In reference to this picture of the crucifixion (see right, based on the drawing from St John of the Cross presumably), I said to my Year 7s, "Who do you think was looking down on the crucified Christ?" They got it pretty quick. "God?"they wondered. "But that's not right!" one of them said. Indeed. (Ordinary/pagan) Divinity dies at the foot of the cross. And the gospel can take root. The God of the crucified risen Jesus, not the plenipotentate of ordinary religion.
Golgotha
Finally, one arrives at the place
Of the skull because there is nowhere
Else to go. And there before the face
Of bone one pauses in despair.
The culmination of all evil
Is displayed before one’s eyes:
Man’s heart conspired with the devil
And cared little for disguise.
Yet if, the sight of the cross,
a light is struck on the rough of the brain
and the mind conceives all bar this is vain,
There comes a voice that reassures: Thus
is the seed of tenderness sown
in the cleft of the heart of stone.
________ANDREW LANSDOWN_____________
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