The Point of the Nails

Date added: 29/05/2020

THE POINT OF THE NAILS

  Luke 23:26-47, 24:45-48

Sins aren’t erased

by a finger

pushing the cancel button:

They’re absorbed

by a body

pushed around and broken.

Surrounded by

mocking curiosity,

derisive frivolity,

vindictive invective,

Jesus dies,

declared innocent by

governor, criminal and soldier.

As bread is his body

and wine is his blood,

He, King of the Jews,

is his people.

His death crowns their pain

under pagan regimes:

He is smashed for their sins

and the nations’ gain.

He is raised with a transformed body,

not as a flimsy ghost;

not like a thin carbon-copy,

nor even the original

returned in the post.

He is raised to glorious new life,

not back into the same,

not like Lazarus his friend

who has to die again.

As the Jews were his crucified flesh,

So the Church is his glorified body.

© Graham Kings, Nourishing Connections (Canterbury Press, 2020).

first published on Fulcrum April 2014, also on Spiritual Journeys.