Milton on Easter Monday
Dejected, I ride home from my class on Milton.
After all the great beauty of Paradise,
God conversing with Adam and Eve
in the cool of the evening--
a picture of all we long for as human beings--
I had hoped that maybe, just maybe
the story might turn out different.
But they fell nonetheless.
Last Friday I sat in church remembering
a petulant teen who balked at going to Good Friday services.
“It’s the same every year,” he protested.
“They kill him every time.”
Why do we keep subjecting ourselves over and over
to the same old trauma of the cross?
It IS pretty much the same every year.
The story doesn’t change.
We hope it’ll go otherwise,
but we know better.
We know about Bosnia and Rwanda,
child soldiers and conscripted baby doll sex slaves
satisfying the appetites of those with purchase power.
We can hear the whimpers of hunger,
smell the fear of those hiding from raging abusers
drunk with staggering guns,
see the fear flash death against a black hoodie
of an African-American teen just walking
his way home in innocence.
History piles up the evidence like Ezekiel’s bones
from mass graves in forests unknown.
It howls at us from the screech of police cars
or the silent accusations of babies with begging eyes.
We know how the story goes.
It’s the same old same old year in, year out.
In fact, it’s downright boring once removed,
in spite of the intrigue and gore--
the stuff that makes for good Hollywood box office receipts.
Every year it’s the same sniveling religious leaders,
brutalizing soldiers, jeering crowd,
cowardly pompous Pilate
ignoring a wife’s whispers in the background.
It’s boring because it’s all so . . . predictable.
Sad, of course, but predictable,
like Milton’s fall in the lush narrative:
fear of threat, movement of shadows, snuffing of light.
1, 2, 3, predictable, boring,
these powers of destruction.
Oh, you will say this is sacrilege,
an occupational hazard
of theologians who know too much
of how the sausage is made--
by requiring the death of an intelligent pig
who, while baptized in mud,
somehow knows how his story will end, too.
Or perhaps you’ll chalk it up to old age
in an age where, after awhile,
our culture’s novelty wears off
leaving nothing but a thin veneer of ennui
no longer affected by others’ suffering.
Maybe it's a matter of liturgical reading
with passionless renderings of The Passion.
But I don’t think that’s it either.
The torture still outrages.
It’s just that destruction is
so cause-and-effect predictable,
like a science experiment of chemical reactions
with explosive results,
as boring as the lecture of an academic sociologist
who no longer does field work
and has taught the same intro course
for decades with nary a change.
Compare Good Friday to Easter, though,
and surprise abounds.
We know that story, too,
how on the first day of the week at daybreak
the women were just going to anoint the body
and found everything awry, amiss,
and thereby back in order.
Something deeper beyond the historical familiar is at work here--
novelty, creativity, astonished whispers of resurrection.
Not restoration or repair of what’s broken
or flower dying in winter and returning in spring.
But something so new we can’t rationally comprehend it
even as we know its truth beyond images
as it surges through creation’s song itself.
Each year, yes, the lilies stifle with sweetness.
Scrubbed acolytes still process protecting precious light.
The choir sings the same songs they’ve been butchering for ages.
Yet somehow it’s all new, unpredictable,
fragile and strong
as hope itself winging across the world
encountering astonishing novelty of choice
among humans who should know better
but who refuse destruction’s predictability
in the embrace of resurrection’s ex nihilo new life.
© 2012, Tess Lockhart. All rights reserved.
After all the great beauty of Paradise,
God conversing with Adam and Eve
in the cool of the evening--
a picture of all we long for as human beings--
I had hoped that maybe, just maybe
the story might turn out different.
But they fell nonetheless.
Last Friday I sat in church remembering
a petulant teen who balked at going to Good Friday services.
“It’s the same every year,” he protested.
“They kill him every time.”
Why do we keep subjecting ourselves over and over
to the same old trauma of the cross?
It IS pretty much the same every year.
The story doesn’t change.
We hope it’ll go otherwise,
but we know better.
We know about Bosnia and Rwanda,
child soldiers and conscripted baby doll sex slaves
satisfying the appetites of those with purchase power.
We can hear the whimpers of hunger,
smell the fear of those hiding from raging abusers
drunk with staggering guns,
see the fear flash death against a black hoodie
of an African-American teen just walking
his way home in innocence.
History piles up the evidence like Ezekiel’s bones
from mass graves in forests unknown.
It howls at us from the screech of police cars
or the silent accusations of babies with begging eyes.
We know how the story goes.
It’s the same old same old year in, year out.
In fact, it’s downright boring once removed,
in spite of the intrigue and gore--
the stuff that makes for good Hollywood box office receipts.
Every year it’s the same sniveling religious leaders,
brutalizing soldiers, jeering crowd,
cowardly pompous Pilate
ignoring a wife’s whispers in the background.
It’s boring because it’s all so . . . predictable.
Sad, of course, but predictable,
like Milton’s fall in the lush narrative:
fear of threat, movement of shadows, snuffing of light.
1, 2, 3, predictable, boring,
these powers of destruction.
Oh, you will say this is sacrilege,
an occupational hazard
of theologians who know too much
of how the sausage is made--
by requiring the death of an intelligent pig
who, while baptized in mud,
somehow knows how his story will end, too.
Or perhaps you’ll chalk it up to old age
in an age where, after awhile,
our culture’s novelty wears off
leaving nothing but a thin veneer of ennui
no longer affected by others’ suffering.
Maybe it's a matter of liturgical reading
with passionless renderings of The Passion.
But I don’t think that’s it either.
The torture still outrages.
It’s just that destruction is
so cause-and-effect predictable,
like a science experiment of chemical reactions
with explosive results,
as boring as the lecture of an academic sociologist
who no longer does field work
and has taught the same intro course
for decades with nary a change.
Compare Good Friday to Easter, though,
and surprise abounds.
We know that story, too,
how on the first day of the week at daybreak
the women were just going to anoint the body
and found everything awry, amiss,
and thereby back in order.
Something deeper beyond the historical familiar is at work here--
novelty, creativity, astonished whispers of resurrection.
Not restoration or repair of what’s broken
or flower dying in winter and returning in spring.
But something so new we can’t rationally comprehend it
even as we know its truth beyond images
as it surges through creation’s song itself.
Each year, yes, the lilies stifle with sweetness.
Scrubbed acolytes still process protecting precious light.
The choir sings the same songs they’ve been butchering for ages.
Yet somehow it’s all new, unpredictable,
fragile and strong
as hope itself winging across the world
encountering astonishing novelty of choice
among humans who should know better
but who refuse destruction’s predictability
in the embrace of resurrection’s ex nihilo new life.
© 2012, Tess Lockhart. All rights reserved.
