gift has he accepted?

Is this that woman again? Or a man? A Roman (but what Roman would know even the rude legends about Elijah)? A Jew, then (but what Jew would not understand “Eloi” in his native Aramaic)? Neither Jew nor Roman? A stranger, maybe? An enigma, surely. A puzzle, so far as the story goes: one by nature blind to the nature of Christ, believing more fervently in pious legends, but kind. Kind, withal. Moved to pity and to serve another’s suffering. A helpless, hopeless sympathizer. A human, indeed. Humanity itself, perhaps, caught in a dismal daytime night. Yes, yes: it is you. It is your gift, your effort, your heart, you.

You, in your worldly form, before your second birth, the very one whom Jesus came to save, here serving him to the best of your human ability—kind, withal.

You.

I do not know you, Jesus. Not wholly.

But you know me altogether. You knit me in my mother’s womb. And anywhere I might go, in body or in spirit, there are you ahead of me.

Perhaps we people will ever be strangers in part and puzzles to one another, always a little lonely. But you, Lord, have searched me and known me. You have searched and loved and saved me even in my ignorance. I was a nice guy—but nice merely, kind only, and dying, till you died for me. More than water, then, and more than vinegar.

All praise to you!

Amen.