My Prayer-Poem for Monday 12 April 2021This the full poem about the resurrection including today’s final stanza.

RESURRECTION


The graves of famous people
are quiet and serene;
places to muse and ponder
celebrity or queen.
But Easter brings a different,
more thrilling place to be
early on Sunday morning
in 33 AD.


Counter to expectation,
the grave was not the same
as they had seen just days before
when Roman sentries came.
Now open wide, unguarded,
the women at the tomb
confront a young man dressed in white
in early morning gloom.


They ask about a break in
to steal the corpse away
but they are told the opposite
had happened on that day;
their Lord had broken out from death
not robbers breaking in;
at which the women fled in fear
from what they’d heard and seen.


Embarrassment has led some
to find a rational way
to flatten and domesticate
the resurrection day;
Some say that Jesus is still dead
but lives and breathes in us
or through his words spoken or seen
on YouTube or a bus.


Others suggest what rose again
was courage in the heart,
a resurrection of purpose
a bursting, brave new start.
But this can never be denied,
disciples down the years     
were martyred shouting “Jesus lives!”
through resurrection tears.


And what of that young man in white
there where our Lord arose?    
Perhaps he represents us all
in white baptismal clothes.
Perhaps from grim Gethsemane
where naked, scared, he fled
this young man stands for all of us
new born, as Jesus said.




©️Mark Andrew Smith