To be honest, I am not fully sure that I can sincerely confess that it is what we need. I kind of accept it in my head, but do I expect God to be like that? I do not find it surprising that the people of Jerusalem wanted to crucify Him and somewhat admire their zeal, even. When you really think about it, putting aside the cultural familiarity, Christ crucified is the stumbling block.
Yes, it is, he is the stumbling block. But I misunderstood what you meant. I thought this verse was about the need to have another human being grieving with us, the need not to be alone in an indifferent universe. There's a terrible dichotomy in Christianity between God as a loving, caring father, and God sacrificing his son in order to "save" us from the original sin, and this sin was just a desire to know, to be fully aware. I became an atheist because I can't reconcile this inconsistency, that in order to achieve an all-encompassing harmony, an innocent must suffer. In the words of Ivan Karamazov, "I hasten to give back my entrance ticket."
A solidarity so total that God lived, and suffered with us, the despair of abandonment by God — or, that certainly is how it feels much of the time. You cannot make this stuff up! Only eye-witnesses to the real event, who heard those words with their own ears, could have thought of that.
I wrote this poem many months ago and read Mark 15:37 just yesterday. Secularly speaking, I find St. Mark to be a literary genius in that he did not specify what Jesus cried out before death, unlike the other Evangelists. (But can anything be completely secular?) All the human suffering and longing, the human condition as a whole contained in one single cry. I might be too pessimistic in understanding humanity, though.
So powerful. Thank you.
Thank you. As you can tell, I borrowed a lot from the Psalmist(s) and St. Mark.
"but The Son of Man cried
With a loud voice; And I
Have looked for none but
One that would grieve together with me."
That's all we can have, but it is what we need.
To be honest, I am not fully sure that I can sincerely confess that it is what we need. I kind of accept it in my head, but do I expect God to be like that? I do not find it surprising that the people of Jerusalem wanted to crucify Him and somewhat admire their zeal, even. When you really think about it, putting aside the cultural familiarity, Christ crucified is the stumbling block.
Yes, it is, he is the stumbling block. But I misunderstood what you meant. I thought this verse was about the need to have another human being grieving with us, the need not to be alone in an indifferent universe. There's a terrible dichotomy in Christianity between God as a loving, caring father, and God sacrificing his son in order to "save" us from the original sin, and this sin was just a desire to know, to be fully aware. I became an atheist because I can't reconcile this inconsistency, that in order to achieve an all-encompassing harmony, an innocent must suffer. In the words of Ivan Karamazov, "I hasten to give back my entrance ticket."
A solidarity so total that God lived, and suffered with us, the despair of abandonment by God — or, that certainly is how it feels much of the time. You cannot make this stuff up! Only eye-witnesses to the real event, who heard those words with their own ears, could have thought of that.
I wrote this poem many months ago and read Mark 15:37 just yesterday. Secularly speaking, I find St. Mark to be a literary genius in that he did not specify what Jesus cried out before death, unlike the other Evangelists. (But can anything be completely secular?) All the human suffering and longing, the human condition as a whole contained in one single cry. I might be too pessimistic in understanding humanity, though.