“I Am the Heavy Cross You Had to Bear”

Nor who betrayed you in the judgment place,
Nor who, Lord Jesus, spat into your face,
Nor who with buffets struck you as you died.

No, it was not the soldiers fisted bold
Who lifted up the hammer and the nail,
Or raised the cursed cross on Calvary’s hill,
Or, gambling, tossed the dice to win your robe.
I am the one, O Lord, who brought you there,

I am the heavy cross you had to bear,
I am the rope that bound you to the tree,
The whip, the nail, the hammer, and the spear,
The blood-stained crown of thorns you had to wear:
It was my sin, alas, it was for me.

This is a sonnet, with the “octet” (the first eight lines, in two stanzas) setting up a conflict.  In this case, between the apparent afflicters of Jesus and who really is responsible.  Not the Jews, not the soliders, but me.

Then we have the resolution of that tension in the octet, the final six lines of the sonnet.  What strikes me most in this poem are the startling “I am” metaphors of the sonnet’s last stanza:  “I am the cross.”  “I am the rope.”  “I am the whip, the nail, the hammer, the spear, the crown of thorns.”  As a meditation, the poem puts the reader where the author sees himself, in the crucifixion of our Lord.  Indeed, Jesus bears our sins, as He bears His cross.  We, as sinners, hold Jesus onto the cross, like the ropes.

Though our sins put Jesus on the cross and thus are responsible for His torments–that is to say, “I” put Jesus on the cross and thus am responsible for His torments”–His suffering, in a turn that comes in the poem’s very last lines, “was for me.”  That is to say, Jesus on the cross atoned for my sins, giving me forgiveness, life, and salvation.

The translation is by Henrietta ten Harmsel.

HT:  Leland Ryken