On Sunday

1 Church people meet around the country,
2 in the same dank, drab basements 
3 and little musty rooms of modestness.
4 The modest keep quiet a righteous idea
5 about a man who spoke up in defense of the poor, 
6 cried in front of his witnesses, and went to the cross, 
7 even though he could have been Barrabus 
8 (without stakes driven through his rope-burned wrists).
9
10 He would not have wept, been spat upon, 
11 and made wicked power’s temporary fool, 
12 sobbing out to unseen father as he suffocates, 
13 is stabbed, and dies in front of his mother.
14
15 Hope walks into the room looking up 
16 through a turned down brow,
17 and sees honesty raised on a modest cross.
18 The righteous idea of love hangs 
19 on crudely-forged iron nails sledged through hands,  
20 holding the visceral weight of man pulled chest under foot; 
21 carried away, washed by servant-hands of no living word, 
22 in resistance to the gravity of death, Christ rises --
23 having chosen death to give life through the Word 
24 that love, stewardship, and service reign.
25
26 Upon aluminum chairs in modest rooms,
27 where a humbling spirit presides,
28 looking each-other in the eye honestly,
29 we wonder if we too are godforsaken.

2.3.18