Nick Fawcett (devotional and reflective writer)

I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE MY LUCK

Now at the festival he used to release a prisoner for them, anyone for whom they asked. Now a man called Barabbas was in prison with the rebels who had committed murder during the insurrection. So the crowd came and began to ask Pilate to do for them according to his custom. Then he answered them, ‘Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?’ For he realised that it was out of jealousy that the chief priests had handed him over. But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release Barabbas for them instead. Pilate spoke to them again, ‘Then what do you wish me to do with the man you call the King of the Jews?’ They shouted back, ‘Crucify him!’ Pilate asked them, ‘Why, what evil has he done?’ But they shouted all the more, ‘Crucify him!’ So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas for them; and after flogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucified. Mark 15:6-15

The meditation of Barabbas
I still can’t believe my luck,
still, after all this time, can’t believe
that I got off that day scot-free.
What on earth possessed the mob to let me off the hook
and send Jesus to the cross? –
I’ll never make sense of it.
All right, so I wasn’t a follower of his –
my way more one of force than persuasion –
but even I couldn’t help being impressed by the man.
He was so clearly innocent, any fool could see that –
a good man, through and through,
sincere,
gentle,
honest,
refusing to compromise his convictions
despite the torment they put him through –
the very idea of him inciting a revolt frankly laughable.
Yes, maybe he had stirred up the crowd’s expectations
through his signs and wonders,
allowed them to believe he was the promised Messiah,
but what of it? –
he was hardly a revolutionary, was he? –
not in the sense I wish he’d been, anyway,
rebellion the last thing in his mind.
I knew it.
They knew it.
So why turn against him?
Why hand him over to the enemy
to be butchered like a common criminal,
and let me, a known trouble-maker, wriggle off the hook? –
it just didn’t add up.
Yet that’s what they did,
and the strange thing is
he made no attempt to defend himself,
no attempt to expose the ludicrousness of the charges
or explain the true nature of his claims.
You might almost have thought he wanted to die, the way he acted.
Not that I’m complaining –
I wouldn’t be here now had things worked out differently –
only I can’t help wondering sometimes
what actually went on that day,
whether there was more going on than anyone realised,
some hidden force at work.
It should have been me instead of him,
anyone rather than a man like that,
but it wasn’t –
he suffered the punishment I deserved,
by some strange twist of fate his death buying me freedom.
It’s a mystery, isn’t it?

Prayer
Gracious God,
we have no claim on your love,
for we know that there is no good in us,
nothing deserving your mercy.
Yet through Christ you have endured the punishment
which should have been ours,
you have paid the penalty for our sins
and carried the burden
which should have been on our shoulders.
By his wounds we are healed,
by his love made whole,
by his death given life.
There are no words to express our debt to you,
yet you ask nothing more
than that we receive the gift you have given.
Gracious God, we come again
and we give you thanks for the wonder of your grace;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.