Sins aren’t erased
by a finger pushing the cancel button:
they’re absorbed
by a body pushed around and broken.
Surrounded by mocking curiosity,
vindictive invective, derisive frivolity,
Jesus dies - declared innocent
by Governor, guerrilla and soldier.
As bread is his body and wine is his blood,
he, King of the Jews, is his people.
His death crowns their pain under pagan regimes:
he is smashed for their sins and the nations’ gain.
He is raised with a transformed body,
not as a flimsy ghost;
not like a thin carbon-copy,
nor even the original returned in the post.
He is raised to glorious new life,
not back into the same,
not like Lazarus his friend,
who has to die again.
As the Jews were his crucified flesh,
so the Church is his glorified body.
The Rt Revd Dr Graham Kings is Honorary Assistant Bishop in the Diocese of Ely and Research Associate at the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide.