Tag: passion of Christ

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Bible Challenge 41: Messiah – The Lamb of God

It’s been a roller-coaster week.  After whining and complaining about his triumphant entry into the city, Jesus’ enemies have been trying to catch him in a verbal stumble, but he’s always a step ahead of them. They are almost in despair until an opportunity opens: unbeknownst to them, a greater enemy has entered on the scene, and the supposed Messiah now has a new struggle to face.  The greatest one of his life.

To find out who it was, and to download the free .pdf, with scripture passages, discussion/though questions, and family-centered activities click below:

Bible Reading Challenge Week 41: Messiah – The Lamb of God

(This is a continuation of a series of posts about the “whole story” of the Bible.  I plan to run one every week, on Tuesdays, with a printable PDF.  The printable includes a brief 2-3 paragraph introduction, Bible passages to read, a key verse, 5-7 thought/discussion questions, and 2-3 activities for the kids.  Here’s the Overview of the entire Bible series.)

Previous: Week 40: Messiah – The Last Days

Next: Week 42: The Church – He’s Alive!

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Bible Challenge 39: Messiah – The Road to Jerusalem

He’s a sensation.  He attracts people, not just for what he does but for what he says.  And, in some sense, what he is.  Though probably not especially handsome or prepossessing, don’t you imagine there was something about him–some literally otherworldly quality–that drew crowds?

Then, at the height of this rock-star ministry, he takes a turn.  A literal turn: Luke says, “He set his face toward Jerusalem.”  The verb indicates a very purposeful, no-looking-back journey toward a particular destination.   And for a particular reason, which he shares with his inner circle.  At least three times he tells them plainly what his purpose is, and they refuse to believe him.  His disciples, and probably everyone else, assume he’s going to claim his crown.  They’re right, in a way; they just don’t know what kind of crown it will be.

But first he has to get there.  And the Road to Jerusalem begins with the most vital question anyone can ever ask.

To find out what the question was, click below for the printable .pdf of this week’s challenge, with more questions,  scripture passages, and activities:

Bible Reading Challenge Week 39: The Road to Jerusalem

(This is a continuation of a series of posts about the “whole story” of the Bible.  I plan to run one every week, on Tuesdays, with a printable PDF.  The printable includes a brief 2-3 paragraph introduction, Bible passages to read, a key verse, 5-7 thought/discussion questions, and 2-3 activities for the kids.  Here’s the Overview of the entire Bible series.)

Previous: Week 38: Messiah – Signs and Wonders

Next: Week 40: Messiah – The Last Days

 

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Why Blood Atonement?

Early this month I sat in on a talk about the Shroud of Turin.

I don’t know what to think about the Shroud, but whether genuine or faked it’s a stunning piece of work.  The image of a crucified man is somehow burned into the cloth, which has not deteriorated near as badly as a fabric dating from the first century, or even from the 7th or 13th.  It’s fine linen woven in a herringbone pattern, very expensive for the time—only a wealthy man could buy it.  This costly fabric, and the costly myrrh and aloes found on it, were put to what a contemporary observer would consider a mean, lowly, thoroughly inappropriate use.

The man: his face is bruised, swollen at the cheekbones.  Eyes almost squeezed shut.  The nose is shoved a little out of place and the forehead clenched.  One shoulder is dislocated and one knee appears to be pushed harder against the cloth because rigor mortis set in while he was still on the cross (that is, he was thoroughly dead).  Those who took him down and wrapped him up would have had to force his arms and legs into place.  There’s a spear wound in his side and on his back are 110-120 lash marks left by the typical Roman scourge of three tails.  The body is naked, the hands crossed over his genitals for decency’s sake.

I gave my back to those who strike

. . . his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance . . .

He was despised, and we esteemed him not

He was bruised for our transgressions

. . . and with his stripes we are healed

I don’t like sermons on the torture of Christ.  I don’t like detailed descriptions of his physical suffering or brutal, humiliating treatment.  I didn’t see The Passion of the Christ and probably never will.  I’m squeamish about blood and gore on the big screen, but also, it’s him.  It causes me to tremble.

But there on the cloth is the crucified man—is it him?  It’s somebody with a very specific description: Jewish male, 5’11”, well-built and muscular, type AB+ blood.  Battered and bloodied, pierced and shamed.  A curse, and accursed.

