The Execution of Justice

It was for this that he came to earth,
conceived of God and woman,
born of flesh.

Trained from youth
to shape truth in the form of wooden beams,
shavings curled around his feet,
hands tough and sure,
knowing the cure for sin.

He walked stone paths,
stooped and wrote in the dust of human flesh.
Friend of leper and harlot,
often caught in the wickedness of doing good
on the Sabbath.

They flailed his flesh,
angry for his silence,
ripped patches of beard from his face,
taunted, mocked, spat upon him.

Kin and cousins of those he healed
yelled for execution,
heaped his blood upon their own heads
and the heads of their children.

He bled for them, too.
Forgiving in his dying
after the manner of his living.
Lifted them up
above the cross,
above the soul-stained soil,
above their own sin,

above justice
all the way
to the very Mercy Seat of Heaven.

H. Arnett
4/2//10