The Rising Word

The Word that spoke the light
gave up his final breath
into the waiting hands of God,
but, oh, the light still shines.
The Word now speaks again,
its mighty echoes rolling on.

Before the stars shone down,
before the mountains rose,
he was, before the world began,
and after stars burn out,
when mountains are no more,
he is, beyond our human span.

But human he became,
a moment and a pulse:
Eternity would live and die.
A fingerprint, a name,
to feel earth's downward pull,
and yet, beyond all hope, to rise.

The author of all life
rewrites the book of death
upon the pages of our hearts.
All glory be to Christ,
world without end, amen,
who pulls us into endless song.

Christ Pantocrator By Unknown author – Unknown source, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5820582

Bright

Bright shines the Easter sun,
now that the clouds have passed,
but we wait for another one,
a morning sure to last:

the cold earth we have closed,
the tamped-down mud of spring
beneath the green of spreading oaks,
uplifting, opening.

The dust God grasped at first 
to shape the forms of men,
when we have all returned to dust,
he'll take in hand again

and shape us, skin by limb
by liver, rib, and thumb,
all shining images of him 
who stand upon his palm,

and treasure every lash
of eyes that see for once
how glory's fadeless lightning flash
in all creation runs.

We'll raise our light-filled hands
and weep our diamond joys
to have each other back again,
when death has been destroyed.

By Prof. Dr. Otto Wilhelm Thomé Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz 1885, Gera, Germany – http://www.biolib.de, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8778

First the Blade

He said, “This is how it is with the kingdom of God; it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land and would sleep and rise night and day and the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how. Of its own accord the land yields fruit, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once, for the harvest has come.”
Mark 4:26-29

First the harrow, then the plow
turns and opens barren fields
where the seeds are trampled down
into wounds the sun will heal.

First the shoot and then the leaf
pierce the earth to catch the rain,
turning all this dead world green,
springing up to life again.

First the sprouting, then the growth
prophesying joy to come,
bounty pledging summer's troth
while the length'ning days run on.

First the blade and then the ear,
then the grain comes, rip'ning gold,
to the harvest of the year,
to the feast so long foretold.

First creation's sixfold day,
then the years' repeating rounds:
Death and life eachother chase
'til the final sun goes down,

then out of the ling'ring gloom
comes the day that will not end.
Seeds sprout up from every tomb.
Winter will not come again.

By User:Bluemoose – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=333105

The Word

In the beginning was the Word,
long before worlds began.
After the end it shall be heard,
spoken aloud again!

Spoken at first, it silent fell
under the reign of death,
now does it ring out as a bell,
sung on undying breath.

What is the word that shapes our sense,
filling the skies above,
echoing in the caverns' depths?
What could it be but love?

What was the silence of the grave
stilling the Word at last?
What could it be but love that gave,
filling death's endless grasp?

Stronger than death is that great love,
deeper than any hell,
truer than stories tell us of,
broader than ocean swells.

Into the silence now it speaks,
thunder with lightning's flame,
filling forever's depths and peaks,
calling us each by name!

Three Marys, by Henry Ossawa Tanner. From the left, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome approaching Jesus’ tomb. Oil on canvas, 42 × 50 in. Fisk University Art Galleries, Nashville, Tennessee. By Henry Ossawa Tanner – https://artandtheology.org/tag/henry-ossawa-tanner/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=132778182

First and Last

Thus, the last will be first, and the first will be last.
Matthew 20:16

When all our ranks and rites are past,
the first go not before the last.
When all who go, go there as dust.
the last go not before the first.

The fruit is from the selfsame vine:
Adorned in gold and jewels fine
or dressed in rags, or starved or dined,
alike the selfsame shroud shall wind.

The rich have not a rarer breath;
their grasping cannot beggar death,
and paupers, too, new wine will press:
the resurrection of this flesh.

No gold or rags, but blood and bone,
no jewels but the eyes alone:
So poor and rich shall rise as one
to bow before th'incarnate son.

Then all we've hidden shall be seen,
all we have failed to be or been,
all cut and mended, stitched and seamed—
each ragged edge shall be redeemed.

And all the gilded and adorned,
the battered, broken, bent, and torn
shall stand alike before the Lord
and drink the selfsame wine outpoured.

The Dance of Death (1493) by Michael Wolgemut, from the Nuremberg Chronicle of Hartmann Schedel Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=490534

The Shepherd On the Hillside

For Easter season, and Good Shepherd Sunday:

The shepherd on the hillside
climbs down into the glens:
A river runs from his side;
the sun shines through his hands.

For oh, his flock has wandered,
his own have gone astray,
the whole driven asunder,
each one to our own way.

The hills stripped bare of grasses
plunge down into the gloom:
a thousand deep crevasses,
a thousand crowded tombs.

And he will plumb each gravesite
to gather up the bones,
restoring what he made them,
their flesh and blood his own.

