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 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 fingers and toes,

The same valved heart

That – pierced – died, withered decayed, and

Then regathered out of his father’s might

New strength to enclose.

 

Let us not mock God with metaphor,

Analogy, side-stepping transcendence;

Making of the even 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 each of us

The wide light of day…

 

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,

For our 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), Seven Stanzas at Easter, 1993.