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Criminal Jesus
by Aaron White
Jesus was a criminal. He was arrested, tried by the legal
system of the day, deemed guilty by a selection of the public,
and was tortured and executed by the state authority. That he
was innocent, the victim of an unjust legal system, does not
change the fact that he was, in his time, a convicted and
punished criminal. He suffered a criminal's death between two
thieves whom he spoke to and with whom he identified. One of
the criminals was promised a place with him in paradise that
very day.
I
have met more than a few prisoners in my time. My job allows
me to go down into the cells to visit prisoners awaiting
trial, to take them messages from family and friends, to see
what I can do to help them. Now, for those who have not been
fortunate enough to visit a jail, let me tell you what you are
missing. It stinks. Literally. It smells terribly of unwashed
feet, bad gas, sweat, metal, antiseptic and fear. There are
usually a lot of people in a very small amount of room and
everyone is nervous, even when they are pretending to be cool
and calm. It is not a place I would choose to spend any amount
of quality time.
There
are certain prisoners who have been through the system before
and know what to expect. Then there are those who are seeing
life from behind the bars for the first time, and they are in
a state of near panic. It's dangerous, scary, smelly and
awful. The person behind bars feels very vulnerable, and very
alone.
I'm
not sure how deeply it has hit home that Jesus actually chose
to identify fully with the criminal, with the prisoner. We
talk of Jesus' incarnation - his putting on of human flesh -
and we are all generally familiar with the story of his death,
but I wonder if repeated hearings have dulled the brutal shock
of it. The King of Kings did not just descend to earth to live
a human life. He descended and became a criminal, rejected,
humiliated, beaten, imprisoned, killed. He chose that way, so
that no one could ever scream out, "God doesn't understand!"
Jesus
went through the worst, and identified with those the rest of
the world thought were just good enough to spit on. Even more
than this, Jesus said that whenever we see a prisoner, we see
him. Whenever we visit someone in prison, we are in fact
visiting the Son of God (See Matthew 25: 31-46). Through those
bars, behind that Plexiglas window, in the face of the
frightened, the convicted, we are somehow meant to see the
face of our Lord. This is powerful grace.
Jesus'
love did not stop at the edge of the prison cell. Where are
the boundaries of our love?
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