Vox Populi

Tags

Barabbas, Ecce Homo, Herod, Judea, Messiah, Paschal, Passover, Pontius Pilate, Prefecture, Procula, Sanhedrin

A sestina for our times:

 

Pilate stood before the Passover mob.

Besieged, he offered them a Paschal vote:

Barabbas over Jesus was a shock-

insurrectionist over a prophet?

The Governor washed his hands of their choice.

This ‘Messiah’ was no uncouth rebel.

 

The crowd chose Barabbas just to rebel

and, punishing themselves is what the mob

love to do.  They see it as their free choice;

their chance to demonstrate their power; to vote.

They prefer to crucify a prophet:

enjoy giving the powers-that-be a shock.

 

Pilate’s wife had had a nightmarish shock.

She said, I don’t want to usurp; rebel

against you, but I must say that this ‘prophet’-

although he’s stirred up hatred from the mob-

would get from me a Messianic vote,

though, clearly, he is not the High Priest’s choice.

 

She flounced out:  It’s up to you; it’s your choice.

To Pilate his wife’s comments were  a shock,

but, after all, she didn’t have a vote.

He’d never known Procula to rebel.

Let her go out and face a rabid mob…

You wouldn’t need to be a seer, prophet

 

to predict that outcome.  No prophet

is ever successful; his country’s choice

and it will be no different with this mob.

I couldn’t imagine the after-shock

if I released this man.  I’m no rebel.

Ecce homo!  I’ll put it to the vote.

 

The thing to do is with my feet to vote;

sit on the fence; let them judge the ‘Prophet.’

Even Herod said he was no rebel.

Judea would never have been my choice

and, getting the Prefecture, was a shock-

those Sanhedrin just as vile as that mob.

 

Why should I find the people’s choice a shock?

Give the mob an option and let them vote:

rebel will trump prophet any day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bethesda Miracle

Tags

angel, faith and doubt, miracle, Passover, Pool of Bethesda, Seraph, Shabbat, stir crazy, The Five Porches, The Sheep pool

 

 

Dumped by my friends, yet again, at the pool-

the same boring view for thirty eight years.

Occasionally some ripples stirred:

phantom movements of an angel?

But, unlike others, I couldn’t move,

so Passover was a pun on my life.

 

I had a lame excuse for my sad life.

I’d always lost in Life’s lottery pool.

And, when those ripples began to move,

the lucky ones, in former years,

would jump in; try to swim to the angel.

Over The Five Porches, the rock doves stirred.

 

The others were stir crazy.  I never stirred-

until I had the Shabbat of my life.

A man, not in the guise of an angel:

a stranger, wandered round the pool,

looking younger than the thirty eight years

I had lain there.  He told me to move.

 

Surely he could see my wasted limbs?  Move?!

Yet the first odd fluttering of hope stirred

my paralysed frame of thirty eight years.

Was this some seraphic Prince of Life type

manifesting himself at a sheep pool?

Why choose me?  God knows I am no angel.

 

Friends had stopped believing in the angel.

They had moved on; but I couldn’t move.

I became their social burden.  The pool

a place of mutual respite.  I’d be  stirred

from sleep; they dressed me- altruism’s life-

long sentence: the same routine for years.

 

Why did I hang on to life for years,

when anyone could see that the angel

had decreed my miserable life

was not such as would move

any heavenly being to be stirred

to transform me, at home, or at the pool?

 

For years I helped others move to the pool.

Stirred by gratitude, given back my life,

I never doubted that he’d been the angel.