Christ is no stranger to trauma,
To feelings of abandonment,
Deep sorrow
And betrayal.
He knows what is is
To cry out in the night
And get no answer,
To be hunted and falsely accused.
He is familiar with exasperating humans-
Of being rejected by His own
And misunderstood even by His comrades.
And most harrowingly
He knows the pain
Of dying at the hands
Of injustice.
This faith we often sugarcoat and
And so frequently sanitize
Is actually built upon trauma-
On a brutal and bloody story
Of how we mortals killed God
And how He used the grimmest moment
The earth had ever seen
To make the make the
Greatest comeback of all time-
The founding of our faith.
He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
-Isaiah 53:3-5