WHAT WE REJECT WHEN WE REJECT JESUS
By Caryll Houselander
Behold the man abiding in mankind!
He has put on our humanity. He has put you on—and me. He has covered himself with our shame, blindfolded his eyes with our blindness, bound himself with our slavery to self. He is bruised by our falls. He bleeds from our wounds. He sheds our tears. He has made himself weak with our weakness. Faint with our faintheartedness. He is going to die our death.
All people are condemned to die, but he Is condemned to die not only his own death, but yours and mine, and that of every man whom he will indwell through all the ages to come.
“Behold the Son of God!”
“This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased!”
He alone, of all men born, need not have died; but because things are as they are, because we have to pay the price of our sins, and our life on this earth must inevitably be a journey through suffering to death, Christ has chosen to give himself to everyone who will receive him, so that each person who wills can tread that road with the feet of Christ, and at the end of it he can, if he wills, die not his own death but Christ's…
He has chosen our impotence in order to give us the power of his love, our weakness to give us his strength, our fear to give us his courage, our ignominy to give us his majesty, our pain to give us his peace, our wounds to give us his power to heal, our dying to give us his life, our interdependence that we may give him to one another…
Yes, and behold in him in yourself. Each one of us can recognizer himself, a sinner, in the disfiguring, the bruising, the ugliness, hiding the beauty of the fairest of the sons and daughters of men. And there can be few who do not recognize themselves, too, in the utter loneliness of this man in the midst of the crown that lately spread their garments to be trodden by the little donkey he rode on, and no clamor for his blood.
