The Shudder
Whipped, beaten, nailed, mocked
The disciples shuddered,
Watching what was happening to Uou.
Yet from penetrating fear that they might be next -
they ran for their lives.
Lifted high, then dropped into the ground,
Your cross shuddered
and each reverberation
shook Your frame
with indescribable pain.
Head tilted, lungs gasping,
Heaven shuddered
as You cried ‘Where are You, Father?
Don’t abandon Me now!’
A seamless union ripped apart for us.
Watching as her Boy is butchered,
Mary shuddered
as only a mother can
who has lost everything.
Part of her died here too.
Lifted high, then dropped into the ground,
Your cross makes the earth shudder.
For here, at this place, the world is changed
and these reverberations do not cease.
They rip curtains in worn out temples,
push away tiny tonnes of stone
that cannot keep You in.
These shudders break chains,
force open prison doors, destroy arguments,
defeat demons, make death scurry like a rat
Into the hole from whence it came.
These shudders unsettle the settled in their beds,
throw the haughty from their thrones
show the poor that their poverty
is not the issue and is not a bar.
These shudders ripple through the swamp of sin.
They crest upon the might of nations.
They seep into the corridors of power.
These shudders shatter defences,
shake foundations,
re-create creation,
initiate transformation,
usher in our salvation.
These shudders reach into a tiny room
in a chapel in the woods
and pierce the heart
and birth hope
then force us out to
continue the impact.
These shudders are unstoppable.
© Malcolm Duncan, Good Friday 2009.