Atonement.
Atoning for sin.
It means at-one-ment.
What was separated is reunited, by something.
The Cross.
A monolith of horror.
That is where atonement happens, a slow, agonizing execution.
Humanity at our ugliest, our worst, our most perverse.
This is where God chooses to be.
I suppose the Cross exposes our disconnection from God, from goodness, from light. If there was ever any doubt about our fallen nature it has now been made clear.
If there was ever any attempt to compare and see who is more bad or more good than someone else, now such comparisons are paltry and petty, we are all so far down in this pit that any measure of righteousness is a mockery.
And this where God chooses to be.
But how does this nightmare make us at one?
There is a deep mystery here. Where words fail, and only poets can speak.
The great divide is being crossed.
A great trade off.
The power of darkness, the power of Sin, the power of death, that strange devouring force at work twisting creation, eroding and destroying all that is good, beautiful and holy. What ever that thing is.
A trade off.
The world for the incarnate God.
One for the other, one is set free, the other takes its place to be gnawed upon.
God would rather die than live without us.
But God is tricky.
Even this cross of human perversion can become the glory of creation beginning anew, a new first day.
But we are not there yet.
Even at Easter morning we are not there yet.
We continue to live under a dark shroud, we still cling to the poison.
But our hope is awakened, and we know where to look, from where our help is to come. In the tortured one, in the betrayed one, in the abandoned one, the forsaken one, the weak one, the abused one, the dead one, we draw near to his tattered humanity and we find God. We draw near to his crushed holiness, his shattered divinity and find our lost humanity.
Atonement.
What was torn apart will be made whole.