Whoever it is, it represents a hideous object planted—thrown, hurled—at the center of human history.  This is what it cost him.  This is what I cost him.

I’ve been having a discussion with a friend about theories of atonement.  She quotes Farther Richard Rohr, a Franciscan: “The terrible and un-critiqued premise is that God could need payment, and even a very violent transaction, to be able to love and accept [his own] children!”

Well.  Over ways are not his ways, and so on.  But Fr. Rohr’s premise is wrong.  It’s not that God requires payment to love those who are already his children.  God’s justice requires payment in order for God’s love to make confirmed and unrepentant rebels into children.

He takes sin very seriously; we don’t.  Since the fall, it’s impossible for corrupted flesh and blood to inherit the kingdom–unless the kingdom comes as flesh and blood and gives his back to those who strike.  He knows the cost; we don’t.

Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him, and cause him to suffer,

and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

The Lord shed the blood of an animal—probably more than one—to cover the shame of the first humans, our parents.  He descended in fire at Sinai, protecting his holiness with smoke and lightning, to prescribe a temporary means of sanctification by blood: “You will be my people and I will be your God.”  But not your Father—not yet.  Not your Father by blood, until his own Son appears, in flesh and blood.

I don’t like the torture part, because I don’t like to think I had anything to do with it.  But that mark there—that’s from my playing holy while acting carnally.  That clenched brow is for my continual glory-seeking.  In my youth I sinned blatantly and today I sin subtly, in a way no one sees but me.  And him.

Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?  How repulsive is that thought to our sophisticated minds.  The ancient pagans used to drench themselves in the blood of freshly-slaughtered, still-bellowing bulls, in orgies of self-abnegation—aren’t we way, way beyond that?

Not really. God knows something we don’t: sin is serious.  He is serious.  His justice will see it punished, but his love will see the punishment that brought us peace fall upon Him, and heal us with those stripes.

 

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Good Friday

Let the scriptures be fulfilled, he said, when they came to take him away.  What scriptures?  Well, all of it.  All of Scripture is a wrestling match between God and man: how can a holy God accommodate sinful people?  You sense the struggle between love and justice throughout the Old Testament: “I hate, I despise your feasts” clashes with “How can I give you up, O Israel?”  Reading through Isaiah (to take just one example), if I can say it reverently, is almost like confronting a schizophrenic personality, as the Lord’s righteousness wrestles with his mercy.

Here is where they reconcile:

 

Steadfast love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and peace kiss each other.

Faithfulness springs up from the ground and righteousness looks down from the sky.  Psalm 85:10-11

And then, it’s Sunday morning.

Click here for a printable .pdf version of this image.

 

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The Strange Case of Malchus’ Ear

It was all very confusing, you see.  There was a scuffle, and a clash of metal, and torchlight bobbling and wobbling wildly—and then a scream.  Everything skidded to a halt for the moment; all eyes went to the poor man who found himself in the middle, now sobbing and clutching the side of his head.  Blood trickled between his fingers.  “Find it—find it!” he yelled then, stabbing at the ground with his other hand.  Seconds passed while men’s minds turned slowly over and figured out what he meant: there it was on the ground, a forlorn scrap of skin and cartilage: an ear.

(Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John: isn’t it strange that they all record this? Such an odd little detail, especially in comparison to everything else that was going down.  Matthew and John were there, and Mark might have been too, if he was the young man wrapped in a linen sheet who showed up at the party for some reason.  Luke would have heard the story from eyewitnesses.  So maybe that’s why.  Or maybe it’s because Malchus’s ear was the only casualty in a shortlived revolution, the anticipated coup that ended with a single command–)

“No more of this!”

A sword lowers in a hesitant hand.  The would-be prisoner takes command, but instead of fighting he’s healing, one last time. Instead of calling out the troops  he’s speaking one last word as Rabbi, and the word is not about truth or righteousness or saving the world—it’s about fulfilling the scriptures.*

One sword stroke can’t stop the plan woven into the ages, but before Messiah is crushed for our iniquities, he raises a hand in a temporary halt, bends down, and picks up the ear.

