Who Feels It, Knows It

So, Easter was last weekend. We all felt the pangs and sorrow that manidest themselves on Good Friday and followed that with the joy and triumph of Easter Sunday. But … have you ever stopped to think – “Passion of the Christ” notwithstanding – what it must have really felt like to the Man who actually had to undergo all the tribulations?
Who could ever get into His head? Who could ever really tell the entire story but He?
And finally, we get the rare chance:
Picture it ... a bright, sunny afternoon, with not a cloud above. As a matter of fact, the clouds are mostly below, providing thick, soft, billowy layer upon layer to recline on ... except if you need a little cooling shade to rest under, then you arrange to have one hovering overhead so that you feel just right, with the cooling breezes gently wafting across your brow, while you sip your nectar or ambrosia through a straw, out of a long, chilled glass.
Yup, there’s only one place you can feel this good, and it’s not of this Earth. That’s right, you guessed it: some of the fellows were chilling out and relaxing, up in heaven. There was Peter, with a long white beard, somehow still carrying a very faint odour of fish around with him. Even after centuries of washing, it seemed to still be there. And there were Michael and Gabriel - you could tell they were Archangels: there was no hiding those long, sweeping wings. John the Beloved lay to one side, reclining on his arm, while an unshaven John the Baptist kept refusing the glasses of ambrosia the pretty angel waitresses kept fluttering around and offering, rather preferring to take occasional swigs from the pouch of wild honey that hung by his side.
And right in the centre of the gathering, sitting crosslegged on a slightly elevated billow, was the One who everyone immediately recognized as the most handsome of the bunch ... Jesus, the Light of the World, the Saviour of Mankind.
There had been a lull in the conversation, each one indulged in his own thoughts, lazily daydreaming, when all of a sudden, the sucking sound made by John (the Baptist) as he drew on the last of his honey, brought a remark from Michael.
“You really should try a little variety in your diet, you know,” addressing John, “that wild honey you insist on drinking all the time could get addictive. Take my advice and try a little nectar now and then ... or at least, dilute it with a little water.”
“No water for me, thanks,” replied the scruffy one, “not since that time I was having a chalice-full and my mischievous Friend here (nodding his head in Jesus’ direction) turned it into wine as it was going down my throat. And you know me ... I’ve got this abhorrence to alcohol, in any form. No sir; addiction or no addiction, I’m sticking to my wild honey. It’s much safer.”
“About that water-to-wine trick,” Gabriel addressed Jesus, “I heard about it from up here, but have never seen it done. Is it something You went around doing often, while You were down there ... like every Friday night or so, if You and the apostles had nothing to drink, You would just get a couple of buckets of water ... and before you know it - party time? I’ve heard some rumours, you know. Even at Your last supper down there, I hear You were passing out the wine rather freely. You must have had a ball, you guys.”
Jesus smiled slightly, a far-away, reminiscent look in His eyes.
“A ball? That’s not quite how I would have termed it. It wasn’t fun and games, you know. In the first place, I never expected that I would get the short straw and be picked for such an assignment. I always say - and I’m trusting you fellows to keep this between us ... I wouldn’t like HIM to get mad at me - that the whole thing is my Dad’s fault.
“You see, when that sneaky son of a gun Lucifer (Son of the morning, my foot) did the dirty and led his army against us ... you remember, Michael, it took all we had, you on the right flank and I on the left, to defeat him ... Dad should have disposed of him permanently, right then and there. We had him defeated and if we had destroyed him ... but no, that’s my Dad - ever-loving, ever-forgiving, all of that; so instead, he simply banishes the fellow to Hell.

“I knew from the start, that was asking for trouble. Next thing you know, he’s down in the Garden, tempting Adam and Eve - successfully, the poor saps - and everybody’s got Original Sin. Dad lets them cry for a few centuries, but one day, up He gets and asks me whether I would mind going down to Earth and saving the poor buggers. Honestly Gabriel, like you I thought it would be a ball; a party, almost; a picnic; a vacation; call it what you will.
“ ‘O.K.,’ I thought, ‘I’ll take a short trip down there, bring the folk the Good Word, probably bless them all and float back up here, none the worse for wear.’
“So without giving it too much thought, I told Dad I would do Him that little favour. Things were a little boring around here anyway. ‘Good. That’s settled, then. I’ll send Gabriel down to pave the way and You’ll follow, in about nine months from now. I must say, Son,’ He looked at Me with pride in His eyes, ‘it’s pretty brave of You. Not everybody would so willingly agree to go and be tortured and die for a bunch of people that are not even of their own kind ... although I was forgetting - You are going to be one of them. In order to do this, You must become human.’
“I was speechless. You could have knocked Me down with a feather. I couldn’t believe My ears. Die? Tortured? Is that what I had let Myself in for? ‘Whoa, whoa,’ I thought, ‘there must be some way I can get out of this? Perhaps if I speak to Moses, he’ll go back (he’s been resting up here long enough, not doing anything really useful - just writing on stone tablets, carving away like he was Michaelangelo or something) and do it in My place? He’s accustomed to this saving people thing. Has lots of practice.’
“But you guys know how it is up here: your word is your bond. So, like it or not, I packed My bags and went.
“Let me tell you ... life down there is no bed of roses. I had to live as a poor carpenter ... Me! I who could, at a moment’s notice, materialize whatever I would have liked to eat: caviar, roast beef, smoked salmon, you name it ... had to eat unleavened bread and roast fish - I even had to share once, with ten thousand people, my supper: five measly loaves and two dried fish. I tell you, it wasn’t easy.
“But that was nothing. I knew the time was coming for the big one: the torture, suffering and death. Even at the last minute, I went into somebody’s garden and talked to Dad. ‘Please take this cup away from me,’ I asked; but you know Him already: when his mind’s made up, it’s made up. ‘No way,’ He replied. ‘You can’t chicken out now. A deal’s a deal. You want me to be ashamed of You? Be a man; bite the bullet and go through with it.’
“I turned to My friends for moral support. Did I get any? No way; nada. Even you, Peter, denied Me thrice. No, no. Don’t tell Me again how sorry you are. I really don’t know if I’ll truly ever be able to forgive you for that one. Anyway ...
“Let Me tell you guys, you angels, who have never experienced pain ... when they stick a crown of thorns on your head, whip you half to death and then, after making you carry the darned thing, lay you down on a cross and pound some ten-inch nails into your palms - and worse yet, into your feet ... man, that is PAIN! You know how many times I felt like just standing up and obliterating those guys with a few bolts of lightning? But noooo, I have to just stay there and take it.
“And finally, to top it all off, they take this spear and stick it into My side. Take a look ... my hands and feet; my side. See them? Well believe you me, never again. Not even if they tell Me I won an all-expense-paid trip to Las Vegas, am I ever accepting to leave here, under any circumstances, and go on a joy ride anywhere.
“For the worst part of the whole thing is ... that they didn’t appreciate it. Lucifer is still the big man down there, and just about everyone prefers to listen to the lies he keeps telling them, rather than to the Word I brought them.
“Well you know what they say: what you sow is what you reap ... and I gave them every chance. I’m not going back through that for anything, so they better straighten up on their own, ’cause Dad gave them His Law - and you know He doesn’t fool around. Pass Me some of that milk and honey, will you, John ... My beloved?”