God is Dead

“Mary.”  His voice was so kind, he must have mistaken me for someone else. No one had ever spoken to me kindly before. And how could he know my name?  I did not know who this man was.

“Mary.”  I looked up to get a glimpse of the man that had saved my life. Blinking in the light of the sun, I could see the shadow of an outstretched hand. Shocked, I lifted my hand out of the dirt and placed it in his.

It was all a dream now. I looked back on that day with confusion. Jesus had saved me from those men. They, rightly, according to the law, should have stoned me. But Jesus spoke to them with authority, saving my life. Since then, I had followed him. I saw his miracles with my own eyes. I saw a dead girl walk again. I saw a blind man receive his sight.  A man with demons was set free. Even the spirits obeyed him. But more than lives, more than just saving my life, he saved my soul.  He was God. His words were true. He was God among us, walking with us and talking with us. I loved him. When I first could see, the prostitute that I had been, when I could see that I was deserving of death and this man of miracles saved me, I was so overcome with love that I gave him my finest gift, I broke my alabaster bottle of perfume. I wept and I rubbed the perfume on his feet. I wiped it with my hair. Giving him my all, giving him my heart, giving him my soul.

But I did not understand. Why did he leave us?  When they came for him, why didn’t he use a miracle?  Why didn’t he stop them?  After all, he is God.  Right?  Why didn’t he stop them?

They came for him, they dragged him away.  He is dead.  My Jesus is dead.  My God is dead.  I saw him tortured.  I thought, somehow, he would make sense of it all.  Through it all, I stayed, I stayed to carry him away.  To carry him away and nurse his wounds and ask him, “Why?”  I thought it would end.  But then he was nailed to a cross.  He hung there on the cross and I waited, I waited for a blast from heaven.  I waited for the voice of the Father from Heaven.  I waited for the miracle, for the moment of victory.  But it never came.  He hung there on the cross and then he died.  God died.  He is dead.  God is dead.

Advertisement