Reflection on Triumph

They say you can’t keep a good man down
The Christian story says you can’t keep the God Man down
Even when he appears beaten, even when he’s defeated, like Rocky Balboa he keeps coming back for more.
But here we see the God Man – Jesus- Abandoned, desperate, parched, dying… but still, with his final breath, angry at the gulf between the way things are and the way things might be. - Shouting at the invisible.
Forget gentle Jesus,
if you ever remembered him.
What can you do but shout when you see the distance between the way things are and the way things might be - and find yourself being strung from one side to the other?
Howling your prayers.
Yelling your psalms.
Life screaming at death Hope screaming at cynicism.

If the psalms teach us anything it’s this - if you can’t shout at God, who can you shout at?
And if you think that your decibels can climb across the unknown universe, that you cries can be heard by Love and that Love will answer, then you will shout even louder.
With his final breadth Jesus the God man shouts into the void
It is finished…
A voice crying in the wilderness
The God man trusting in the hands of the unseen,
The hands of mercy,
The hands that make all things new.
They always have and always will.

What other hands dare you fall into?
Perhaps then we are not abandoned.
Perhaps then we are not beaten,
If the cross teaches us anything it is this even when we are defeated there is hope.

In 1985 after the fall of the Iron Curtain, Derry teacher Maurice HARRON created this sculpture "Hands across the Divide," as a symbol of hope for the war ravaged nation of Northern Ireland. He hoped it would inspire peace and reconciliation for the people of Northern Ireland.
In Jesus the divide between us and God has been breached.
We no longer shout our prayers into the void of space but in the name of Jesus we access the throne room of heaven.
It is finished is not the cry of a boxer who has taken one beating too many – it’s a cry of victory.
The breach has been mended.
The final sacrifice has been made.

heads up to http://www.rejesus.co.uk/site/module/seven_last_sayings/ for some of the wording