A reflection on Matthew 27:57-66 and Job 14:1-14 for the Easter Vigil.
by Andrew Stephens-Rennie
God, it was awful.
I don’t know if you were there, don’t know if you care or how you’d react if you were. As for me, let me just say it again to be clear: it’s nothing if not an awful, God-forsaken mess.
All I can feel – all any of us can feel – is the oppressive weight of death. How can you not feel it hanging? The air weighs a thousand tonnes.
A millstone around my neck. Dragging me under, crushing me, striking me down. Breathless, lungs screaming for air. Like I’m hanging on the cross next to him, fighting for breath. Fluid in my lungs, salty tears filling my eyes, I can almost feel the spear in my side. It’s nothing, if not an awful, God-damned mess.
In my anguish, in this deep, wounded pain, words come to me from across the divide, across hundreds of years, and I find myself covered in ashes of mourning, echoing Job’s lament:
Poor mortal, born of woman,
few of days and full of trouble.
Comes up like a flower, a fig tree, a mustard seed,
flees like a shadow and does not last. Read the rest of this entry »
