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Perhaps because it’s so hard to watch intense suffering up close that the  gospel writers struggle so much to tell who was there exactly. In Matthew and Mark, Jesus is deserted by his friends, taunted by the crowd watching on, the chief priest and scribes, the soldiers and the other victims. Luke has the same cast of characters, but some of the bystanders and one of the victims are sympathetic. In John, the mother of Jesus and her close companions are near enough to hear Jesus speak to them from the cross, but elsewhere, the women keep their distance. They agree on two things only – the disciples are nowhere in sight, and those nearest to the cross of Jesus are those who had no choice in the matter – the soldiers and the two others being crucified.

It’s a story of abandonment. The disciples are either in hiding or running as far away from Jerusalem as they can get, but they can’t hide or run from the guilt and shame that has come upon them. For Pilate, it’s case closed and his final verdict is pinned to the cross, ‘This is the king of the Jews’. He has got the measure of this Jesus, he can say what is happening on the cross.

The priests and scribes have decided who this Jesus is too; they can say what is happening on the cross. Their history, traditions and centuries of privileged access to God have closed their minds to encountering God anew.

Further out from the cross is the crowd, which has followed Jesus here from Jerusalem, some weeping, some jeering, some dumbstruck at what they are seeing, some numb to the routine cruelties that are the backdrop to their lives, some who feel they cannot go on, some not thinking of anything much at all and just looking for an afternoon’s diversion.

There are so many figures here that we can try on. Are we fearful? Do we doubt? Does shame or guilt make us want to hide away? Do we pride ourselves in our understanding of God? Are our rituals of worship, beautiful as they are, a substitute for God? Do we wish Jesus had come to right the world’s wrongs? Are we carrying a cross, or helping someone carry theirs? Are we waiting for a miracle, or a sign from heaven? Are we looking for comfort for the absences in our own lives? Are we parents whose children confound us? Are we citizens horrified at what is being done by our governments or their agents? Do we weep at the sorrows and injustices of the world, or for our powerless to do anything about them?

Where are we in this story? Which part of us is present and which part of us is keeping our distance? We try our best to concentrate on the events of this solemn day, to find rich words and heightened language for our meditations, to summon proper emotion in the deep recesses of our hearts, to search our store of go-to scripture texts, hymns, poetry, images, in order to understand what it means that Christ dies for us. We hope our efforts will bring us closer to the cross, but whenever we think we have understood it, we can become like Pilate, pinning a sign on the cross that says ‘I know who this Jesus is.’ He was right in what he said, and our explanations may be right too, but they only ever touch the hem of the garment of all that this day signifies.

Like the priests and scribes, we who habitually go to church may find it hard to connect with the cross because we know the story so well and impose our own meanings on it. But here, God is so utterly different from the pictures of him we carry around with us. The shock and chaos of the cross is of no help if we want a safe and reliable religion, a God who will comply with our understanding and serve our needs.

So it’s maybe better to stop trying, to accept our confusion, let go of our need to explain everything and let the cross contemplate us. We aren’t asked to understand, but to stay, and to dare to let ourselves be seen by God. And the people who can help us here are those nearest to the cross, the soldiers and the two criminals.

The soldiers had wretched work to do and are brutalised by it. It’s their hands that strip their victims, hold them down, and hammer nails into flesh. Cursing and screaming they were used to, but not, ‘Father forgive them, they know not what they do.’ Far from home, separated from all its intimacies and comforts, where their job is to obey without question, the words they hear from this victim open the door of a new family home to  them, a home where there is the love, understanding, forgiveness and acceptance they so miss.

Sylvia Sands is a Belfast poet who wrote much of her work during the years of the Troubles and she imagines one of the soldiers as a young squaddie broken open by these words,

‘I’ve heard curses and threats and brave defiance,

But never, never, as the hammer swung, concern for me.

Through the blood and the thorns and nails

His eyes met mine with tenderness.

Suddenly I wanted my mother and my wife,

And my gentle daughter

To cradle my head in their laps

And hide me, hide me from this man’s gaze

And here I am, throwing dice,

With his words hammering,

Hammering in my head,

Hammering, hammering in my heart

Like nails of love and forgiveness and tenderness.’

In this story of abandonment, it is not Jesus who is abandoned. It’s us and on the cross, Christ comes to find us and call us home. In death as in life, Jesus seeks the lost. I like to imagine that the priests and scribes were near enough to hear these words – because I think I might have been among them – and wondered if they were being sought and called home too.

We don’t know what the crimes of the other victims were but the sentence of capital punishment – recoil from it as we might – does not allow us to be sentimental about them. Yet, in his dying moments, these are the people Jesus is with. One rails and blasphemes, but there is no rebuke from Jesus. We too might say horrible things when we are desperate and in pain. Jesus sees him, he takes his anger.

But the other man shows us fully what it means to let ourselves be seen by Jesus.  He is the only person ever to call Jesus by his simple name, unadorned by any title like Lord, teacher, son of David. It is a response of love to love, the most intimate exchange anywhere in the Gospels. Jesus, naked, bloodied, nailed, outstretched has nothing left except his love for us and this thief is held in its gaze.

His plea, ‘Jesus, remember me’ is answered with a promise of more than he asked for. Today he has a future beyond the agony and the death. Today he will be released from his suffering, today his sins will be forgiven, today he will not just be remembered, but will be in paradise with Jesus.

And though they cannot imagine it, those faraway disciples are held in that gaze too. In three days’ time Jesus will go searching for them and will speak the words that will cover their shame and remove their guilt and bring them close again, ‘Peace be with you.’

‘Once we were far off, but now we have been brought close through the shedding of Christ’s blood’ are words we sometimes say as we share the peace.

Wherever you are in the story today, these words are for you.