Resurrection Rhymes
A ONE Church Eastertide Devotional
It is our custom in the ONE Church Devotional community, to listen on Fridays to the poets. Today, we turn our ear to an author who isn’t best known for metered verse.
John Updike won Pullitzers in 1982 and 1991 for his novels Rabbit is Rich, and Rabbit at Rest, respectively. He penned 170 short stories for the New Yorker alone and received the prestigious Rea Short Story Award in 2006 for his contribution to the genre. With us this morning, Mr. Updike seems a bit tired of interpreters who see resurrection as a metaphor or a feeling. To him, Easter is about a body coming out of a tomb. Enjoy!
Seven Stanzas at Easter
by John Updike
Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.
It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.
The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.
The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.
And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.
Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.
With her “An Easter Flower Prayer”, Helen Steiner Rice risks the very “Easter is about spring” message that Updike counters. But, unlike Updike’s, her poem seems unconcerned about what happened at Easter. Her eyes are on “this Easter grandeur” that the flowers simply emit. The poet hopes that the faith of Christ’s followers will blossom like these, rather than “lying dormant in our hearts”. God bless your reading!
An Easter Flower Prayer
Helen Steiner Rice
God, give us eyes to see
the beauty of the Spring,
And to behold Your majesty
in every living thing.
And may we see in lacy leaves
and every budding flower
The Hand that rules the universe
with gentleness and power.
And may this Easter grandeur
that Spring lavishly imparts
Awaken faded flowers of faith
Lying dormant in our hearts.
And give us ears to hear, dear God
the Springtime song of birds
With messages more meaningful
than man's often empty words.
Telling harried human beings
who are lost in dark despair
'Be like us and do not worry
for God has you in his care.'
Prayer — God of the empty tomb and brilliant blooms, visit us this Eastertide with the power of resurrection and the mystical message of flowers and birds. Come among us, in the risen Jesus. Amen.