The living and the dying
A poem.
God of the living, and of the dying
What happened
two thousand years ago
has a grip on our hearts
and on our minds
We remember an event
impossibly far removed from us in time
as though it were today
that the one who won us over
was tried
by church and state
and publicly executed
It staggers belief
Can God be put to death
by humans?
He was vulnerable from the start
from the day he was born, his first steps
A Son of God cannot walk the earth
openly
without becoming a threat
to every injustice, to the unjust
without becoming a friend
to losers
and leaving the winners feeling left out
vulnerable
losers like us
whom he won over
by his love, by the truth that he told
by the way, the path that he showed
to life – to You
We sit here all these years later
scattered sheep gathered in
on a Friday called Good
and re-live it:
watch him again, hear him again
not balk, not avoid what’s coming:
capital punishment
for the crime of being who he was
and human
We’re keen
to peak around the corner
to Easter morning
without going through his Hell
And we who are human, though we know and believe
also fear
We who wish to live, preferably forever
do run, deny, weep
with the rest of our world
to avoid what’s coming
our own death
the death of someone we love
We who feel that death itself
is an injustice
do not willingly hear
that it is through death
that we find and enter into the life You give
We’re keen also
to avoid admitting to
the deaths we cause
the murderous thoughts, the verbal murders
of living breathing human beings
our little executions
of Your other sons and daughters
We pray for those, like Christ
unjustly accused
Unlike Christ
we beg mercy
We rely, body and soul, on Your promise
to be with us now
and at that hour
We are human only
Today we can only just bear
to hear and follow his story
through to the end
and to remember again his dying words
