The sickly smell of sacrifice

Jesus had been hanging around on the cross for three long days. Frankly, he was get­ting rather tired of it. His arms hurt from all that stretch­ing, the strain was tear­ing them from their sock­ets, and he had bloody great holes in his hands. As for what all this expos­ure to the ele­ments was doing to his once smooth, unblem­ished skin — well, he just wished that the guards would dab some mois­tur­iser on him now and then. He might be redeem­ing the world from its sins, but that was no reason not to look his best.

The miscre­ants on the other crosses — who unlike him hadn’t claimed to be the Mes­siah, but were there for rel­at­ively minor offences such as molest­ing sheep, tak­ing the Lord’s name in vain, steal­ing car ste­reos and impal­ing Roman sol­diers on their own gleam­ing spears — had come and gone so many times that he had lost count of how many agon­ising deaths he’d already wit­nessed. The latest batch, how­ever, were all mer­chant bankers, which pleased him no end. Yeah, he thought, I always said you guys would be first for cru­ci­fix­ion when the revolu­tion came. He smiled when he thought of how his dad would soon be send­ing bolts of light­ning to smite them. Pow, pow, pow. And sizzle. Fried fin­an­cier, burnt to a crisp. Deli­cious. Any day now, any day now it would hap­pen — a few thou­sand volts aimed at their hearts, with another rather gentler crack of the white heat of elec­tri­city to tear through his shackles and free him from this cruel and unusual torture.

“Did you say some­thing?” Jesus asked one of the bankers sharply. They had been mum­bling amongst them­selves in their loud-mouthed, wide boy tones for hours, and it was begin­ning to drive him right­eously nuts.

“No, no. You’re okay, pal. We were just chat­ting through stock options on tombs in Geth­se­mane,” said one, quick to try and reas­sure the maybe Messiah.

“No, we weren’t, Steve,” but­ted in an incon­gru­ous Lon­doner, who had moved out to Jer­u­s­alem to make his for­tune selling tour­ist knick-knacks in the temples. “Why are you skirt­ing round the facts? We’re all blokes here. He’s not some flip­pin’ pansy, is he? He can take it. Listen, J — is it okay if I call you J? I’m not really a believer, you see — listen, right? It’s just that you’re begin­ning to Jimmy Cliff a bit …”

“Jimmy Cliff?”

“Whiff. Jimmy Cliff, whiff. Get it? Smell, me old mate. You’re begin­ning to smell. Do you have any roll-on deodor­ant? Even a moist scen­ted towe­lette would help. When did you last take a shower?”

“Not recently. With the arrest, the show trial, and now three days up here with every­one shout­ing insults at me, clean­li­ness hasn’t been upper­most in my mind. I’m sure you know how it is. One of the guards has taken pity on me — he says I’ve got kind eyes and I appar­ently look like someone called Robert Pow­ell — so he keeps com­ing up and thrust­ing that wet sponge into the open wound in my side, or using it to moisten my parched lips, but that hardly counts.”

“Wait, are you ser­i­ous? Three days? You’ve been here for three fuck­ing days? Jesus! Par­don my French. I mean, Christ almighty — ”

“Thank you. But there’s really no need. We are all equal here, under the Lord our God. My dad. The big G. Bless them, Father, for they know not whose body odour they criticise.”

“Right. So is there any chance of this dot­ing daddy of yours send­ing, like, a tor­ren­tial shower of holy water to clean you up a bit? I don’t want my last dying thought to be about the hor­rible stench that comes from your loin­cloth and assaults my senses when the breeze hap­pens to blow in my direction.”

“I have greater con­cerns than the mere bio­lo­gical fail­ings of one’s bowels when tor­tured and tor­men­ted by vicious acts of bru­tal­ity,” replied Jesus, sol­emnly. He could feel his halo begin­ning to burn into his scalp, which was always a prob­lem when he was feel­ing par­tic­u­larly saintly. “Our God — your God — is sav­ing the world from the sor­did depths of its unspeak­able sin, dec­ad­ence and abom­in­a­tion by sac­ri­fi­cing me on this cross. My time here is almost at an end, so why should I heed the trivial niceties of earthly ablu­tions? My soul shall be truly cleansed and made as new when I ascend to heaven to sit at the Lord’s right hand; when my father maketh mine enemies into a footstool.”

