Did You Sanitize Your Sword?

 

Did You Sanitize Your Sword?

(“Then Jesus said to him, 'Put your sword back into its place, for all those who take the sword will die by the sword.’” Matthew 26:52)

Did you sanitize your sword this morning,
freshly sharpen it on the grinding wheel?
Did you study the better ways to draw blood
and go in for the kill?
Did you point your tongue at someone’s heart today,
target the spot already bleeding?
Did you rehearse your words to stick like barbs
hidden away in your opponent’s story?

“I would never” is
ever the thing I would.
“I would not deny” is the setup for
fresh self-protection.

Someone sectioned off the lies that
let me pull the trigger and claim it was
still well-holstered. Ever since an emperor took the
Cross
into battle
we edit peace and name them missiles,
we hate the lamb and
bare the teeth of the lion.

Legions of angels could subdue
every weapon formed against you,
so why polish your handgun
when the Lord of all the earth is
cruciform?

Unrelenting love, persistent songs of protest
for the
weaker ones seem so frail to some. But
not to the one who bids us sheath our swords
and walk with the suffering instead.
The collateral damage is not just in our heads
but on the dusty streets where bombs hit their targets
and stick like barbs in the occupants of dirt
and land and history and memory.

The rhetoric and armaments have stored enough
violence. When will we sing “peace on earth,
goodwill toward men” and mean it first and again?