The High Priest's Servant

Every year, as Easter nears and meditations circle around the steps of our Lord to the cross and His steps out of the tomb, I take out a book John gave me a few years ago ( A Cry Like a Bell by Madeleine L'Engle). This year, I reread the poem below and wondered why it had never stuck to me before now.

As "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani" echoed in darkness, Christ bought us with flowing blood. When He rose the third day, leaving linen in the grave, He rose with our freedom in hand. The only true freedom is a paradox found in being willingly bound to Him. It's a freedom that should shatter our lives, and we should never forget the price of it. Unlike Malchus, we have no tangible talisman, but here's the poem anyway.

The High Priest's Servant

Sometimes I take it out and look at it
(unrecognizable now,
unless one knew it full of blood and sound)
shrivelled like an old heel of bread
or piece of fungus.

I was certainly not prepared.
I knew my master had it in for
some itinerant preacher,
and it seemed to me that his high priest's fear and anger
exceeded anything this Galilean might do.
But my master was always given to extremes,
and what could I do but go along
with him and the others
on that warm, crucial night?

It would have been simpler
to take the man by day (though less dramatic).
We came to the agreed-on place,
where an ill-named friend approached to kiss him
so we'd be certain we had the right man.
After a sudden flurry of torches and shouting
a stunning pain slashed down my head.
The roar of anguish within me
was louder than my scream.

And then he touched me, this strange man we'd trapped,
and the intolerable roaring cleared,
and I heard the small song of a night bird,
and the wind moving in the olive trees
beyond the heavy breathing of frightened men.

I bent down and picked it up.
Then lifted my hands,
felt my head, and two ears, warm and hearing.

And my life was shattered, turned around,
and changed forever. I left the high priest,
never to return.

There is danger now.
Often we do not understand
our freedom, and the fresh blood flowing in our lives.
That is why I sometimes take it out and look at it,
unrecognizable now,
unless one knew it full of song and sound.