Part I

We were fishermen, simple people
Who only asked for a decent living
And a fair deal.
But life was rough;
We never caught enough fish
And our meager income was
Heavily taxed by the Romans.
We hated them—oppressors that they were.
But then one day this guy
Came along—a strange fellow
By name of Jesus.
There was something about him,
Magnetic, I suppose.
Anyway, he knew how to speak and
How to work wonders.
The crowds loved him
Followed him everywhere they did.
We were flattered that he chose us
To be his friends and followers.
We could hardly wait for the Kingdom!
We were sure it was about to come
And we little people would be free,
No longer oppressed and beaten down,
Oh, no, we would have the power then!
Jesus filled us with hope
For liberation.
So we believed in him,
Trusted him.
Followed him.
We were proud and flattered and excited.

We ran, like rabbits here and there,
Bewailing our misery,
Humiliated by our pain and our betrayal.
He betrayed us, you see,
That was obvious.
Got us all excited.
Gave us great hopes.
Then smashed them in
All at the same time.
He was never very clear, of course,
We could never really figure him out.
He was kind of a funny guy.
He never minced his words when he knew
That things were wrong
And shouldn’t be.
He was always putting his foot in it,
Lashing out at injustice and oppression.
He wasn’t scared to say what he thought.
But we liked him.
And he loved us.
We believed that
In spite of his odd ways
And his embarrassing behavior,
He’d win in the end.
Yes, there was something about him.
Until they did him in.
And then it all fell apart.
What was he on about?
He fooled us.
Such embarrassment.
We now were the laughing stock.
All that blood and spit and pain
Didn’t fit our notion of
God and Kingdom and power.
Jesus fooled himself and fooled us too.
Betrayer and betrayed. Simple fools!
So we hid, scared and humiliated.
Ran away we did.
We’d nothing left.
We abandoned him
Like he’d abandoned us.
We could hardly look each other
In the eyes.

But then after it was all over,
And we were miserable,
Something happened.
It was amazing.
Suddenly he was there!
We saw his Spirit
In the life around,
We heard his voice
In the voice of another,
We felt his touch
In the touch of another.
Our world turned over.
We couldn’t understand just then,
We only experienced and believed.
From our pain and misery
Came life! Suddenly surging up
Bubbling and so free!
And we said:
Jesus our hero was killed
But Jesus our hero
Is alive!
And then we knew, we knew
That he was human
Because they killed him,
And we knew, we knew
That he was the Christ
Because God raised him up,
And then we knew, we knew
That he was us and we were
To be him.
His life began to speak anew
As we heard again
What he had preached and taught—

Freedom and justice and love.
All the things people couldn’t take,
For they are not what we have built.
We have our own gods.

And so, you see, they killed him.
They had to.
He was a threat. A troublemaker.
Sign of contradiction.
When we saw him again,
It began to make sense Because we realized
It was just the beginning.
We had to take over then—
Carry on the work he’d started.
What a job and what a path!
Oh, what a crazy God
To go so far
To prove God’s point.
No glory, no triumph.
Only faith that came
Through pain and death
Faith in our God
Who taught us such a lesson— Such a lesson.
Turned us upside down.
We see now that
The path of Jesus is ours,
That same love and action, once his,
Now ours,
But they will not like us
Any more than they liked him.
We too will be a sign of contradiction
To selfishness and greed.
We too, a threat to
Establishment and peace.
We are all this because we believe.
We believe there is life.
And we believe because
God raised him up.
 

Part II

And what of us?
I cannot speak of us,
I can only speak of me
And say that I too have seen
This Jesus whom they killed.
And I too have heard all
He preached and taught and lived by.
It was once taught to me
In a classroom as a child,
And I squirmed and played and waited
In boredom for the clock
To strike my freedom.
And when the freedom came,
I ran out to the world
Excited and full of joy. God was simply a reasonable idea,
Somebody had to create it all—
That was logical enough.
Jesus was a legend.
But I thought of him, now and then.
Sure—he was a good guy.
But he was dead.

But they told me I should believe.
So I said I did and even though I
Thought I did.
I prayed to God and Jesus—
That was the right thing to do,
They told me.
But people and life were
More interesting than
A benevolent, boring God, and a dead Jesus.
So I leaped into life
And into the world.
Jesus was dead.
And I was alive!
But something happened to me.
I looked and saw pain and despair
In the world into which
I had leaped
So sure and proud and triumphant.
Reaching out to the pain I cried:
This must not be!
This cannot be!
(But you see, Jesus was dead.)

Then something happened to me.
It was amazing.
Suddenly he was there!
I saw his Spirit
In the life around,
I heard his voice
In the voice of another,
I felt his touch
In the touch of another.
My world turned over.
And I knew without a doubt
That Jesus was alive,
And I knew that he was the Christ
Because God raised him up
For I had seen.
From my own pain and my own despair I had seen him,
And in my Yes, though anguished,
Was Yes to all that he had stood for,
Lived for, died for.
The cross, the death, and the resurrection —
I saw the reason why.

But I believed, you see, because
They killed me too.
I had my death and
He raised me up.
I live now as he does.
I live to proclaim what
He proclaimed—
Life in death, liberation from
The internal and external

Prisons that we have built.
And I am free,
Because I died to myself and now
I live.
First, first we must die to
Really understand,
For if we follow his way
We must die.
There really isn’t any other way—

If you’re serious
About the Jesus
Who lives.
 

Amen.

Copyright © Edwina Gateley, 1988