8. Who is Jesus? - Part II

Chapter Three

(Continued from Part I…)

The Crucifixion

And Jesus cried again with a loud voice and yielded upon his spirit. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom; and the earth shook, and the rocks were split; the tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.¹

What happened, I wondered, when the one who had the fulness of God’s Word woven within his flesh voluntarily laid down his flesh for the sake of all? Although I had been taught the traditional theological interpretations of Jesus’s death, my heart yearned to be there, to stand at the foot of the cross and see with my own eyes the one who died for me.

One morning, as I opened my heart to God, I found myself standing upon the ancient hill known as Golgotha.² The sky was a mixture of red and black. Before me hung Jesus upon a cross. His body was ravaged, his chin lay upon his chest, and he seemed to be staring at the ground below him. The air hung with stillness, as if the whole world were holding its breath. Then something happened that has defined my life ever since: Jesus lifted his head and stared directly into my eyes.

The urgency and intensity in his gaze unsettled me. His eyes seemed to penetrate my skull and reach down into my chest. He was searching me. Without moving his lips, he spoke these words within me: Are you able to carry this weight? Can you hold the world within your heart? My body began to tremble. I felt faint and nauseated. Unable to endure his gaze, I wanted to run away. And then, as if knowing my frailty, he breathed upon me.

I suddenly found myself standing on hard dry ground with no living thing in sight. Somehow I knew I was in the Garden of Eden. As I looked around, I felt stunned by the devastation of this formerly luminous and lush landscape.

I beheld a man wandering alone in that barren land. As he knelt to the ground, I saw in his hand a single fruit from the Tree of Life. He examined the precious pearl with a look of immense pain and suffering. Closing his eyes, he ripped open the fruit, and a river of glistening white light poured out upon the dust. While I stared at this wonder, everything changed around me, and I found myself once again before Jesus on the cross.

He cried out in anguish and breathed his last. As he did so, a light shot forth from his chest, filling the entire expanse of Heaven with brilliant whiteness. The light moved down into the Earth, slowly penetrating the darkened depths. As it reached the center, the light spread outward again in all directions, setting the Earth aglow with sparkling splendor. All Creation shone like Love.

Just as Love created the sphere of Heaven on the second day of Creation, so too did Love create something new on the day that Jesus poured out his blood upon the Earth. As I marveled at the brilliant whiteness that emanated from all things, I beheld Jesus’s resplendent pearl multiplied and placed within the hearts of all mankind. Through his silent submission to an excruciating end, Jesus restored our ability to freely eat of the fruit of the the Tree of Life by implanting it within our hearts like a gateway of pearl³ through which the fulness of God’s Word can enter Creation without limit.

Never before had Jesus’s death meant so much to me. Never before had I felt so overwhelmed with gratitude.

With these visions fresh in my mind, I turned again to John’s Gospel and suddenly found Jesus’s own descriptions of his death to be full of new meaning. As he explained to his disciples that his purpose on Earth was to die,⁴ he said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”⁵ Jesus knew that his death would result in the multiplication of the “grain of wheat” which at that moment resided within only him.

During his final meal, Jesus told his disciples that he was “going to prepare a place” for them where they would be united to him even after his death,⁶ saying further, “If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”⁷ Jesus knew that his death would result in a union between God and us, and that this union would occur within us.

Lastly, as I read the following words, I felt a weight I never knew existed suddenly lift from my chest: “Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the ruler of this world be cast out; and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.”⁸ Jesus knew that by being crucified on the cross, the stronghold of darkness would be overcome, the barrier between us and our Creator would be torn in two,⁹ and God would be immediately accessible within the hearts of all mankind.

The Blood of Jesus

Worthy art thou to take the scroll and to open its seals,
for thou wast slain and by thy blood didst ransom men to God
from every tribe and tongue and people and nation,
and has made them a kingdom and priests to our God,
and they shall reign on earth.

For most of my adulthood, I disliked the emphasis on Jesus’s blood, which seemed to me unnecessarily gruesome. I reasoned with myself that it is enough to talk about Jesus’s death in general without getting too involved with unpleasant details. That changed when I saw his blood firsthand: pouring from his body like a river of glistening white, Love watered the barren ground of the Garden of Earth.

According to the heavenly beings that stand forever around the throne of God, Jesus’s “blood didst ransom men to God.”¹⁰ The word “ransom” suggests a purchase, as if the payment of Jesus’s blood resulted in a transfer of ownership from one to another. And, indeed, we have been purchased. Through the payment of his blood, Light penetrated the depths of the Earth and cast out the darkness that had long held dominion. Through the payment of his blood, Love was poured into the hearts of all mankind, creating the doorway to God that we were always meant to have. Through the payment of his blood, “every tribe and tongue and people and nation” have been given the ability to become “a kingdom and priests to our God,” breathing the fulness of God’s Word into all Creation from the pearl that lies within us.

John concluded his Gospel prologue with these words:

And from [Jesus’s] fulness have we all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, has made him known.¹¹

Jesus’s unprecedented gesture of perfect love changed what it meant to be a man and woman on Earth. From the fulness of the Word poured out in his blood, we have all received “grace upon grace” in the form of the sacred fruit residing within us. We are now like the first man and woman in the Garden, able to walk with God “in the cool of the day”¹² and do God’s work without ceasing.

Though it is impossible for us to perceive the imperceptible Creator, the good news is that through Jesus, who was the Word spoken from the very heart of God, there is now a way for each of us to intimately know the unknowable God.

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1. Matthew 27:50–52

2. Matthew 27:33

3. Revelation 21:21

4. John 12:27

5. John 12:24

6. John 14:2-3

7. John 14:23

8. John 12:31–32

9. Matthew 27:51

10. Revelation 5:9–10

11. John 1:16–18

12. Genesis 3:8