My offering for this Resurrection Week. On Easter Sunday, we do well to celebrate the empty cross. But . …

Don’t Take Him Down Yet From the Cross,

 

Don’t take him down so fast.

 Wait, wait one more blessed moment

Before we shout again this win.

Yes, we do well to sing

This victory, this vanquishing of death---but wait

One     moment     more.

 

Take off your shoes, your coat, your scarf.

Come close, here . . .

Step up on the spike through his feet.

Do you feel the nail,

the blood, the heat?

 Stretch your arms out with his.

Lay your own head by his bloodied head.

Are you thirsty?

Can you breathe?

Do you know you too put him here—-

Here, where love and grief meet?

Do you hear the mockery, the jeers?

Do you hear him speak,

 “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

 Meet him there again and know---

 This is for you.

 This is for us.

 Christ is crucified for us.

 Let us bring again this limping broken us

And nail it here to hang with him

 That this may be true:

 

I am crucified with Christ

And I no longer live—

I, that self bent far from God

No longer lives,

No longer taunts and hates---

No longer lives

No longer boasts and kills

 No longer hides or fears

No longer lies and steals

No longer lives.

For Christ came down from the cross

to kill the grave that lived in us.

So sing now and laugh and praise

today and ALL of our days for

 We have been crucified with Christ 

and we no longer live,

but Christ lives in us. 

The life we now live in the body,

we live by faith in the Son of God, 

who loved us and gave himself for us.

 Amen.

  ————Leslie Leyland Fields