He has straightened bones, restored sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf, even called a few souls back from the grave, so this act of healing is nothing to him.  It’s tender and telling, though: I don’t need your swords or strategies.  I want your ears.

The parade moves on and the drama plays out, but what about Malchus?  And his ear?

I would like to think that, once Jesus touched it, the ear was his, good as new.  And Malchus too.  For the first few days, the incident in the garden was forgotten—and Malchus too.  The crucifixion of the Nazarene, and the deep disappointment of those who hoped for something better, was all the news.  If Jesus had stayed dead, even that news would have withered away within a generation—

But early on the third day Malchuis woke from his fitful sleep with a peculiar buzzing in his right ear.  Or not really a buzz—more like a song with words he could not understand.  But the sound filled him with an almost unbearable sweetness.  It sang of memories and hopes, achievement and expectation above all he had ever asked or thought.  His mind, lately roiled with memories of torchlight, flashing swords, and searing pain, quieted itself like a weaned child with its mother, listening.  He put an arm around his sleeping wife and listened.  He shushed her querulous complaints and listened.  His heart warmed with compassion for his difficult son and sickly daughter while listening.  When the sun was fully up and the city shook itself awake and rose to the first day of the week, the song faded like a dream.

By noon rumors were flying in the electrified air.  Several people had visited the empty tomb and seen the limp winding clothes with their own eyes.  The scribes and priests were quashing rumors left and right: pay no attention; it’s a trick; move along; nothing to see here.

Malchus, a loyal Levite, had served the high priest all his life—first Annas, then Caiaphas.  He knew them well, and never thought to question an authoritative word from either of them.  That day, authoritative words were ringing off the walls: It’s a trick!  It’s a lie!  It never happened!

But when Malchus first heard the news from a fellow servant, everything made sense, especially those puzzling scriptures the Rabbis loved to argue over.  Messiah’s last touch, on the ear he restored, flamed to life again.  The sweet song spun off words.  He was filled with a joy inexpressible and full of glory.

What happened to Malchus?  Probably an ordinary span of days ending in ordinary death.  The song in his ear would diminish with age until he couldn’t even remember it, but if that life was planted in him, he is hearing it now.

He who has an ear to hear, let him hear!

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*Matt. 26:53-54.  “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than ten legions of angels?  But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?”

Mark 15:49-50.  “Day after day I was with you in the temple, and you did not seize me.  But let the Scriptures be fulfilled.”

Luke 22:37.  “For I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in me: ‘And he was numbered among the transgressors.’ For what was written about me has its fulfillment.”  (Luke records this earlier, in the upper room, but it’s in the context of a conversation about swords.)

John 18:11.  “Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?”

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The Accuser

Accuse my accusers, Yahweh; attack my attackers.

Grip your shield and buckler—Up, and help me!

Brandish your lance and pike in the face of my pursuers,

Tell my soul, “I am your salvation.”        (Ps. 35:1-3, New Jerusalem Bible)

Dozens of Coptic Christians killed during Palm Sunday church bombings in Egypt.

I’ve never done a survey, but I would guess that at least one third David’s Psalms are cries to the Lord about his enemies.  This one is especially passionate: he’s giving orders to God, almost—“Get up!”  The man certainly collected enemies in his long and exciting life, but I was never sure how to apply these Psalms to me.  I don’t have enemies.  And if I did, should I be prodding the Lord into the ring to punch them out for me?  It seems antithetical to, say, Isaiah 53 where the Lamb is led to the slaughter yet never opens his mouth.  The Lord’s true servant, it seems, meekly takes all the abuse hurled at him with no appeals for intervention.

Speaking of Isaiah 53, did you ever notice how the servant’s tormentors are never identified?  They are either abstract qualities (“by oppression and judgment he was taken away”) or shadowed by passive voice, with the victim as the subject, front and center: he was led, wounded, crushed, afflicted.  In the Psalms, the enemies are never identified either.  Evil snarls like a lion and bares its teeth like a jackal, but in the end it has no personality.

But evil has very real causality.  What to do about it?  These Psalms do represent moral progress, in a way.  David wrote them in an age of blood guilt and honor killing, not that far removed, culturally, from Lamech’s time: I killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me.  If Cain’s revenge is sevenfold, Lamech’s is seventy-sevenfold (Gen. 4:23-24).   David is at least asking a higher power to intercede for him, knowing that the Lord’s judgment is perfect.