Jesus couldn’t help but poin­tedly dir­ect that remark at his Cock­ney inter­rog­ator. He scowled, as much as his pier­cing blue eyes would allow him. You’ll get yours, he thought. You’ll bloody well get yours. I’ll make sure I don’t wash my feet for a week. Those unhygienic san­dals gave me quite the worst fungal infection.

It was at times like this that Jesus wondered about his father’s suit­ab­il­ity for the role of Chief Exec­ut­ive and supreme cre­ator of Heaven and Earth. He had been run­ning the show for such a long time that when the whole thing star­ted going all Sodom and Gomor­rah, it had plunged the old man into a deep, dark depres­sion. He had even taken to drink­ing, and Jesus had spent more nights than he cared to think about listen­ing to God bemoan­ing the state of the world whilst swig­ging neat gin: mother’s ruin, if only he’d had a mother. Appar­ently, accord­ing to the Lord, that apple busi­ness had upset the whole apple cart; free will had been his biggest mis­take ever, and next time he’d be a heart­less dic­tator and make the bas­tards wor­ship him, no ques­tions asked.

After seek­ing ther­apy fol­low­ing the unfor­tu­nate flood incid­ent — one night, over­taken by a drunken rage, he had impuls­ively decided to get shot of the whole damn lot — God had slowly recon­ciled him­self to his mis­takes. His angelic psy­cho­ther­ap­ist had helped him come up with a ten-point plan for put­ting the world to rights, and put­ting his one and only son on a wooden cross to have insults thrown at him by non-believers was the pen­ul­tim­ate step in this grand scheme. Yet Jesus was still uncon­vinced, just as he had been when his father first told him about the idea: go down to Earth, do a few mir­acles to cre­ate some pub­li­city, sign up a few eager believ­ers, start the pro­cess of get­ting people to mend their ways, absolve the sins of the feck­less wastrels by dying for them, then finally get resur­rec­ted and ascend back to heaven a few days later once he’d had all the neces­sary travel jabs. God’s words echoed round his tor­men­ted mind: “Thirty-three years. Blink of an eye. You’ll barely notice it, son”.

To Jesus, how­ever, it had been an age and a half. He had soon real­ised that these people didn’t want his help; they didn’t want to be saved, and had made that much abund­antly clear. He was doing this death thing grudgingly, to say the least. When Satan had shown him what he could have if he came over to the dark side, he had secretly been sorely temp­ted. He had been even more temp­ted — and decidedly sore — by the lust­ful curves of Mary Mag­dalene, too. But cru­ci­fix­ion called, and Jesus was just too damned dis­cip­lined to say no.

It was time, high time, to get the hell — if his dad would par­don the phrase — out of this place. Time to see the storm clouds come rolling in and watch the skies go as black as night. Time for the Roman cen­tur­i­ons to fall to their knees and recog­nise that, yes, he really was the son of God. Time to put on an apo­ca­lypse to end all apo­ca­lypses. Time for him to sum­mon up the last reserves of his dwind­ling strength, take a gasp of stale air into his fail­ing lungs, and shout out the agreed secret code phrase at the top of his weary, cracked voice.

“Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?”

There was no answer. Not a sound. Jesus scanned the heav­ens, des­per­ately and fer­vently look­ing for a sign. Any­thing. Even the com­edy celes­tial right hand would do: emer­ging from between the clouds to point at him like he was the lucky win­ner in some lot­tery advert­ising cam­paign, fol­lowed by his father’s boom­ing voice inton­ing that this was his beloved son, with whom he was well pleased. Even that. Couldn’t he just have that? He wasn’t ask­ing for much. Not really. Just some sort of acknow­ledge­ment that his miser­able exist­ence on Earth hadn’t been a com­plete waste of time.

But there was noth­ing. Nothing.

Jesus choked, strain­ing for each indi­vidual breath. He was wracked and bleed­ing, giv­ing up the ghost. This was it. This was the end. Thank you, world, I hope you’re grate­ful. Thank you very bloody much. It’s been a pleas­ure. A real stink­ing pleas­ure. Hon­estly, I don’t know why we bothered, dad. I really don’t. Let ‘em have it, let the bas­tards have it.

The son of God had only one final thought. One final thought to wrench from his broken body and his defeated spirit before death took him in its cold clutches. He looked down­wards, fix­ing his eyes on the Roman sol­dier scrab­bling in the dirt, wail­ing, beg­ging and grov­el­ling for for­give­ness and mercy. This piti­ful spe­ci­men would be the his­toric recip­i­ent of Jesus’ very last utter­ance on the situation.

“Fuck.”