Psalm 22:1-21
Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Hebrews 10:1-25
John 18:1-40,19:1-37
God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing — or should we say ‘seeing’? there are no past tenses in God — the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath’s sake, hitched up. If I may dare the biological image, God is a ‘host’ who deliberately creates His own parasites; causes us to be that we may exploit and ‘take advantage of’ Him. Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves.
— from The Four Loves, by C.S. Lewis
The brutal way in which Jesus suffered and died that we may live is the contradiction God used to prove his love for us. This day, some 2,000 years after the Crucifixion, we are flies buzzing about a cross, seeking Jesus as our host, knowing this love is our salvation.
May we always remember this barbarous act of love.
