A Macabre Experiment
A macabre experiment took place on the battlefield of the Crucifixion in the backside of the desert (Exodus 3:1-3) in the boondocks of space and time. There, we put Jesus to the test (Malachi 3:10) (Luke 4:12) (Deuteronomy 6:16) (Wisdom 2: 17-20). "Let us test him with insult and torture, that we may find out how gentle he is and make trial of his forbearance" (Wisdom 2: 19). On the battlefield of the Crucifixion, we tortured and killed Jesus. We made him suffer and die. We impaled him on a cross as a fisherman insouciantly impales a live worm on a sharp hook where he hung until death. It was an ignominious defeat.
His ignominious defeat ought to have marked the end of the story. However, it did not. Surprisingly, the story continued. Jesus did not stay dead and he did not stop loving us. His love for us survived the evil that we did to him. In this way, Jesus turned his ignominious defeat into a glorious victory.
On the battlefield of the Crucifixion, Jesus drew the sharp sword of sweet forgiveness from the scabbard of his prodigious love for us to slay the monster of the Crucifixion. Forgiveness killed the monster dead (Jeremiah 31:31-34) (Luke 23:34) (Acts 10:43) (Matthew 6:12) (Matthew 18:21-35 (Luke 7:47) (Matthew 5:45). We did not deserve forgiveness but he forgave us anyway. He did not wait for our conversion to forgive us. He forgave us to bring about our conversion. Jesus was highly confident in the power of his prodigious love to induce our repentance.
The test was done and its result was noted. Jesus assigned his Church the mission of propagating the test and its result from the point and place of their obscure origin, across space and time, to the children of Adam and Eve here and now. The Church is failing in its mission. Instead of shaping our understanding of God with the demonstration of divinity that took place in the macabre experiment on the battlefield of the Crucifixion in the backside of the desert (Exodus 3:1-3) in the boondocks of space and time, the Church is doing other, lesser Christian things. Failure means that God stays a stranger to us (John 10:5) (Psalm 69:8) (Exodus 2:22). “And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers” (John 10:5). God continues to lament, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge" (Hosea 4:6).