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You are neither your parent’s first nor their last child, chosen in the waters they created, baptized by a man so kind they cut his head from his throat. It had been a kind death, instantaneous, gentle in its cruelty.
Yours will not be kind because you are dying for crying children, mourning mothers, and beaten boys. You will die for their tears and blood and war cries, all the sins committed, and all those to be thought of still. The future is nothing far away from you, and you know exactly what horrors humanity will envision for they are the reason you need guards while you sleep, your nightmares keeping you awake otherwise.
Your name is Yeshua and you are the son of your mother Maryam, and, except for your parent’s favor, you are utterly human. You heal and pray and invoke for you are their beloved son, made in their image as every human is, yet you are so much more, destined to sit at their right and judge because divinity runs through your veins.
Your name is Yeshua and you are tired.
Your dear friends laugh and enjoy this meal that is supposed to be your last. Heavy on your tongue lays the truth, that you know Jehuda’s kiss, sweet as it may be, will be worth thirty silver coins, that Thomas won’t believe, and all of your chosen will hide cowardly in the house when your body rots away.
You love them and you know your parent demands a love that is so much more than humans are capable of giving. You cannot judge them for it for you, who is made of both worlds, understands what it’s like to be so mighty, people will fall to their knees at the sight of you, incapable of returning your love equally. So the adoration your parent asks for is total, all-consuming, lasts in life and death.
You do not want your friends to die for you.
It would be incredibly selfish, you think, to hope for them to live a life of fulfillment and kindness and damn them to such cruel deaths.
Your dear Kephas will travel far, cross the sea even, steady as the rock you hoped he’d be, and he would die all the same.
Hands lingering over food and drink, you open your mouth, thinking, take it, this is my body; this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.
Your mother, who never asked to give birth to you, who had a choice that wasn’t one, would weep at your grave and shed all the tears the heavens wouldn’t because you’d finally stand at your parent’s side, and they could be loved as they had always wanted to be loved, freely, eternally.
The heavens would rejoice, the people freed of all torment.
All you had to do was die.
“Are you alright?” Jehuda, with silver gleaming red on his fingers, asks you, and you know you should speak up, the choice already made and yet, you were made to be free, to be worshipped and damned, to scrap your knees and tussle the hair of your siblings.
I will die, you want to say, and it will save you all someday, but until then, you will continue to kill and murder, and you will do so in my name, and I cannot stop you for I will have already died to save you some uncertain time.
And until then, I will carry your sins.
You find, staring into brown eyes and an honest face despite the lies lingering beneath, that you do not want to die, that you do not want to be responsible for all the hurt.
Gabriel, poor broken messenger, who sung you lullabies, will find another woman and tell her you who are highly favored, the Lord is with you, and perhaps her child will be named David, and maybe they will be beloved and capable of bearing the weight of mankind’s sins.
You are not.
Your name is Yeshua, and your hands are rough from handling wood, and you dream of building a house large enough to welcome all your friends and a table that can withstand them bringing more food than they can eat.
Your parent weeps as you make your choice, as you ask the world to wait for another child of the heavens, somebody strong enough to do what you can’t: save them.
I’m sorry , you will pray every morning and every night for decades to come, but I want to live happily and die in the arms of my love.
“Let us leave Jerusalem tonight,” you say, divinity falling to the floor as you rise, utterly mortal, no longer your parent’s child.
No longer the son of the Lord.