Good Friday Meditation 2004 Poem by James Tipp

When they came I stood alone, empty of emotion
My prayers had drawn everything from me
Exhausted me in a new way, my father seemed removed
This loneliness was unnatural to me, his voice an echo
I wondered if this is how it feels to be without God.
Something I had never known since birth.

The soldiers crowded around, these temple guards
Who smell of smoke and oil and leather and now,
They also smell of fear, strange how fear has a smell
I smelt that smell so often in my life on those who came
Those who crept in the night to speak to me
Afraid their credentials might be tainted by their contact

I smell the Temple before I see it, the smell of blood
It hangs like a curtain over Jerusalem’s Passover
John called me ‘The lamb of God’, do they require my blood
Is this the end that makes sense of all I have come to do?
I do not fear this place although I fear for it,
My message has no part in this as God will show somehow.

The priest in their piety cling to power like drowning men
Expediency always taints those who have much to loose
One man against the establishment, against they claim history
There will be no contest, I will not play their game,
I begin to feel where this will end and I shudder
God must it be this way, must I really go through with this?

The Praetorian, here the gentiles smell so different
Clean shaven faces, none of the fanatical glaring
Here the politic of Rome is exercised at their whim
Nobody seems to be worried about being tainted tonight
The priest crowd around to make their charges
For Rome I am of little interest, just another Jew

Herod, I am to see Herod whose father once
So long ago tried to kill me, does this Herod know that?
Did the Magi see him as a child as well, on their visit?
Did he wonder who it was they sought on that day?
When Ramah wept her wails cast into the sky
Still heard on the voice of history, does he know?

So now Rome must decide but duplicity is their game
Whom shall I release? Is a loaded dice waiting to roll
So it begins, the pain, humiliation, degradation, more pain
How does humanity think of such terror, such agony?
Inflicted through the ages, worse is yet to come
Such total pain as the nails bite, and breathing is impossible

‘My God My God why have you forsaken me’
Wrung from a chest that has no breath, a mouth
That has no moisture, a body in so much pain.
Is this the end or the beginning? Confused
The lights go out, the crowd grow smaller and dimmer
For now they have won, but victory will be brief.