Our Sweat and Tears

The sea tastes of our sweat and our tears.

A deep, salty taste reaching down to all we are and can not be.                                                                                                                                      Step into the edge of the sea and the waves overpower, the water tasting of sacrifice and suffering.

Honestly, I have always had a hard time seeing Christ’s death as sacrifice.

If He is God, He must have known He would rise again. And how can we call it sacrificing His son, if He knew His child would return so soon – beyond death – unbeaten?

And how is it suffering to face pain in a human body if you know you are beyond that body, if your soul is perfect? If you are God then shouldn’t that be easy for you?

These are the things I think when they pass around the squares of bread that taste like paper and plastic cups that are too afraid to be full of wine. And then I wonder if I am sacrilege, if my thoughts are flying heretical around my mind . . .

But then I sink into the sea and the waves rise up to greet me, to pound over and through me and wash all else away.

The waves a million holy cups and I taste my sweat, my tears in them. Then I know He must know more of work and pain than I – to fill this vast depth with the flavor of endless tears and our bodies striving in this angry world.

Maybe I am not meant to weigh his sacrifice or pain against my own.

Maybe I am meant only to know that He knows.

Maybe it is more than enough that He has tread our path and spilled His blood out into this earth. That He has breathed easy next to us and shared a plate. Broken bread, warm and nourishing and drunk wine with friends round a table candlelit. That He has sought our hearts lovestruck and felt the sting of rejection. That He formed beauty, gifts everywhere for us to see and still must watch His beloved suffer and fight amidst a world that is not as He had hoped.

Maybe His sacrifice is living with us through this dark and broken mess to write the most beautiful story, a story that can be written no other way . . . and knowing us well enough to spill our tears into the sea.

Maybe the sacrifice wasn’t really that moment crucified for all to see, maybe the sacrifice is being forever joined to our deep dark selves . . . the cross a picture of His heart bleeding out to heal our souls