The Dead Are Raised

I, John,

rocked by the Spirit of God before I ever saw the light of day--

womb-water, heartbeat, whispering,

then,

blast.

God's Spirit. God in His body.

His mother.

I, rocked, rearranged.

We were boys together.

Visiting.

He treated me as the leader.

The guide.

The older cousin.

Even then, not remembering why, I couldn't get over

the unsettling I felt of it.

Ah. But how I loved Him.

Locusts and honey and camel hair didn't make me weird.

The visions made me weird.

The seeing. The knowing of God. The knowing of sin.

The seeing into myself

and

every man who came to me;

every Man

Woman

Child

Confused

Desperate

Ashamed

Pretending to be well.

But ever so beloved. Destined to be rescued.

They couldn't see it. I saw it.

I saw tomorrows.

You thought the desert and the locusts were signs of my consecration?

Rather, how would I be able to sit at table with you?

With your momentary concerns? With your fleeting pleasures?

With your pleasant chatter?

I would not be able.

The knowing.

The seeing.

The tomorrows.

Pleasantries are impossible for me.

But.

I will meet you at the riverbank.

I, John, on the day He came to the river,

wanted to die of humiliation.

If I'd had a tent, I would have folded it and ran.

But I had no tent.

I have always been exposed.

Even in the womb.

I said to Him that day, "Please don't make me do this."

I felt the humiliation of a hundred men.

I pleaded with the fear of a hundred tomorrows.

He insisted.

"Fulfillment of the Scriptures," He said.

I heard His Father's voice. I witnessed the Spirit come down.

I saw the rivulets pouring down from His beard

as he rose up from the water.

I saw--and my soul was shredded by the seeing--

the Oneness,

the Love between Them.

I remembered my own baptism

in my mother's womb.

Unworthy to untie his sandal, I must decrease.

I pointed everyone to Him.

*

*

One night,

I was seized by a horrible future sight:

I, John, bound.

I, imprisoned.

I, an amusing but threatening oddity,

brought up from the dark,

interrogated, considered through a thousand lenses of arrogance.

That adulterous, incestuous, coward and bastard--

Herod.

I never held my tongue with him.

I wanted to slice him open him with my words.

If only he'd seen the filth of his own household

his own marriage

his own court

his own soul.

But he wouldn't.

Then, I saw my head.

Severed.

Blood pulsing out

of my ragged neck

onto the pissed and bloody

prison floor.

I'm only a man. I panicked.

In the morning, I sent messengers.

Who are You really?

My head will be severed at the neck from my shoulders.

It will not be a clean stroke.

Who are You really?

And word came back to me: “Go back and report to John

what you have seen and heard:

The blind receive sight,

the lame walk,

those who have leprosy are cleansed,

the deaf hear,

the dead are raised,

and the good news is proclaimed to the poor."

The dead are raised.

The dead are raised.

Even the insult of the gold platter, heaped upon the lethal injury

of my head severed--

even that is nothing to me now.

The dead are raised.