I don’t remember it exactly – how I was born a dead woman walking. I just know I was. Marked for death. Born into gray, dreary days, where we all were marked for death. Kinda like Katniss Everdeen buying bread from Peta and hoping against all hope that her sister or she wouldn’t be picked for the Reaping. She just was. But so was everyone else.
I heard about Revolution, Salvation, and Hope, but I thought I could skate by on goodness, masking my death and being marked and finding a way out through following the rules. I was told how good I was til I believed it, until one day, I no longer did. The good girls were never good enough, and no one ever found a way out. We were dead men walking and that was that.
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It happened one night. They gathered together to break bread, fellowship and enjoy each other’s company, and remember the work they were doing. Little did they know that He had a plan that made their fellowship time a little different. When they came in, He asked to wash their feet. They’d just been discussing who would be the greatest in the kingdom, whenever the kingdom came. They didn’t know for certain, just that Jesus said to pray for the kingdom to come, and they had entered Jerusalem. Surely now was the time. Surely, now He would be made king, and each of them could take their place next to Him and receive the honor due them for saying yes when He said, “Come, follow.” What the men did not understand yet was that the man they wanted to call “King” would have to die in order for them to truly understand His love, power, and authority, and how everything He was doing was the betterment of the Law originally given to draw them to the One Most High. At least some of them knew that He was the Christ, the Messiah, and yet they didn’t really know what it meant that He was Messiah, the Christ. That death was inevitable, that suffering was at hand, that their only Hope would slip away almost quietly in the night, that freedom was coming.
And so, they did normal things like talk about who was the important one, who was loved the most. They ate, they drank, they wondered why He would wash their feet and then say that they were to do likewise. Kings don’t wash feet, now, do they? Surely, we as His closest don’t wash feet either? They wondered who would betray Him and why. They each had their own insecurities and humanities. And though Jesus told them, it would be Judas, they did not have eyes to see or ears to understand, so he left the table. Maybe he was giving money to the poor. Into the night he went.
He gave them a new command, but this command was an old command about to be made new. He said He was going away, and this command was lost as they wondered where in the world He was going. He was about to be King. He was about to solve the problems, right? They were afraid. They wanted to follow, and they wanted to know the way and the Father, and Jesus speaks all that He can to prepare them in so little time left for all the things they need to know before He leaves.
And then they walk, like they so often did. Through a garden and He tells them about the Vines and Father and this Love command He mentioned earlier. He stops at the Garden of Gethsemene to pray. He goes on alone, asking his men to pray for Him. But they sleep. While they sleep, He cries out the depths of His heart to Father, sweating drops of blood, pleading, “Please.” Love was greater than all the pleas.
The sleepers did not yet know what Love was. It was the command, but one broken Friday, they would feel as if Love had died. Because it would.
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It was one broken Friday, the day I died. I grew tired of playing all the games, of trying so hard and failing and falling deep into holes I could not climb out of off, tired of yelling for anyone to notice as they walked on by. I did what any sensible person would do who was tired of living, and I jumped headlong into the abyss.
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Judas came and gave Him a kiss. And things moved fast. Guards took Him into prison. A trial was arranged. He was found guilty, and then before the day was done, He hung on a cross. Body beaten and battered, the man they thought would be the king. All hope of humanity – dying. Hopeless. The sky black. The earth quaked. He was gone. Moments ago, they had eaten with Him, laughed with Him, been scared with Him, but now, He was gone. They were together, but still afraid, uncertain of what came next.
———
Instead of landing with a thud on the bottom of the abyss in shards, I awoke with a jolt with a man on a cross. I was in His body, and we were dying. Lifeless and frail, hanging on with no hope of living to be found, yet the world was not gray, and the strangest sensation of warmth was in His chest. The way He saw the world with eyes unlike the ones I’d had before, eyes that saw everything I never even knew existed. The magnificent colors. The Revolution of Change. The way He saw into the hearts of those in His sight. The way He knew I was there and held on tight to me without me knowing what to do. He was dying for me, because of me. So too, He was dying for them and because of them – those we could see and those with us together in that moment. The Power in Him I felt. I didn’t care if we died, as long as we were together forever. This Power was a Force unlike any I’d ever known. He held me close, and together we breathed our last, glorious breath. This is what Love was.
I awoke with a gasp. In the waking was the living. I was no longer a dead woman walking. I was being birthed again, into a new body. This time I had new eyes, the ones I’d seen on the Cross. Had He revived me somehow? No, He was living in me. He was alive, and we were free.
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