Poem from John Updike

John Updike was one of the great American novelists of the past half century and one of only three writers to ever receive two Pulitzer prizes during his lifetime for his work.  A good deal of his writing returns frequently to distinctly Christian themes.  His poem Seven Stanzas on Easter is one of my favorite pieces from Updike's corpus.  A more profound meditation on 1 Corinthians 15:14 would be hard to find:  "If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain" (cf. all of 15:12-19).  The bodily resurrection of Jesus is at the center of the Christian gospel.  Without it, there is no Christianity.  And no hope for the world.  Ponder Updike's lyrical exploration of this truth:

SEVEN STANZAS ON EASTER

Make no mistake: if He rose at allit was as His body;if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the moleculesreknit, the amino acids rekindle,the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,each soft Spring recurrent;it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddledeyes of the eleven apostles;it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,the same valved heartthat–pierced–died, withered, paused, and thenregathered out of enduring Mightnew strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;making of the event a parable, a sign painted in thefaded credulity of earlier ages:let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,not a stone in a story,but the vast rock of materiality that in the slowgrinding of time will eclipse for each of usthe wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,make it a real angel,weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linenspun on a definite loom.

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 areembarrassed by the miracle,and crushed by remonstrance.