It was Spring. To anyone who had eyes for the buds ready to burst on the willows by the stream and ears for the bird song, it was paradise. Daily the sun was getting stronger and the shadows cast over the fields by the trees spelt out the energy and beauty of creation. But David, out for a stroll to try and sort out his thoughts, was not moved. The contrast between the feeling of death that he felt within himself and the colours and life around him only served to increase the pain he felt so poignantly. Jonathan, whom he had grown up with from childhood had suddenly been struck with an incurable disease and had not long to live. Why? The question gave him no rest. He had heard of others who had wrestled with the same problem but then he felt that the advice so often given - that Jesus had died for us and that in his cross we can find strength and comfort when struck with adversity - did not now give him any assurance or peace of mind. He almost despaired of life for himself. If his own religious background gave him no answers then what was there worth living for? He felt a void inside himself and thought that another step along this wooded path and he would faint. He had stopped to give himself a chance to get some let-up in this awful tension that he felt between his heart and his mind and his body - pulled apart would be a better description of his state. Then to his amazement he thought he heard a voice saying "I died" - David hadn't thought those two words and there was no one near him, so - what? - Feeling as if he would really faint and go headlong on the path in front of him, David repeated, in response, "You died?"

"Yes, and I am the living one."

'Sort of religious language', David thought to himself. Then in a mixture of fear and hope he whispered, "I have heard those words before in the Bible. You - are - not - Jesus?"

"I am."

The fear intensified like a haystack catching fire from a stray spark and then suddenly lifted like a cloud moving away and hope was born again in David. "Can we speak?", he managed to say. The silence that followed was an affirmative one, David thought, and as questions were forming in his mind, one after the other, he began to talk. He found that the questions that came tumbling out, one after another, were answered with extraordinary understanding, bringing him a peace and enlightenment of mind he had never before experienced. The conversation that followed is set down here just as it occurred although this cannot begin to express the feeling David had that he was, for the moment, experiencing another dimension of life altogether. So he began -

"I know that everyone says that your death was for a 'religious' purpose, but why should a young man like you die in such a cruel way?"

"Well, here we are talking about something that happened to me a long while ago. I know that the great theologians have found it difficult to come to an understanding of my death and about my relationship with the God whom I call Abba. I did speak a little about the death that I anticipated and I often spoke about the relationship I had with God. But I couldn't have foreseen the misunderstandings which have arisen since then. I was living in a relationship of trust with God and that involved putting myself into his hands without knowing the details of the future."

"Now that is a point I have never been able to fathom. If God was so close to you as to be your Abba, why could he not have stopped the awful death that overwhelmed you? Some Christians have even said that there had to be a sacrifice and that God chose you to be a satisfaction for the sins of the world. That cannot be right - it is against all human justice and morality."

"I was a Jew and many people have not understood just how far I was led by my life in Galilee and Judea with the poor, the sick and the outcasts of society to go beyond the Law and the whole Jewish legal system. I just knew that I had to follow God's leading in everything to the last ditch. I mean that he didn't plan that I should die and be crucified, but he did want me to be fearless in the face of those who sought only their own religious and political ends. Such people always end up by being selfish or callous. I had to follow the truth wherever it led me. It was a point of disclosure when I realised that despite everything that might happen to me, the result would bring freedom and life to many."

"You speak in riddles, Jesus. How can any death, never mind a dreadful death like crucifixion, bring freedom and life?"

"You know how you and Jonathan both benefited in your different spheres of life, supported and inspired by the bond of friendship that you have had since your days at school? Now you feel a sense of dread because of his impending death. But I know that the bond of love you have for one another will remain, even through death. So it was with me. What led me to follow the truth was the love that I had for my Abba, God, and for everyone I lived with from the Nazareth days to all the places where we made our temporary lodgings - you read about them? - ending up in Jerusalem in that upper room of a friend of mine ....... "

"Yes. Now that you speak of your inner motivation of love, I can begin to understand how it could also look from God's side too. I never felt that what people said of you, that you had been destined to become a sacrifice for sin, could really be true. After all, no one, except degenerate peoples, have believed that human sacrifice was right; still less could God accept such an abhorrent rite. Whenever I have read the four gospels of your life, it is clear that above all you were concerned for the new beginning, the kingdom of God, to fulfill the covenant made with Abraham and then by Moses at Sinai. And yet, you did say, didn't you, that 'the Son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many'? I don't understand how a ransom could be big enough to buy off all the generations of people right up to my own day and so to please God. You also said, 'This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.' And of course there seemed to come a point when you began to talk about the inevitability of suffering and death at the hands of men."

"Now you are asking about very difficult questions that involve Jewish language and customs. You know of course that the old covenant was ratified with blood and always on the day of atonement the mercy seat was sprinkled with blood and then the worshippers were also sprinkled. A new covenant that the prophets looked forward to was to be in the heart of my people. I could not have fulfilled the requirement just by being willing to shed my blood, as you so rightly point out that human sacrifice is not acceptable. But when I look back on it all, I realise that from the time when I began to live and work for others in the spirit of mercy, justice and love, I knew that my life would end the tradition of ritual sacrifices of every kind - for of course there were not only blood offerings but also various gifts made to God for cleansing and for sin. There was a real sense that in me God himself was going to make the new beginning, and for all time. Do you remember the young man who went away and having wasted all his property returned, grieving, to his father; only to find his father coming running to embrace him? So it was, in a different way with me. I had done the Abba's will in all things and so more than ever it was true that in my crossing over to him, he came to meet me to embrace me in death and to raise me to life. You can say that I became the forerunner of the whole human race; everyone was now free to accept the gift of new life from God - they had, you might say, been 'ransomed' by the free gift of my love. I, a layman in the eyes of Judaism, had become the high priest and also the victim and had entered the holy of holies - you are familiar with these Jewish terms? - so that for ever, everyone who hears my voice can enter into the relationship with God that I share."

