Sunday, March 14, 2021

A history lesson


After Acts 7:1-60

The charges are false,
the witnesses paid to lie,
and the judges ask
only one question
a simple question:
Is this so?

A simple if long answer
to a simple if short question,
but a simple if long answer
to turn the falsity and lies
on their heads and reverse
the charges to present
mirrors to the judges.

And the answer moves
backward fifteen hundred
years, back to the man
first called to the land.
And it makes perfect sense:
this is where the story begins,
this is the seminal event,
the backdrop to the corruption
of the law called this trial.

And what he implies,
and what he says in this lesson,
this recitation, of shared history,
is to make a point, the point:
what they are doing in this trial
is what they have always done.

Photograph by Tanner Mardis via Unsplash. Used with permission.