But notice his complaint: violent men accuse him, lie about him, gloat and jeer at him, tear his flesh, wait in ambush.  He must be  speaking metaphorically, since there’s no record of David being broken or severely wounded.  From a physical angle, his looks like a charmed life.

But Messiah was literally treated in the way David complains of, so literally it makes us cringe.  Gloated over? Jeered at?  (Why don’t you come down from that cross?)  Torn? (His flesh hung in ribbons.)  Lied about?  (He said he could tear down this temple.)  Accused?  (He’s trying to make himself king!)

Yet when David says Accuse! Christ says Forgive.

When Lamech boasts of seventy-seven fold, Christ pours out seventy times seven.

When David says, Rise up O Lord, Christ says, Here I am.

What David asked for, he got—only the blows he wished to fall on his tormentors fell on the tormented instead.  And ever since, when righteous men and women suffer, they can at least know that the judgment has fallen, the accusations made, the attack carried out.  They can find themselves in Messiah’s bloody footprints.

Why doesn’t God intervene?  Ha already has.

Easy for me to say, in good health and comfort.  Does it apply to the Syrian Christian tormented in a refugee camp, or the North Korean Christian huddling in scraps against the cold and scrounging for insects and amphibians to eat raw?  It has to.

Tell my soul, “I am your salvation.”  That’s what the cross pleads, and what the empty tomb replies.

 

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Hallelujah!

My first Messiah performance was a university production augmented by community members.  I was one of the latter–a college dropout who didn’t know much about music but knew what I liked.  The director (I’ll call him Dr. Gunther) was passionate and volatile, the type who usually spells trouble for music departments.  By mid-term, he had already alienated half the faculty.  He dropped enough hints to indicate the nature of his faith: an artist’s Catholicism, invaluable as a source of inspiration but no use at all in curbing a rampant ego.

Gunther loved this music passionately, and over weeks of rehearsal had exhorted and molded the choir into a mean Messiah machine–or at least we thought so.  “I don’t care what your religion is, or even if you believe anything,” he told us after warm-up on performance night.  “But tonight–just for tonight–sing like you believe this.”

I already believed this, but was beginning to question why.  Why do some have faith and some don’t?  Was it entirely a choice, a Nietzschean “will to believe,” or did the Holy Spirit just muscle His way in to claim this lumpen territory for Christ?  The performance didn’t answer that question, but showed me what (or Who) mattered more.

The first chorus is a ringing proclamation: “And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.”  Each part takes turns asserting, “the mouth of the Lord has spoken it!”  If God makes a promise, we can take it to the bank.  Gross darkness covers the people, the bass informs us (to the accompaniment of low strings swirling like fog).  “But the Lord shall arise upon them.”  As his voice climbs the scale and the minor tone brightens, we hear the dawn.

The fulfillment of God’s promise is announced first to lowly shepherds.  The air fills with the rustling of wings as though the angels are too excited to hold still.  “Glory to God in the highest!” bursts out of the heavenly band, with “Good will!” tossed about in joyful benediction.  It’s too soon over (but listen as the last angel leaves the sky, in a quiver of violins).  Next, the babe has grown up and is walking among us, leading his flock in pastoral calm.  “Come unto him, all ye that labor . . .”

But Part II opens with “Behold the Lamb of God,” covered in blood.  The music itself, with its staggering intervals, lashing chords and jarring dissonances, lays on the stripes.  But why this sudden dance tune, incongruously lively?  “All we like sheep have gone astray”–can’t you hear it?  Giddy, foolish sheep, turning every one to his own way, dashing madly toward the devil’s pit, skidding faster and faster–until the basses drag the bleeding Messiah forward again: “And the Lord hath laid on him–” (“on Him! on Him!” every voice echoes in stunned amazement) “the iniquity of us all.”

Part III: The resurrection does not receive a grand choral anthem; instead the tenor assures us, almost matter-of-factly, that God “did not suffer [His] holy one to see corruption.”  Well, of course not!  The King of glory enters heaven to a tune both regal and merry, exhorting the very gates to “lift up your heads.”  What’s more, His people are destined to follow him there.  “The trumpet shall sound” (and so it does, in a stirring duet with the bass soloist) and we shall be changed into creatures worthy enough to shout, “Worthy is the lamb.”