"Thank you, yes; I see now that the astonishing stories in the gospels all point to the fact that you are the living one with whom we must come to God. It would help a lot of people to realise that those accounts are there to identify you, as it were, when you come to meet them, as you do now to me - despite the fact that, as I feel now, it must always seem quite extraordinary that God should do this for us as a gift!"

A silence fell as I tried to take in all that had been said, and I also began to realise there were other questions popping up in my memory, going back to Paul's letters to the churches he founded. Did not Paul say that he gloried only in the cross of Jesus? And yet he had had a vision of Jesus. So what could he have meant?

At this point I began to wonder whether I was just having a soliloquy, trying to talk myself out of my misery, but my momentary day-dreaming was interrupted -

"Obviously you have read about my friend, Paul of Tarsus - a fiery character who handed himself over to my friends in Damascus after an encounter with me as he was journeying there. You have been wondering about him, I expect, how he could write both to Gentiles and to Jews about the new life in God and be understood by them?"

"Well, yes - I mean he was terribly keen on talking about you, but quite often, it seems in Jewish terms. So he said that he had been handed a tradition which said you died for our sins. Now I know that the Jews were constantly concerned about transgression and how to overcome the sins against the Law but that for the ultimate sin against God there was no release. Then I wonder just how far Paul intended many of his sayings to be taken literally. For instance, when he wrote, 'Far be it for me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ', was he really meaning that, as some say today, there was a sort of power in the cross itself? This seems curiously at odds with his wholehearted proclamation of you as Lord."

"Paul had to suffer many setbacks for the sake of proclaiming me as Lord and Messiah, as you know. But he used this experience of weakness and suffering to point out to many of the new Christians that as I had suffered in great weakness, the good news is not about power or might but about the love of God and the wisdom of God made available to all people of whatever religion or status. And did I not say to many people whom I met among the Jews that if anyone followed me they would need to give up everything, and to 'die' to themselves in order to be reborn by the Spirit of God? God can only make this transfiguration in us if we are prepared to die to the old life. It is a way of freely willed response to God in relationship with me. Of course it is not an easy option; my friends, the first disciples, discovered that. Then I expect you will have heard about my own fear on the last night. My Abba also knew that 'sin' could not be got rid of by the rites of sacrifice that you read about in the Law. But as Paul said, they were there to tide us over until the right time came. So I was the person chosen to bring to the Father the obedience of a love I learned in my own life and of course this also involved human suffering."

"So do you mean that God, your Abba, allowed you to give yourself freely up to torture and a cruel death so that the old order could be repealed? I know that Paul did say that what God did in you has made us free - I think he said, 'God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself'. But when one of the churches appeared to be going back to the 'slavery' of the law he reminded them that he had 'placarded' you as crucified before their eyes. The problem is that this language has misled many people to believe that the heart of Christian belief rests in your death, and that somehow your suffering was also for our benefit."

"Well, Paul expressed himself in a great many images and metaphors that would be understood by Jews. I know, however, that the real and constant witness he made was of me, Jesus, as alive. He was convinced of this at our encounter on the Damascus road and at that point I know that he died to his old life and was raised to new life in his response to my call by the Spirit. He was also looking to being 'closer' to me - as you will have noticed in some of his writings. This involved hoping for the time, which he thought must not be far off, when we could all be together in the completion of the Father's work, in the kingdom. If anyone thought that by returning to the 'safety' and age-old certainties of Jewish Law they could be more assured of salvation, that troubled Paul greatly. His statements about the cross and myself as the crucified one have to be read in the context of his arguments. It was clear to him that my death and resurrection had brought an end to the Law. The death was a bridge to the age of the new covenant. Now, on this side of the events of those last days of my life, anyone who turns to me in faith receives the blessings of peace and new life from God. Despite the fact that from my fellow Jews point of view my death by crucifixion had brought the curse of the Law upon me, Paul had come to see that it was the 'lever' to the opening of the kingdom of God to all. He identified himself with me in my death for, as he said, he had also died to the Law that he might live to God in a relationship of faith with me. So he was continually constrained to speak of the necessity of accepting me, the 'living one' as the person who was crucified, and not some other saviour."

"I am beginning to see now that Paul's real concern was to bring as many people as possible to know you as the living Lord Jesus Christ. Suffering and death have been, and I suppose always will be, a preoccupation of the human race. But I don't remember you saying anything about the problem of suffering. You were concerned with life and the gospels set this out clearly. They narrate your trial and death in detail but without any emphasis on the suffering. Perhaps we always feel the need to project our problems on to others and we may have done this to you in meditating on your life throughout the centuries. We are slow of heart to understand! For you are with us for ever .......... "

There was a long pause. I realised that I had been speaking too much as well as getting a bit out of my depth. Then when I looked up I simply saw the shadows cast by the trees and people approaching from the other end of the path. If you have read this far in my account of the conversation, you might think that it had taken some hours! But in fact it happened in a split second, if one can speak about time in such an experience. It must have seemed the same to Paul on the Damascus road. At any rate, in some mysterious way, I had also died in the course of this encounter, and had been given new life in Jesus - with understanding. I still suffered greatly for Jonathan, but in a different way - I saw everything now in the perspective of the 'living one'.

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