Fri, Mar. 29
... "Society's Undesirable"
I heard my name. They were screaming, shouting, nearly cursing it. And I don�t hear much from where I am. Stone walls, thick stone walls. They and the cold, damp air usually keep all sound from reaching me. The only things I ever hear are the mice scratching the floor and the walls, nearly driving me insane. Maybe I am insane. But I know that I heard my name that day. That wasn�t merely a figment of my imagination.
They must have been shouting loudly. Shouting isn�t the right word, even, because what I heard was more like an inhuman screech. A wail. Some creature that kept shouting my name, over and over and over again. �Barabbas! Barabbas! We want Barabbas!� The words were barely discernable as such, but I knew they were calling me. And I knew that something unbelievable must be happening, because no one ever wants me anymore. They haven�t wanted me for years. I�m the nuisance in the basement; the prisoner they only remember when it�s time for what they try to pass off as food, and then only to shove it through the crack in my door. It�s been so long since I heard my own name spoken aloud by someone other than myself that I almost didn�t recognize it. But it was my name.
At first I thought there must have been some other Barabbas that they were yelling at for some reason, but no, it was me. They weren�t yelling at me, though, they were yelling for me. No one has called for me in years, except to call for my death. They�ve yelled at me, certainly, but not for me. I am society�s undesirable; the one they wanted to lock away and forget about. They�d heard about me, most likely, but only in the warnings from parents and scoldings when wrong things were done. �Be careful! You don�t want to end up like Barabbas, and if you keep this up, that�s exactly where you�ll be. In jail for murder!�
When they called my name, I�m sure they didn�t stop to think that the one they were calling for was the one they had been warned not to become like. And I�m sure the irony of who they were calling and sentencing to death did not strike them until much later.
It struck me immediately, though. Even in my cell, I could not help but hear about Jesus. Snippets of information would reach me with my food; tidbits of knowledge would seem to float in on the small amount of wind that occasionally found its way through the labyrinth of passages and tunnels to my cell. No one could help but know about Jesus. And when they finally came down and unchained me, I realized that it was him they were killing instead of me.
I never claimed to be �religious,� but I know enough to know that the Jews release a prisoner at Passover every year, and for some reason, this year Jesus was a prisoner. Pilate tried to convince them to release Jesus, but for some reason, they chose me. They called me. I�ll never know why, but I was brought back from the brink of death and he died instead. I�ve seen many, many Passovers come and go; I�ve seen many prisoners come and go, but never was there any hint of a whisper that I might be let free. I am society�s undesirable, remember? The one no one wants to be like. The one they whisper about at night, under cover of darkness, the one they tell stories about and scare each other with. I am the ugly side of life, the one they cover and hide and try to ignore.
That year, they called me, though. They knew who I was, knew who they were setting free. But the thought of releasing uninhibited goodness and perfection was more threatening than the thought of releasing evil. They knew how to deal with me. They knew what to do with me if I started to murder again, but they didn�t know what to do with him. He was too far beyond their control, so they did the only thing they could think of to do. They killed him.
It was supposed to be me. I was scheduled to die within days after they released me. But instead of me, he died. He took my place.
I went and watched it. I had to know how this man would react, what he would do, what he would say. Had it been me, I would have been cursing them, screaming, trying to escape. But this Jesus was different. He didn�t say a word. And it wasn�t because he was sullen and bitter. I saw his eyes. I expected to see bitterness, anger, rage in them, but I saw something else. Something I almost didn�t recognize. It was . . . it was love. It�s been so long since I saw love in anyone�s face that I�d nearly forgotten what it looked like. But even though his face was so bruised and bloody that it was almost unrecognizable, his eyes still shone. When he looked at me, the love in his eyes seemed to increase. It was almost as though he knew that I was supposed to die, but that he was dying in my place, and he was letting me know that it was okay. That he still loved me. That he was glad to do it.
I don�t know . . . maybe I�m reading too much into a simple glance. But there was something different about this man. He was not an ordinary, everyday criminal. This Jesus was not a criminal at all. I knew that, even though I had been locked up for most, if not all, of his lifetime. I know criminals, and I know criminals� eyes. They have a distinct stoniness to them, and Jesus� eyes were the farthest I have ever seen from a hardened madman�s.
I don�t know what motivated him to do it. I don�t know why, but I have the feeling that he could have stopped everything that was happening to him. Something about the way he looked at me. I�ll never know what it was, probably, but I do know that he took my place, even though I�m convinced he didn�t have to.
Remember, I am society�s undesirable. The one they locked away and tried to forget about. The one they only remembered when it was easier to set me free than to deal with him. But because of him, they did set me free. He took my place; he died when I was supposed to. And somehow, that changes everything. I�m less free to do the bad things I did, because I�m not only responsible for my life now, but his, too. I guess that now he is, in some twisted way, living through me, because I�m here and he isn�t.
infinite || abyss
posted at 5:52 p.m.
