Pop the Words

Pop the Words

(“How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” John 5:44)

You pop the right words, “God gave me”,
and “Christ told me”, and “I’m led to”,

But why I cannot find you when
the poor need another week of bread,

Why you are not running
to open the bus doors for the
children who smell just like you did
when you were a child that smelled;
did you stay home to avoid another buffet line?

You’ve changed your words, but still shoot daggers
at the same people as before. Now you quote Scripture
to prove how right your intolerance has become.

Come now, sing the tune, the words, the Spirit,
the same as we have sung for centuries on end. Why?
Do you?

You set your timer to go off at exactly the moment
you notice
no one notices
your commitment; your words last only
as long
as they are easy to speak. Hard to keep and
the alarm rings

And the Pastor is preaching suspect passages,
the doctors are only practicing, not healing,
the teachers don’t know their curriculum
and the banjo player gets his fingers stuck in
the strings.

Or so it seems to hear your report.

You met Jesus, and all he did was give you a new vocabulary
to tear up and shred every decent person who ever tried

To help you a decent person. And “Christ”, as you call Him,
is not Christ at all if You have forgotten the blessing of doing
what nobody ever notices.