Long Before

Long Before

(“The people continued to sacrifice at the illegal places of worship, but they sacrificed only to the Lord their God.” 2 Chronicles 33:17)

We celebrated where the guns thundered and the
flags waved in the fiery sky.
We celebrated when the muskets when silent
but built monuments to remember our might.
We wear our uniforms to church,
we build chapels with crosses shaped like
fighter jets.
We sing god-and-country and cannot understand
why god has not declared a
winner yet.

We always had the better gunpowder,
never relied on spears or arrows,
wrote our language down for centuries;
poetry and science, medicine and odes for
the sorrows others inflicted upon us.
We were destined for these amber waves of grain.

Yet upon purple mountains there are still caches of blood,
there are cloaks of misery trodding the fruited plain.
How many times must the sun go down
before we reject religion that sees no difference between
animals and kin?

And still our monuments stand. Still our hollow statues of
hammered copper green with the age. We honor the killers,
sing of the rebels, send our missiles with prayers attached
to their tails.

But we have braided the stars and stripes so tightly with
the stripes and wounds upon our savior’s back that we salute the
flag and expect Jesus to answer early and late. 

Come to a monument without a statue,
settle in around the table of peace.
Break the bread where the only allegiance is
God toward his people. Find Jesus on the streets,
and bring our hidden guest, that we may begin again,
find rest again, proclaim glory again that shines the moment

we descend the mountain to the spot on the foothills where
feet walked, mothers gave birth, fathers hunted, long before
we touched the earth.

Family Business

Family Business

(“Men made it very hard for Him and caused Him to suffer, yet He did not open His mouth. He was taken like a lamb to be put to death. A sheep does not make a sound while its wool is cut and He did not open His mouth.” Isaiah 53:7)

You who call for the end of all things,
nuclear conflagrations and conspiratorial
elections,
how smart you have become in your invested opinions,
claiming blue jays are hawks without reservation,
decrying marriage as just another contract with paper and ink.

How great our brains have grown to act as if what we know now
we have already known and leave God out of the question,
or question whether knowing Him is part of the question at all.

And you who call for Christ to return,
as if your aches and pains are the scheme behind all things,
though we all sympathize, (who wouldn't want a home where
eyes never go bad, the paper is on the porch, and health insurance
is affordable). But my limp falls far short of filling up the lack

in Christ's sufferings, if there is any lack at all.

And you who ache for the first wake of the final seven years
that the book series insisted would Leave Behind mostly the left
because they don't go to church, or when they do, the inhabit those
demonic denominations
who sometimes actually find an open mouth to feed. Do you want
the end
simply because your favorites are out of power?

I do not exaggerate, look not for hyperbole, I shudder when I
sense the Silent Lamb so mistreated, the Unblushing Love of
all
leaving word and protest on the floor like the greasy cleanup
of a short-order store. I weep that I do not see it well enough.
I shiver at stone churches, big screen projections, tight harmonies,
bright fantasies that stir up dust but stare at the the ones who
traipsed the mud into their house with their unfashionable boots.
Is it too late for anyone to remember?
Are we too far, too american, too rich, too accepted,
so high and holy that no one can see the vague resemblance
we once had to our Elder Quiet Brother?

Don't say He was harsh with the fakeries, unless you,
fakery of His family, agree you need His words strictly
for your own unfinished family business.