The poet believes that Jesus hates him.

I read one of D H Lawrence’s poems that shocked me. It is called “Meeting among the Mountains”. Lawrence is walking from Germany to Italy and he is drawn to a wayside crucifix. Christ’s body sags, ravaged by agony; it fascinates him. As he stands looking, a bullock cart comes along the road, and Lawrence pretends that his attention is not fixed on the Christ. (Who among us has not hidden our connection to Jesus in embarrassment when others are present?) 

Afterwards, he returns his gaze again to the crucified figure, and seems to see through the closed, dead eyelids that Christ is hating him – several times he repeats that Christ hates him – I suppose he feels guilty for being embarrassed. That is what shocked me. He got it wrong. Christ would say to him: “I don’t hate you; you hate yourself”. 

Each of us has times of self-hatred. We grow tired and dispirited because of our constant failures and oftentimes glimpse the deep wrongness buried inside ourselves. But the wrongness is a fault in our own vision. In our assumption that we are responsible for everything including ourselves, we become haunted by the bitter erosion of self-esteem.

But we are not responsible for everything. We are created to respond to another who loves us. But, oh, how our embarrassment makes us hide from others behind the façade of self-sufficiency! We can only be released by a lover who sees through our posturing and believes in the deep potential of what we are meant to be. And that needs to be a very mighty lover. By sheer grace, we have just such a lover - God. Listen to The Song of Songs, God’s love song to each of us.

My Beloved lifts up his voice,

he says to me,

"Come then, my love,

my lovely one, come.

For see, winter is past,

the rains are over and gone.

The flowers appear on the earth.

The season of glad songs has come,

the cooing of the turtledove is heard in our land

The fig tree is forming its first figs

and the blossoming vines give out their fragrance.

Come then, my love,

My lovely one, come. (Song of Songs, 2 10-13)

Can you hear the urgency of our Father? It is as though he has made a vast vacuum in his own heart that can only be filled by us. And that will happen as we grow more and more into the likeness of his Son.