Not a second goes by that his teeth don’t tear into my skin, that the poison which lives in him, in his mouth and his veins, his tears and his piss, not a second goes by that the poison isn’t injected into me. My eyes never close. Neither do his. I never sleep. Neither does he. My sentence is to be consumed for eternity, chewed like undercooked bacon, crushed and burned, sucked on and spat out. My sentence for your deliverance.

Who would have thought 30 pieces of silver would have bought this? And don’t even get me started on inflation. Alright, so you might wonder at how I can joke, and joke badly, while a three headed demon gnashes his teeth against my bones, flossing with my sinew, gargling on my blood until the end of time. You see, I can’t separate myself from the pain. It never ends. My bones break and reappear. My flesh, swallowed at intervals, is regurgitated and boiled back onto my bones. I feel it all. All of it! There is no escape and there never will be. You’ll get eternity in blissful paradise, one I heard about and preached about and hoped for and one that I’ll never see. You see, I followed Him because I believed. Not in that once a week, let’s get the family and head to the temple kind of way. I believed with everything in my body, my mind, and my soul. I believed so completely it would blind me. All I would see is Him, glorious wonderful funny sincere easy and true Him. How I loved Him so!

The funny thing is that I was already in love when I met Jesus. Maybe that’s what hooked me. The man had this message of love like it was something you’d never imagined possible. He talked about and you could taste it. You could taste it and smell it and you’d have to pinch yourself so you knew you weren’t dreaming. Only you could actually feel the love too, and the pinch just became a tender reminder that we can all become that person we’re afraid of turning into. We could all be just like Him.

“Please, Judas. Just stay with me a few minutes longer.” I called her Jasmine.

“My sweet Jasmine,” I said as we lay there skin against skin on a pile of soft spring hay, “A few minutes with you is a lifetime of bliss.” I tried not to think of what my brothers would say if they knew I spoke to her like this. How they would laugh! You couldn’t talk about love with them. Not with them or with your parents or your friends or anyone. Love just didn’t seem to matter. All you needed was a woman and the surety that she was “your” woman and no one else’s. It’s why arranged marriages worked so well. It didn’t matter who you married, so long as you simply did it.

“Then let this last not a lifetime,” she leaned in close and kissed me and I could taste apples and wine on her lips, “let it last an eternity. Stay with me. Stay with me forever.”

Looking back I wish I’d done what she asked. So forever on this earth is transitory and what we really have to do is prepare for the eternity of the hereafter. Sure, I know that. Hindsight may be 20/20 but I’ve got an eternity of hindsight to endure. That and bad jokes are all I know beyond the pain.

Jesus was alone the day I met Him. He was tall and elegant, like a glass of walking, talking water. I was out for a breath of fresh air, thinking about Jasmine and family and work and the future. I used to like taking a stroll by this crystalline lake just about a mile from my home in Judah. There was a rumor the devil lived in that lake so everyone stayed far away. Legend had it that if you put just a finger in the lake it would instantly rise to a boil and burn you so terribly you’d feel the sting of it for a lifetime to come. Everyone stayed away. When I was a kid I decided to find out. Mother said I was insatiably curious, but mother understood. She’d let me wander (though I don’t think she thought I ever went to Devil’s Lake). When I was eight years old I decided to test the waters and slinked up to the shoreline. I remember it was dusk, one of those magnificent sunsets over the desert, and there I was hiking up the cloth of my garment and daring myself to dip just a toe in that sinful liquid. After a while standing there with my eyes closed I plunged my big toe in and waited to scream. But instead of a scream I laughed. The water felt perfect, just that right temperature. So I took all my clothes off and waded in, swimming alone in the desert daring the devil to boil me alive then and there. Obviously he didn’t. He left me alone and I enjoyed one of the most wonderful days I can remember.

So it wasn’t any surprise that Jesus was alone at Devil’s Lake. It was the first time I’d ever seen another person there and I’d been visiting the lake for 20 years now. He wasn’t doing anything mystical or miraculous (and after getting to know Him better I realized He rarely did anything miraculous), He was just skipping stones over the water. I hung back for a while because this man, this person I’d never seen before but felt this sudden affection towards would meticulously bend over and study the ground, pick up a rock and rub his thumb along it, then discard it for another and stand up and then he’d aim and take two practice throws before finally letting go on His third throw. I could see his mouth moving as the rock bounced happily against the water’s surface, counting the number of bounces before the final plunk pulled it to the lake’s shallow bottom. And when the rock sank from view Jesus arched his back and looked towards the sky and laughed. That’s the first thing that really drew me to Him. The man had a wonderful laugh, an infectious laugh, a spine-tingling hair-raising stomach-giggling laugh.

“It’s good water for skipping stones,” and I laughed as I said it.