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History’s Greatest Miracle Play

Let me tell you a story - Prologue

Actors gather to play their parts
To set the stage – backdrops and props –
In history’s greatest miracle play
Called to speak their lines
On redemption’s stage
In a holy script of seven days
Written before the first bright beam of time
Before light took its first breath
Coming center stage
Emerging from creation’s gauzy scrim.

Act One – Scene One

Hosannas echo in the temple courts
The King of David’s line returns
In Anna’s prophecy in Simeon’s words
Riding on a donkey with a coat of white
Palms laid up a stony road –
What is the trembling at the earth’s core -
Hosannas sound like earthquakes
Like curses waved instead of palms
Heaven prepares to welcome home its Prince

Scene Two

Echoes reverberate from the blacksmith’s forge
Sparks, like biting fireflies, shower a stable
Where a white donkey dreams in visions
Of the King who rode upon his back to waving palms
The anvil sound pounds within these dreams
Fiery iron cloned and shaped into flesh piercing nails
Ordered by invasion on this crossroads of spice;
Does the smithy know his craftsmanship
Will hold God and man fast upon two beams of brutality -
The Master that he follows?

Scene Three

Quiet the air setting the scene – an upper room -
Heavy in expectancy and waiting – anticipation not exhaling - 
The fragrance of bitter herbs and roasting lamb in holy spices
Fills each corner like the hushed conversation
That prepares a table remembering the night
When death passed over doorways anointed with the blood of lambs
But waits to play its part crossing over midnight
Hovering!  Watching as the Master washes feet – a new command –
Then eat new covenant bread, blessed and broken,
To sip from the new blessings cup of salvation
Until the living Elijah cup returns in glory.

Act Two Scene One

Spin doctors of the law
Twisting words to fit their fiction
Throwing back into the face of the Word
Truth re-arranged in tangled hypocrisy
Cunning duplicity in contorted quotes hurled at purity
Treachery stalks in ideology -falsehood masquerades as rightness
The hands of mockery strike at redemption
Rend their robes in hissing shows of self-righteous drama 
And yet this deceit too forgiven from a cross
For they know not what they do on salvation’s stage.

Scene Two

The temple shudders in nightmares of prophecy
The firm cornerstone rejected
Foundation liquefies returning sandstone back to shifting sands
Trembling before the anointed redemption
The temple curtain lays in shreds 
Revealing a clear path to Holy Holy God
Still hearing in memoir the newborn Emmanuel’s cry
And in cries from the cross – “It is finished.”
Forgiveness cloak revealed – Eden found again on a Friday
God’s finger reaches down again to touch the heart
And it is good!

Scene Three

Upon a winding road - a narrow way
A crowd gathers on stony streets of grey
To watch a man pass by condemned to die this day
On the way of tears
For they come to jeer the man who healed the lame
To watch him suffering who healed them of their pain
They come to ask him if his God will save him now 
From stones and traps that trip him
As he carries the sins of mortal history
On the way of tears.

Scene Four

Your sandaled footsteps hurry down this Roman road
They carry you - walk on actor in cameo role written by a plan -
Into a frenzy stirred up by seething ancient evil -
Cast down into fiery fate – bursting from the wings released
Your footsteps echo on this crowded market weeping road
As a destiny beckons your feet and clothes your footsteps
Bringing you face to face with anointed agony
To clear a path on rough stones with your conscripted steps
And carry a burden, not your own, with strong shoulders of compassion
To look into your Savior’s eyes.

Scene Five

Purple boughs shelter sparrows
In wilderness temple courts
And bleed in aromatic myrrh when pierced
Like wounded hands nailed to a cross
Remembers sweet perfumed gifts given
Beneath the whisper of one bright guiding star
And waits again to anoint the broken body of the Word,
Sinless Lamb who refused its gift of pain relief,
Arms stretched out between pure Heaven’s face
And haunted earth.

Scene Six

Born from bits of primeval mud
Pressed down by the weight of century’s hand;
Round.  Rolling.  Ponderous as shame.
Carved from a numb granite face
Sightless, mute barrier, between scurrying life and immobile death
No watch fires warm your stone heart
As tears of dust fall from your visage without feeling
Until you too shout “Alleluia!”  “Amen!”
Rolled away by living grace to reveal your empty tomb!

Act Three Scene One

Grace, the matrix of the morning,
Wraps fingers round the sunrise
Of rosy pink, purple mauve, 
Triumphant yellow and fiery orange
Waking history’s garden to bloom again
Born from seeds of the plaintive heart
Nascent in new light reborn from exile
No longer wandering blind
In wastelands of shadows and mourning
New life rises with the first light!

Scene Two

Agony’s tears plants the seeds
In Alleluia’s victory garden!
Triumph’s bower of the Paschal Lamb
Leaps in Hosanna’s jubilation
With Hallelujah’s lyric laurels
Sheaves of Eden’s weeds discarded
Blown away by fanfare trumpets like tattered chaff 
Tortured Passion’s flowers stained crimson
Sow Maranatha 
Within Amen’s sacred spice.

Epilogue

Wondering moonlight enters the empty tomb
Light, redeemed by the Light of Lights on the finale’s stage,
Passes over the Kidron Valley 
Where discarded pagan altars and impotent sacred poles 
Descend into their eternal crypts when the footsteps of the Word
Renders their light more mute than eclipsed moonbeams;
The full moon of spring forever exalts in perennial return
Arching between Eden and exile – Egypt and Resurrection
As the soul, frozen in winter, rolls into redemption
And celebrates a moonlit dance in the empty tomb.

4-26-22
Contest: Narrative
Sponsor: Constance La France
Theme: Life

Contest: Easter Poetry
Sponsor: Regina McIntosh
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