Just When Everyone Else Is Walking Away

Just When Everyone Else Is Walking Away

(“But from now on, the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God.” Luke 22:69)

Empires are threatened by authority that wields its power
like dying. Rulers rage at the gentle grace that sits upon
the face of those who have learned, at the sharp side of the spear,
that military parades are the antichrist in a world desperately needing peace.

The Son of Man, the human one, the person no one understands,
will always be the one brought before courts with made-up charges
from the cream of the crop.

The accusations fly and Satan laughs and dances: That man told us
to stop paying taxes.
That man is misleading so many people of our nation.
That man says we shouldn’t give anything to Caesar.
That man says he is a king!

The empire implodes. The purveyors of propriety pull their hair,
the strong men grab their whips to teach a lesson or two that the
Teacher
needs to learn.

They thought to sit him down and shut him up,
they encouraged every false claimer to speak up,
they needed charges, false ones, accusations grown of
discontent and jealousy. They needed to rid the nation of
this threat to their good way of life. Follow this man and our
whole reason for existence could be ruined. Mute him;
forever.

You will never see the power of the divine until you
contemplate the splintery stake upon which Jesus sat.
You will never understand the dream of God until you
study the way the Son of Man ruled from a cross meant for
shame: humiliation: death: In those moments you may receive
illumination that God’s power is not like human kings who
write out executive orders to rid the land of more uneasy people
of color.

God’s throne is not golden, it is not gilded in precious jewels,
it is not at the end of a royal carpet with warriors holding up
the corners. God’s throne is among the jesters who know how
shame can bring rain that washes all the dust away. They are the
ones who started to tell the truth when kings thought they must be gods.

No one ever knew, and many still do not, that God is no king, but is
a servant. That the Son of Man is not a destroyer, but a giver. And
it is time to know kingly edicts can only come from crosses of pain
that remind us that we have been forgiven again and again. And the
Son cries, “Father forgive, for they have no idea what they are doing.”
And the jesters dance just when everyone else is walking away.

A Whisper Shattering Everything

A Whisper Shattering Everything

(“But from now on the Son of Man shall be seated at the right hand of the power of God.” Luke 22:69)

That’s the point, and still is.
That’s the point of view that has changed all that is.
The next sound is a whisper shattering everything.
The next question raises eyebrows.
The prisoner was cross-examined and
never backed down. They dragged their
chains across his forehead, their lightning was pale.

Preachers predicted a coming Armageddon,
the apocalypse was just around the bend.
But the universe kept arcing, the word kept
asking
why the world should be destroyed.
Blood up to the bridles and swords flashing
sky to sky while
the Human One
stood in the silence, filled up the vacuum
left panting like rain.
Vacant accusations suspect that God would not
mind
at all
burning up the earth to house all the
flagrant doubters locked into their cells.

Yet the grass still remains soft as baby’s skin
beneath bare feet that only want
to walk home in peace.

That’s the point, and always will be.
That’s the point of view that opened eyes can see.
The next sound is a parched cry from wooden beams
that wipes the slate clean.
The next question announces mortality,
why, o why, have you forsaken me?

And the human one, with the cry of finality
says it is done, finished, complete and needs no
annotation. Sit on the edges of

The world;
it is time gaze again, without/within,
and redefine our fiery rhetoric with
the new world started and being,
finished and headlong,
a creation where the
human one
whispers to power in ways that
shatter everything.