I follow orders. I don’t act on my own. I go where I’m told. I do what I’m instructed.
I’m also out of work.
Before my early retirement, my thirst for justice could only be quenched by the taste of blood.
I am the wrath of God.
I was awakened in the beginning when the deceived couple disobeyed Him. I watched as He banished them from the garden, a flaming sword nearly blinding my eyes. As they left, my smoky breath pushed the newly clothed couple deep into the wilderness. Their tears of shame and guilt echoing into the night.
Many years later, I stood on dry ground as the rain fell freely for the first time. I watched as the men and women blistered their fists against the sides of the boat. It was me who kept those inside from opening the door, preventing the old man and his sons from rescuing a single evildoer. My voice thundered through the storm, drowning out the screams of the dying.
“Death!” I yelled from the mountaintops. “Death to you all!”
Sometime later, with His permission, I unleashed my full potential for swift, utter destruction. No more of the slow 40-day drizzle. This was instantaneous. I rained down burning sulphur upon those two towns. Explosions of fire rattled rooftops. Those inside the cities’ walls must have thought the earth had erupted like a volcano beneath their feet. My fire smoldered for days, not a creature survived except Lot and his daughters.
Then a new system of animal sacrifices limited my involvement. Atonement He called it. A payment for transgressions that didn’t require the guilty to die. One night, I watched Abraham take his only son up a mountain to offer a sacrifice. The very promised son who was born when his wife was too old to give birth. Without an animal to slay, he tied his son to the alter. I licked my lips. But an angel intervened just as the knife was about to descend. I only drank ram’s blood that night. Abraham’s words of faith, “God himself will provide a lamb for the burnt offering, my son,” never left my memory.
After the passing of centuries, I had very busy night. Abraham’s offspring had prospered into a populous, albeit enslaved, people. I was given freedom to devour the first-born among all living in Egypt, including the Israelites. I relished the name I was given: the destroyer. The Lord and I went all throughout Egypt. But there was a catch. He would not permit me to enter the Israelite houses where the blood of a lamb was painted upon their doorframes. We passed over all the homes that had the drippings of the precious blood. I roamed ferociously that night, drinking to my fill, from the palace of the Pharaoh to the bottom of the deepest dungeon. No house in Egypt was spared. Yet in Israel, the lamb’s blood had saved a nation. That night would usher in an annual celebration of what He had done.
My work continued for millennia. And then my career came to a merciful halt. It was my last night on the job. My crescendo of killing. My most horrible endeavor. It was in Jerusalem, during the Passover remembrance. I had been restrained long ago in Egypt. Now I had one opportunity pour out what was once held back. But the punishment I was about to release was not for sins of the past.
It would be for future transgressions. The wickedness of all mankind. Paid for tonight. In full. I was told to direct every ounce of life-ending destruction that I couldn’t unleash in Egypt, that I wouldn’t need to mete out during all the tomorrows to come … upon one man. I couldn’t believe my instructions. How could this be His plan? I begged for another way. But I had my orders.
And so, I did. I turned my reluctance into rage. With all I could summon, the fury of Sodom was set upon one pair of shoulders. Forty days of rain pelting one man’s head.
Beatings. Whippings. Punches. A skin-piercing crown. His back was stripped bare. A bloody Nile ran between the cracks in the cobblestones. His face was nearly unrecognizable.
Then I took him up the hill. Laid his shredded body on the wooden beam. The same type of post used to make doorframes. I stretched out his arms across a second beam. I grabbed three nails and a hammer. The first time I raised the hammer I waited, no I hoped, for the angel to step in. To grasp my hand and prevent the downward swing. But there was no ram hiding atop that barren, skull-shaped rock. I swung that hammer.
At the strike of the first nail, the words came back to me: “God himself will provide a lamb for the burnt offering …”
… “My son.”
He took the full measure of my terror. His screams of agony were far louder than those who drowned in the flood, his tears deeper than those of the garden-exiled duo.
I lifted him up for the crowd to see. The cross sinking into its hole with an earthy thud.
I poured myself out. I was empty, exhausted. As his blood dripped to the dirt, as steady as rain, I took a taste. I filled my cup with it and gulped it down.
And I was satisfied.
Then I wept.
I climbed up the side of the cross, peered into his eyes. Somehow, he was still alive. My tears mixing with his blood below. “Death to you, Son of God,” I sobbed into his ear.
Suddenly the sky grew black, the howling wind stopped. Fraught with agony, he looked at me. I saw in his eyes, for the first time, my antithesis … grace.
“It is finished,” he whispered back.
And so was I.
