Laughing On The Cross

And so the convict crucified next to Jesus said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."

Jesus answered him, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise."

The convicted man thought about that for a minute then a wry smile formed on his lips which then kept building into full blown laughter. "It's true, isn't it?"

"Yes..."

"They do all this for nothing!"

Both men broke into laughter as they fully realized the futile and feckless ways of the world.

The Roman guards who heard the laughter looked up in dire fear as they already suspected they lived their lives in vain, hoping against hope the approval of the world meant the approval of God. It was if their innermost secret fear was being played out in broad daylight and this froze the guards in paralysis, helpless bystanders to what may come.

The guard captain, who'd long ago eschewed his soul as a useless hindrance, turned to hear the laughter and the sound of it ripped through his being as sharply as the nails had the crucified men. In his agony he rushed over to cease the piercing pain.

"You two shut up! There's no laughing on a cross!"

But that was as if he'd spoken the punchline to a joke the captain was wholly inadequate to understand, causing a fresh burst of laughter. Flustered, the captain whirled around to see if anyone noticed him and to his horror found every eye within sight to be upon him. He fell back on his tried and true methods.

"I order you to be quiet!" That was a quick failure and the captain felt as ants were crawling over his entire body. In sheer desperation to assert an authority he did not have, he decried, "You've been convicted by our holy courts! You criminals are fools!" When that too failed, the captain could no longer fight the feeling he'd been stripped naked before the world, thus revealing no one had reason to listen to anything he had to say regardless of his so-called rank. The captain fled, much to the the astonishment of his underlings.

"I suspect one - if not all of us here - is a moron."

The laughing had also drawn in curious onlookers, some of whom had voted for the two men's death. They too were disconcerted.

"The devil's come taken their minds!" asserted a woman who'd declared herself pious. "Read about it in the holy scriptures," she added to give weight to her argument. "It's good to be killing these two. No one can live with possessed minds like these."

A nearby banker also felt justified. "That Jesus is a most unserious fellow. He has no respect for commerce. Silly sot spoke of love as he should of money."

A coward sneered, "He said he wanted to help people. What good can he do dead? Easy to talk high and mighty when you don't plan on sticking around, the short-sighted fool."

No one who heard the laughter was able to remain silent, anymore than a person thrown into a roaring fire could. The sound pierced and piqued the soul into uncontrollable agony, forcing expressions of self-reflection - that which they most desperately sought to keep secret, even to the point of murder.

As the commenters had feared - but not dare utter - the two crucified men were laughing at their self-serving foolishness. The crucifiers acted as flat-earthers who believed killing every person who says the world is round will somehow make it flat. The hopelessness at the core of their behavior - that getting as many people as possible to agree with them would save them - made their every act meaningless and moot. In a word, they were morons - morons to be pitied and whose absurd claims bring laughter from the truly knowing.

Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."