I had the great privilege to write a spoken word piece about the last sayings of Jesus on the cross before He died and I performed the piece at my church this past weekend for Good Friday. I hope this piece blesses you and makes you fall more in love and in awe of the precious, tender, wonderful glorious person of Jesus Christ and His peerless work of redemption. God bless you as you read!

The Last Words of the Crucified Word

Like Cain attacked his own

With great disdain for his pain

So now others disown

The true and better Abel

Who is more than Able

To make them slain 

Envious eyes eye with ire 

Babbling tongues of Babylon lie  

Sick soldiers shake stones 

Gambling greedily for the garment 

That was His own

But though the blood of Abel

Cried out for vengeance 

Out of the grieving ground

This time around 

This other innocent son bleeds 

But pleads:

FATHER FORGIVE THEM,

FOR THEY KNOW NOT

WHAT THEY DO

Father

Forgive them

Forgive…them?

For give them?

Give them not what they deserve?

Sinners like us: 

The blasphemers, liars, gossips, angry,

Complainers, deceivers, selfish, 

Faithless, loveless, merciless, partial,

Racist, stubborn, people-pleasers,

Wicked, proud, hypocrites, adulterers, bitter,

Porn addicts, drunkard, disobedient,

Fornicators, gluttons, legalists,

Homosexuals, malicious, prostitutes,

jealous, self-righteous, slanderers,

Lustful, occultic, abusive, Corrupt, 

Cheaters, Filthy, murderers, unforgiving.

Forgive….them? 

For God so loved the world 

That he gave His only Son

That whoever believes in him

Should not perish

But have eternal life

The sun will soon be down

Refusing to give its light

As the son is cast out 

Yet The Son looks down 

And lifts up the down cast 

Heart of the weary Mary.

Mary, pondering these things

Fixes her gaze as the son 

She raised and reared 

Now is raised and jeered 

The crowd with eyebrows raised, 

They sneered.

Even in his suffering he is caring for another

Looking to John who is to him a brother

He looks at them both and is able to utter

WOMAN BEHOLD YOUR SON

BEHOLD, YOUR MOTHER

This Spirit-filled Son still shines 

No evil can eclipse His love

His heart racing to serve even as

His strength seeps from Him. 

Never mind that if anyone had a right 

To be thinking of only their plight 

At that moment, it should be our Christ

Yet doing nothing from selfish ambition

He shuns the mockery and scorn

He lifts the spirit of this woman forlorn 

Though he is awash with grief, 

Naked between thieves, 

His words arrive as a tender balm

That clothe and console

She whose soul 

Magnified the LORD and 

She whose spirit rejoiced 

In God her Savior, 

So she may see that 

She will surely be safe.

Do you see? 

The seed of the woman 

Who will bruise the head

Of the Serpent is here.

His heart: heavy. His heel: hurt. 

However, His hope: high. 

Suffering, the servant-shepherd; 

Sinless-savior lifted high 

Seeks to serve and to satisfy

And to submit to

The sacred scripture:

Honor your Father and your Mother 

So your days may be long in the land 

The crowd has clogged 

Their consciences 

With so many lies that they 

Don’t realize it now, 

But this son will prolong His days.

For His ways are not their ways

Though they rushed to see Him crushed

Though they cried against him and reviled

Though they bowed mocking and cursed aloud

They know not that the Father allowed

Him to be smitten, stricken and scorned

The thieves too, those traitors two 

Telling Jesus what to do

The foolishness to not see

They too have their flesh torn

They are about to die

As their breath goes..

By and by

Time goes on…

By and by

By and By 

Until— the one comes to His senses

He becomes pensive

Abandons all pretenses

And lays down his defenses 

The weight of his sin lies heavy on him

Wait! After all these hours he has seen

How this Christ responded

He becomes despondent 

Now He sees the glory of the King 

And his heart feels the sting

Recognizing His own sin 

and that he deserved death 

He first rebukes the other one

And then he pleads 

In holy hope

To the wholly Other Holy One:

“Jesus, Remember me when you come into your Kingdom”

Like the men back in Joseph’s day

One baked the bread

The other bore the cup

And when all was done and said

The one lifted in hope

But the other lifted on a rope

So now these two men

Though both started in wrath

They ended on different paths

As the True Bread

Who drinks the Father’s cup 

Will now raise the one to be in glory

While the other has a different story

TODAY, YOU WILL BE 

WITH ME IN PARADISE