Our Pastor calls one year to ask if I’d write a moment through the eyes of the mother of Jesus? So I write down words… and imagine the mother of our Lord… fingering the bloody tunic of her Son.
Son…. Son of God… Son of mine…
God.
Why?
From the beginning I have watched and I have listened and I have pondered all these things quiet in my heart — but now I have to ask:
why?
Why didn’t You come down from that Cross in all Your power and Glory?
Why didn’t You blind the chief priests with Your divine radiance?
Why didn’t You still all their blasphemous tongues with the army of the heavenly host, with Your burning holiness, with Your flaming sword?
Isn’t that who You really are?
Oh Son — why?
I know… I know.
Only Your blood flow can extinguish the flames of hell.
There was no other way.
How could You let a lost world burn?
Sin hurt You far deeper than the spikes.
And You let the horrors of satan take a swipe at You so that all horrific sin could be wiped clean.
And You knew it all along.
You were conceived into skin for the Cross — the cave of that manger beginning glimpsing the cave of Your Messiah, martyred endings.
You who had no beginning, You were born for this, for the blood —
that we might be reborn to life.
Oh Son….
I know… how could You have been our Saviour if You hadn’t known suffering?
How could we have worshiped You if You weren’t wounded?
How could we bow to You if You were not bruised?
We could only believe in You because You have lived in us — in our mangled world, in our aching pain, in all our hurting humanity.
You alone are the God for us — because You alone are the God who has been one of us. You felt what we feel, You touched the death that we know, You came to us as Immanuel: God with us.
I remember when Joseph first told me… that the angel had told him that You would be called Immanuel… God with us.
I started weaving your robe right then.
The loom work was soothing, the shuttle slipping back and forth, like rocking, a lullaby. And I dreamed of You and holding You and how someday You would wear this cloth…. this tunic without seams.
It’s tradition, what all Jewish mothers give to their sons when they leave home: a seamless robe.
A one-piece robe.
And I began Your one-piece before I even beheld You and I wove late through the nights, under that circle of moon and I thought of You who has no beginning and no end, You from which all things are from and through and to… and I gave you the robe and I watched You walk this sod and I was there.
I was there at Calvary and I stood near that Cross with my sister, Mary, the wife of Clopas and with Mary Magdalene and I saw you heave breathe.
And I saw the blood trickling down from the iron pierced holes in your feet and I saw the soldiers take Your clothes… this one-piece robe… and I hardly breathed… and I heard them say, “Let us not tear it.”
And when they already had tore you right through…
“This all happened that the Scripture might be fulfilled.”
And I heard you say, your voice gurgling blood, “Dear Woman… here is your son.”
And I went home with John, my mind thinking of you torn and your one-piece robe still whole…
How You let your side be ripped open that our lives need never be split into sacred and secular.
How you were slashed that our lives could be seamless — all holy.
That the veil in the temple rents in two because of You, and there is no longer a divide between the common and the hallowed and the whole earth is full of your glory and You are the continuous, unending, divine thread that weaves through all of the world, holding all together… even when you, Son, are rent apart.
And hanging naked and blood smeared and dirt defiled, You nodded slow and You said yes — You gave us your one-piece robe of seamless holiness and You clothed us, the filthy ones, in all your white righteousness.
Your blood wasn’t enough.
Your buying us back wasn’t enough.
Your being our brother wasn’t enough.
Nothing short of dressing us beautifully and calling us Beloved would be enough.
O Son…
That I’d take up this cloth that You give me and be who You name me — Beloved.
That there’s no more being torn in a million directions — that no matter what pulls, I have a one-piece life life in You: One direction, One purpose, One audience, One Love, One Joy — a one-piece life — all holy, all meaningful, all offered to You.
That I’d wear a One-Piece life and see Your face in a thousand faces, in a thousand humble and unseen places, and all my life would be all with You. And the moon will shine round and the threads of all my moments will shine with Your glory. And this one-piece life — that it’d be all be for the One and True God alone…
I swaddled You in the beginning…
And now You hold us and robe us in You.