There shall be none abandoned,
no tombstone left unturned:
Each debtor shall be ransomed,
each prodigal returned.

In silence we await him,
in separate sorrows lie,
for none in death can praise him
'til dawn shall break on high.

Then oh, the light shall touch us
that's streaming from his hands.
See how the Shepherd loves us
and makes us whole again!

Fifth-century Ravenna mosaic illustrating the concept of The Good Shepherd By Meister des Mausoleums der Galla Placidia in Ravenna – The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=155308

As We Look On Death

Martha said to Jesus,
“Lord, if you had been here,
my brother would not have died.
But even now I know that whatever you ask of God,
God will give you.”
Jesus said to her,
“Your brother will rise.”
Martha said to him,
“I know he will rise,
in the resurrection on the last day.”
Jesus told her,
“I am the resurrection and the life;
whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live,
and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.
Do you believe this?”
She said to him, “Yes, Lord.
I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God,
the one who is coming into the world.”
John 11:1-45

You ask us, as we look on death,
to trust in resurrection;
to hope, beyond the end of breath,
that all our sighs are reckoned;
to love, though there is nothing left,
and say someone still beckons.

You stand with us outside the tomb
to mourn the one within it—
O, call him out again to you!
O'erturn the grave and spill it!
For we shall all go that way soon,
and you yourself shall fill it.

Here where the ground gapes open wide
and swallows all in shadow,
you come with us.  You step inside,
descend into death's furrow;
a seed stripped bare of pow'r or pride
is buried by the harrow.

You who had shaped us out of dust
as brief and weak as grass is,
who breathed your life into our mud,
are with us as it passes.
It fades, but you are still with us:
Breathe life into these ashes.

The Raising of Lazarus, 1310–11, By Duccio di Buoninsegna – Kimbell Art Museum, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7125641

O God of All the Living

Jesus said to them,
“The children of this age marry and remarry;
but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age
and to the resurrection of the dead
neither marry nor are given in marriage.
They can no longer die,
for they are like angels;
and they are the children of God
because they are the ones who will rise.
That the dead will rise
even Moses made known in the passage about the bush,
when he called out ‘Lord, ‘
the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob;
and he is not God of the dead, but of the living,
for to him all are alive.”
Luke 20:27-38

O God of all the living,
the unconsuming flame,
O saving and deliv'ring,
bring us to life again.

You drew us through the Red Sea;
now draw us through our death—
but who knows what we shall be
when you restore our breath?

From dust, to dust returning,
then dust is glorified;
not ash in your love's burning, 
but endless warmth and light.

But all our life is ashen,
from birth to our decay.
What shall we be, new-fashioned,
within your glorious day?

The bush ablaze yet growing,
its green shoots never burned:
So shall we stand adoring
within your love, O Lord.

And there shall be no sandals
on all that holy ground
where we shall burn like candles
that never shall burn out.

Moses and the burning bush. Painting from Dura-Europos synagogue, 3rd century CE By Anonymous – Own work → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Moses_bush.jpg → http://realhistoryww.com/world_history/ancient/Misc/Jesus/Jesus.htm, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34210760

Breath

You spoke my name, and I began;
you breathed your life into my clay,
and by that breath alone, I am:
a word you've chosen still to say.

Not mine alone, but your breaths, too,
from that first cry in Bethlehem,
in every moment make me new—
and you alone can number them.

The widow's son and Lazarus
and Jairus' daughter lost in death:
You came to them (to all of us)
and gave them back the living breath.

You breathed your last upon the cross
and first again on Easter morn.
You sobbed and screamed through helplessness
as one of us since you were born.

My panting, gasping, choking days,
my yawns and drawn-out sighs of night:
You know them all, the songs of praise
and shouting at a world not right.

So let my every breath be yours,
for you have hallowed each of them,
and breathe upon me, living Lord,
that I may have your peace in them.

Alsace, Bas-Rhin, **Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Strasbourg** (PA00085015). Bas-côté sud, Verrière “Résurrection du Christ” (4eBc): Jésus apparaît aux disciples By © Ralph Hammann – Wikimedia Commons – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14571792

We Shall Be Knit Again

To the tune ODE TO JOY:

After all the world's unravelling,
lo! we shall be knit again.
Dust that once from stars came travelling
with a brighter light shall shine.
Soul and body, joined together,
joy that never more they'll part,
but with angel choirs forever
shall rejoice the Savior's heart.

Christ, who took the flesh he gave us,
that same flesh he will renew.
He who knows our bodies' fading
all their deaths he shall undo.
Every tear drawn from our sorrow
he shall wipe from new-woke eyes
in his ever-dawning morrow,
when from every grave we rise.

Bone and sinew, skin and muscle:
hands remade we lift to him.
Long-stilled hearts begin to thunder
with the rhythm of our hymn.
Breath that we had held for ages
now at last begins to sing:
Vocal chords form heaven's praises.
We shall welcome Christ our King!