Seven Stanzas at Easter

Nathan Stam
Children/Communications Pastor

With Easter approaching in a few weeks I thought I'd do the same thing on the ABC Blog as we did with Christmas and post some thoughts, quotes, poems--for the purpose of awakening in our hearts a fresh perspective on the Resurrection and what it means for us as followers of Christ.

Here's the first. It's a few stanzas from John Updike's Seven Stanzas at Easter:

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.

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-mache,

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.

Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again!