Where Is Our Hope?

It's one thing to have hope when looking back after the Resurrection, and another to have hope when it's just after the crucifixion and burial. What went on in the minds of the Apostles?

WHERE IS OUR HOPE?

It’s over now.
We tried to say
There was something
Wrong with the way
He was doing things.

Now he is dead—
Crucified for some crime,
Some trumped-up charge
Which no one believed
He could ever do.

But what’s the use?
Who cares anymore?
We were fools to think
That he, or anyone for that matter,
Could really change the way it is—
And has been—and always will be.
Why fight it anyway?

Oh God, how we hoped
That he was really sent from You.
We just knew that You really cared
And that through him you were at last
Bringing salvation to those who trust in You.

Bah! What’s the use of talking like this?
Maybe even You died a long time ago.
Maybe You were never there at all—
Our fathers just said you were real
Because they could not explain life
Any other way.

Why don’t you answer me?
Why don’t You take away the ache
And give that mysterious peace I was promised?
If you are real, why don’t You reveal Yourself?

No. I have no right to criticize.
I am sure You have a purpose in his death.
I just can’t see it now.

Perhaps…If only it were possible…
He said he would rise again on the third day.
Then, oh then I could begin to hope again.
And what I seek is real, genuine HOPE.

Rudy J. Antle
April 3, 1974
© 2009

John Updike: Seven Stanzas At Easter

I came across this poem for the first time when reading about the death of John Updike in Christianity Today. The poem is referenced at the end of that article: “Kendall Harmon at TitusOneNine posted "Seven Stanzas at Easter," Updike's well-known poem on the Resurrection, last March.”

I like the way Updike creatively addresses classic arguments against the Resurrection and their manifestations in today’s theological debates with allusions to today’s scientific awareness.

Enjoy,

Seven Stanzas at Easter

Posted by Kendall Harmon

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.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart that — pierced — died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

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.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

--John Updike (1932- 2009)