He wasn’t Jesus, and Jesus wasn’t him either. But perhaps he could have fooled you for a moment, a short moment only of course, because I know you are much too wise to mistake a Savior. But I should hope that in that fleeting second, the one when the overhead lamp caught his face just right, you would not have missed the make-up of his expression, and how the last 3 hours had painted on it a story that looked much like the latter days of another man, the aforementioned Christ.
The new setting that the man found himself in gave him obvious parallel to Jesus. You want to discover sinners, find the hurting, see the sick, abused, poor, and mistreated, show up at your local hospital. Better yet, show up at a hospital sandwiched between two very dark streets, and make sure the air is dry and the brows of the patients are wet. Make sure of this, for Jesus might not have liked moving air. Chills.
Back to our man. After enduring a few more than a few minutes of clenched eyes and wincing teeth, the man opened his face and found himself in such a hospital. Figuring that just showing up here didn’t exactly make him a Christ figure yet, he decided that he would play a hand at humility and be the last to be served. He didn’t exactly tell the doctors this, and ironically enough, he didn’t need to. They seemed to know that he didn’t want to be treated and cared for right away, that he was shooting for righteousness.
When the hospital staff finally came to, the man was faced with the proverbial question of Pilate, who behind his desk with a cigarette in his mouth asked our other man, “What is the truth?” To which there was no reply. In that stunning silence of the Christ, Pontius was perhaps terrified. In the stunning silence of the man (or perhaps it was the fact that his low mumbling voice was inaudible) the staff was annoyed.
When an answer to the question came to surface in the back corner of the ER, the most common reaction was “How is that possible?” Nobody at the hospital knew the answer, but perhaps you do. How is it possible for an incarcerated man to have such expensive wounds? Why did he earn the deep beating that he received from those of his own kind? Did he deserve it? Was it persecution? He wouldn’t be the first, says John, and Matt, Mark and Luke.
Perhaps the most haunting part of our man’s situation, and coincidentally his most striking parallel to Jesus, were the marks left on his wrists by the hate that was inflicted upon him. It wasn’t nails that severed his arteries and every major string in his wrist, but rather, a machete smuggled into a cell to deal out penance. If I were a heaven and hell man, which I am not but I will postulate, I might say that two half wrists might do the man right, push him toward meeting the ‘good ole’ Lord. But lets be honest, having a Mark Rothko painting of your own blood splattered up and down your body doesn’t exactly say, “praise heaven.”
But compassion might. Might say such things, that is. Henri Nouwen, an author of many books, would tell us that compassion is partly the act of saying, “I do not know what to say or what to do, but I want you to realize that I am with you, that I will not leave you alone.” Compassion is not putting a sentence on a man already sentenced, is not finding advice or the perfect word lost in a word find. It is simply being there, and perhaps finding a bit of hope therein.
I thought about this as I stood next to our man. As I tapped the needle. As I reached down and squeezed the meatiest part of his being. As I injected the two inches of silver, wishing that I could inject in him more than just an antibiotic.
*I hope that this writing portrayed the lackadaisical nature of much of the hospital staff. That was the intention. However, it should also be noted that there are, as everywhere, some real good people within the walls of the hospital. Some very good doctors, and soon to be doctors work there, and they should not be slighted.
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