The Temptation in the Wilderness
(Mark 4: 1-11)
After forty days
Of solitude and fasting
A man might gnaw at a stone
Thinking it was bread
Or grow wings
And fly
Around the cities of his mind
Or walk naked
Thinking
He were clothed,
Decorated,
And perfumed.
A man might do these things
And people might say
He was possessed.
I would say
He was
Hungry.
II.
The
Transfiguration
(Mat 17: 1-13)
A Matter of Fact
Erie, Pennsylvania
Starbucks
Like every Starbucks
corporate living
room
filled with strangers
Nat King Cole
on the sorta hip
always inoffensive
“juke-box”
competing with
the grinding
and steaming
of coffee.
I’m pondering
a biblical summit
meeting,
Christ
transfigured,
locked in
conversation
with Moses and
Elijah,
But what they’re talking about –
I don’t know.
At the table
next to mine
A gray-haired
rolly-polly
black man
Has made himself at home
with crossword
puzzle, newspapers,
and prominent -
a brown, leather bound bible
I have a feeling
he’d know
and wouldn’t mind
my asking:
“Excuse me,
are you a student
of scripture?”
“Yes.”
“Mathew 17
Jesus on the
mountain
Peter, James, and
Andrew.
Jesus talking to Moses and Elijah,
what were they
talking about?”
“Mathew 17,
“Peter, James, and
John,”
he corrects,
“Jesus was thanking them
for paving the way,
and he was
promising them
he would continue
the work.”
“The work. What work?”
“Redemption. It’s all about redemption.
And that
was that,
Matter of fact,
even as Nat King
Cole
lost his baby
and almost lost
his mind…
Even at Starbucks,
It’s all about the work.
The Woman at the Well
(John 4: 4-42)
In the long shadowed evening
In the first quiet
of the day
He sat at the well’s edge
And brushed a
pebble
That fell as lively
as a star
Down to Jacob’s
water.
She walked
Across the shadows
Balancing a jar on her shoulder
With her shadow
Clinging to her.
Who is this,
She wondered,
And as the pebble touched water
All her secrets
Rippled between
them.
He asked for a drink
And she gave her
eyes
He asked for food
She opened her
heart
He told her everything
And she forgave him
And was never thirsty again.
But he,
He would cry,
“I…thirst!”
IV.
Sight to the
Man Born Blind
(John 9: 1-41)
Left to his own devices
He would have perfected his blindness
And faded completely from this world.
But,
The prophet packed his eyes with mud
And as he washed himself at the river
The world assaulted him.
He found himself answering
questions
That had nothing to do with sky, or sun,
Or the astonishing and transparent water
He held in his hands.
His frightened parents,
whose faces he didn’t know,
denied him.
Lawyers,
who considered the flash of wonder
in his gaze
criminal,
questioned and berated him.
The Prophet,
whom he loved,
used him as a lesson.
And then
the man born blind,
fled into the colors of the world
and disappeared from the story.
V.
The Raising
of Lazarus
(John 11: 1-43)
Even Jesus
Must have been
frightened
as he reached
into darkness
wrenched
the spirit
from beyond
and forced it
back
into
his friend’s
body.
Even He
must have been
aghast
at how nature roared
at this intrusion
and Lazarus walked
out of his
stinking tomb.
Even He
must have
wondered and wept
as they embraced
and the wind
howled a sand storm
around them.
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