The pounding chorus of “Blessing and honor” deals a joyful death-blow to the notion that heaven consists of sitting on clouds and strumming harps–to spend eternity singing such praises to such a Savior will be glory indeed!  The incredible “Amen” layers the voices of a multitude, of every tribe and nation, each in his own pitch and tone, woven into perfect harmony by Christ Himself.

At the end of that performance the choir was pumped, all excitedly congratulating each other and our sweating director.  (At the same time the orchestra was muttering that Dr. Gunther didn’t know how to direct, and the alto soloist resented some of the looks he had given her.)  I just sat there on the risers for a while, an emotional wreck.  No wonder; I’d been given a surround-sound refresher course in the gospel, plus a glimpse of heaven.

The coming of faith is when God inhabits time–the music, the images, the controversies and the daily grind–and makes it glow.  He was there, and my belief was neither act of will nor involuntary takeover.  It was Him, and it will always be Him, forever and ever.

Amen.

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Among the Scoffers

And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know now what they do.” . . . And the people stood by, watching, but the rulers scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One!”  Luke 23:34-35

Rulers: If you are the Chosen One . . .

Save yourself!

Soldiers: If you are the King of the Jews

Save yourself!

Criminals: If you are Messiah

Save yourself! and us!

Messiahs breath catches, snags on the nails, streams out in shreds.  No . . .

Not me and you

not both and all

no and–but or.

It’s one or the other.

Save myself or you?

I choose you.  I choose . . .

from the other side, a whisper choked and raw,

barely raised above the mutters and jeers:

“Lord? . . . that kingdom you talked about?

When it’s finally yours–remember me?”

Bloody fingers slowly uncurl and stretch; the right hand of one to the left of the other.

When it is mine, it will also be yours.

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Criminals All

Two others, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him.  Luke 23:32

“Up! It’s your time!”

Their names are unknown to us: One and Two.  Left and Right.  As we meet them, they’ve known for some time that the day was coming but they weren’t sure when—like all of us.

They’ve lived their lives in a haze, yelling from the very first hour: give me food!  Give me warmth!  Give me shelter, give me love!  Give me that shiny thing, and this tasty thing, and that thrilling thing, and this intoxicating thing that will make me lose consciousness for a while so I’ll forget how unsatisfied I am (like all of us).

Unwilling to make do with that they had, they became thieves; interlopers, snatching bright moments from the dull days, decking their lives with desperate finery.  They bargained with the time but time always wins; sooner came before later, and they were caught.

Like all of us.

“Up!  It’s your time!”

Pulled from a filthy cell, loaded down with heavy cross-pieces, they are herded like cattle to the Walk of the Damned.  Terror blinds them; only gradually do they perceive the splatters of blood on the path before them.  And then the crowds: Dear people, is all this acclaim for us?  No, couldn’t be: there’s another poor wretch ahead of them, who’s doing all the bleeding and attracting all the noise.  And what noise!  Wails of sorrow, mocking jeers, furious catcalls packed into a multi-legged clamor, punctuated by stings of a whip applied to make them move faster.

Is there no escape?  No way out?  They’re moving down a hollow tube with iron walls and no joints—no vulnerable places that can be exploited.  Life—once full of possibilities and angles and gaps, pleasure and pain, light and dark—now hardens, funneling them down to a single point they cannot see beyond.

As for all of us.thief

Down the road, through the gate, up a long, tortuous hill, the splintery crosspiece bearing down with every step. Still, they’d gladly keep walking forever—or even more gladly pull someone from the screeching throng to take their place  That scribe over there, his face so buckled you would have thought he was passing bricks, screaming his rage.  That smug-looking Pharisee or his grim-faced pal.  Any one of the contemptible Romans: illiterate peasants most of them, of no higher birth than a Jewish thief, who nonetheless lord over them every chance they got.  Even that wailing woman there, or the wide-eyed boy—pull one of those out of the mob, put this hunk of lumber on their back, and I’ll not protest.

Might feel guilty tomorrow of course, but there will always be another skin of wine and another willing woman to help me forget.

“Halt!”

Not today, though.

