Red

Red didn’t belong there in the coarse, sticky green. It caught my eye like a gem, nestled down in the grass under the clothesline. It was a little stub of crayon that had most likely fallen from the pocket of a piece of clothing hanging there.

Ironically, large size crayons were made for small size hands. But I never liked these chubby implements very much because it was impossible to render any real detail with them. I preferred the smaller sort; felt-tip markers were even better.

It was obvious that someone had liked this red log though, since both ends were rounded from use. And both edges of the stiff paper wrapper had been peeled back to expose more color.

I reached down to pick it up. My thumb and index finger closed upon it with an accuracy of pressure perfected by at least seven years of experience with the hardness of crayons. But my squeeze met nearly no resistance at all. The crayon yielded in an entirely unexpected way.

It had melted in the summer sun. Until I squeezed it, the stubby cylinder had retained its form. It was a bewildering, delightful and inexplicably gratifying sensation. In that moment I discovered the potential softness of crayons. And I learned that the faraway sun is near enough to change stuff here on earth.

Not many summers later I was with my gang of friends in one of our favorite unsupervised spots. It was nothing more than a few undeveloped acres of hillocks, bracken and small trees set between two neighborhoods and an apartment complex. Its virtue was that grownups had no reason to go there. We, on the other hand, had an excellent reason for being there: Billy Sass had firecrackers and matches. I think he’d gotten them from a cousin who’d been to South Carolina on vacation.

Firecrackers were a rarity in New York since they had to be purchased out of state. Their detonation was an event to be savored. Earlier that day we’d melted a red candle and molded its wax around the firecrackers. The idea was to make the explosion more dramatic. Blowing stuff up was without question the coolest thing that could be done with a firecracker.

Being boys, we all had to get our hands in on the action of arranging the ordnance and supervising the twisting together of fuses. We watched the red match-head scrape along the matchbook’s rough strip, and heard the successful burst of fire. A pungent whiff of sulfur wafted into the air. We watched the fragile cardboard stick move toward the fuse and hoped no breeze would blow it out. We waited for a spray of sparks from the tips of the fuses to signal us to scamper backward from our tight circle.

This particular braid of fuses burned faster than expected. My hand was the last one to pull back from the blast zone. There was a flash, a bang, a sharp sting, and the alarming sight of red. For a gasp’s length I thought the skin had been blown off of my left hand. Fortunately, it was only covered with wax shrapnel.

Red gets my attention. It usually means something important is happening. After a knock on the head I instinctively touch the injured site and check for blood on my fingers. At times I’ve felt the sweet relief of seeing none there. Other times, when my fingers have returned from the site wet and smudged with red, I’ve felt my anxiety level rising sharply. In both instances the pain might be identical, but my degree of concern differs according to the color I see.

At this time of year, along with most Christians, I look toward Golgotha – “the place of the skull” – and force myself to again behold the horror of my Savior stained red. The written accounts of his anguish create vivid, troubling images in my mind. My faith compels me to believe that Jesus had to suffer as he did, but I remain unable to understand why. I wish from my core that it could have been otherwise.

This year I have the opportunity to view a filmmaker’s depiction of the most disturbing, most humbling, and in a sense the most private scene of my faith. By all accounts, his use of red in the film is copious. If I choose to see it, I expect that it will grab my insides and not let go. It will probably never let go. That’s the cinematographer’s intent.

But with or without the movie’s help, I will think about Jesus over these next few weeks, worn and bloody – exposed and vulnerable, his divine covering peeled back. I’ll remember his softness to my distress and anxiety, and I’ll be reminded that God is near enough to change stuff here on earth.