Two-Sevenths of a Meditation on the Resurrection

Meditations on Jesus, his person and his work, are always worth meditating upon. We established that last week as we reflected, in meter, on the connection between his humiliation and exaltation. Sometimes meter helps us to internalize, understand, and apply what is normally heard in prose.

Today, John Updike shares... well, I share Mr. Updike's words...  stanzas one and seven of_ Seven Stanzas of Easter_. As you reflect on Christ, do not go the way of the modernist or the postmodernist-  do not turn events into metaphors. The resurrection is the historical fact upon which the confession of the church stands, and upon which the Lord Jesus is building his church...

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.

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.

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