Passus sub Pontio Pilato, Crucifixus, Mortuus, et Sepultus (Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried)

Passus sub Pontio Pilato,

Crucifixus, Mortuus, et Sepultus

(Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried)

It is evening,

and the shadows arrive.

The chapel grows dim.

I reach the next line:

Suffered under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified,

died,

and was buried.

The words weigh heavy,

thick with empire and execution.

A governor’s name fixed forever in our creed.

A reminder that the

gospel bleeds within history.

Pontius Pilate signs the order.

Religion and empire clasp hands.

The innocent is condemned,

The King of love will die.

He is dragged through the streets,

stripped of dignity,

spat upon and mocked.

A crown of thorns,

a purple robe,

a reed for a sceptre.

The soldiers laugh,

the crowd looks away,

and heaven holds its breath.

He carries his cross through

dust and derision.

The maker of worlds

stumbles beneath wood and shame.

Nails pierce the hands that blessed,

the feet that walked toward the broken.

The Word who spoke galaxies

now gasps for air.

He drips with blood.

He drips with love.

Each drop a prayer,

each wound a word.

“Father, forgive them,

for they know not what they do.”

Love intercedes for its executioners.

Grace flows from open veins.

“My God, my God,

why have you forsaken me?”

The cry tears through the sky—

the voice of the godless heard by God.

Here is the Crucified God,

entering the world’s abandonment,

bearing the silence of the forsaken.

He dies with open hands.

The breath leaves him.

The temple curtain tears.

Even the stones seem to grieve.

They take him down—

limp, broken,

his body heavy in their arms.

They wrap him in linen,

lay him in a borrowed tomb.

A stone rolls shut.

A sound like finality.

Now silence thickens.

The darkest day deepens into night.

It appears that death has spoken the last word.

Violence seems to win.

Hope lies still,

buried beneath the weight of stone.

I sit with the creed in that silence—

with the forsaken and the crucified of history:

the oppressed, the imprisoned,

the mocked, the spat upon,

the ones left in the cold shadows of power.

So I believe—

not with answers,

but with wounds.

I believe in the Crucified God,

in love that drips and endures,

in mercy that refuses to turn away.

And I wait—

with the women at the tomb,

with the world that still bleeds,

and with the question that trembles through history:

Does violence have the last and final word?

-Rev’d Jon Swales

from the collection Creed.