it’s so interesting how our automatic reaction when looking at the passion narrative is to want to save christ, whisk him away from the guards, take him down from the cross, bandage his wounds, but this causes a fundamental theological conflict: christ has to die for our sins. he can’t be saved. so instead the narrative switches: the spectator wants to die on the cross with christ, to suffer with christ, to “hang upon him that hangs upon the cross, there bathe in his tears, there suck at his wounds, and lie down in the peace of his grave.”




