Rough hands throw the crosspiece on the ground, drag the two men aside and strip off their clothes.  A guard sizes up those pathetic garments with a calculating eye, deciding if he wants to gamble for them.  Though they know they’ll soon be beyond it, shame stabs each of the condemned as they stand exposed before the crowd.  They’ve been observers at scenes like this, and well know the kind of jokes and jibes passing among the ranks right now.

The crosses are being nailed together.  The two thieves, pathetically trying to cover their private parts with unbound hands, become aware of the third condemned man.  He too is naked except for a grotesque garnish—a circle of spiky thorns pressed down on his head.  The soldiers are calling him King of the Jews.  The thorns are supposed to be a crown—their idea of satirical wit.  The two thieves realize, at about the same time, who this is: Jesus of Nazareth.  They’ve heard of him—who hasn’t?  And what Jew, however impious, didn’t harbor some hope, however sketchy, that this was the one: Messiah.

The screaming mob now surrounding Skull Hill must have had the same hope—what else could explain their rage?  In the last moment before the hammer falls, when they are seized and stretched out, when extra hands are called to hold down their twitching bodies, they feel it too: absolute rage, consuming fury.  Like a child of wrath, foolish, disobedient, malicious, envious, full of hatred for themselves, for others, for God,

Like all of us—

Screams rip the bland blue sky.

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Daughters of Jerusalem

And as they led him away, they seized one Simon of Cyrene, wo was coming in from the country, and laid on him the cross, to carry it behind Jesus.  And there followed him a great multitude of the people and of women who were mourning and lamenting for him.  Luke 23:26-27

He’s on the road again, still followed by “a multitude,” but this time with a cross on his back, staggering under the weight and bleeding from a thousand cuts.  Like a crushed dog crawling along the path, like a mangle bird, like a worm—something you turn away from and try to erase from your mind.  Even if there were no crowd, the women track him easily by the blood splashed along the way.  So much blood!  And when they reach him, he has collapsed under the weight of the heavy crosspiece.

carrying cross

There is shouting—jeering, weeping—the Roman soldiers in charge of the execution have called out an unsuspecting countryman to carry it behind the condemned man.  It’s not kindness; they just want to be over and done with it.  It’s some distance to go before Skull Hill, where executions take place, and  there needs to be enough left of the prisoner to nail up when they get there.  The clueless countryman, whose name is Simon, looks terrified.  He was on his way to the temple before the crowd swept over him—why did these alien soldiers single him out?  He barely understands their pidgin Aramaic—for all he knows, he may be headed for his own execution.

Everything the Master said about being turned over to his enemies and killed is echoing in the women’s minds. They women heard it all, along with the disciples, but they never pictures this.  Words are so clean and sterile; this is battered and bloody and helpless. The women from Galilee try to shield him from his mother, but then he stops and turns around.  In spite of the angry shouts of the soldiers, no one strikes him, and Mary (the one who poured oil on his feet) receives the distinct impression that he himself is orchestrating the entire scene.  How strange!  How terrible.

His eyes are the only part of him not bloodied.  Time stops as his eyes linger on the women, his long-time traveling companions.  Then he glances toward another cluster of women who have been following with loud laments.  These are well-born ladies of the holy city who follow political prisoners to their deaths, bringing jars of vinegar and gall to dull the pain.  With a look, he silences their wailing.

“Don’t weep for me, daughters of Jerusalem.  Weep for yourselves and your children.  The day is coming when you’ll beg the mountains to kill you quickly.  If judgment falls like this on the innocent, how will it deal with the guilty?”

The old order—eye for eye, tooth for tooth, blood for guilt—simple justice of the sort that everyone understands, is wildly out of whack.  This man has done nothing wrong: Pilate said it, Herod confirmed it, everyone knows it.  But what they may not know:

This man has done everything right.

Who can say that about anyone?  The wretched stooped-over figure stands condemned, turning blind justice on her head and rendering her carefully-weighted balance scales useless.  If such punishment falls on him, what petty thief, careless gossip, casual liar can have a prayer . . . .

“Move on!” shouts the nearest guard, more confused than angry.  The bloody face sets forward again, the bloody feet stumble on, leaving bright mottled prints on the stones that would have cried out in anguish* had he allowed it.

Luke 19:40

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