Who Do You Say That I Am?

As history and ordinary sinners
Began to spread the news
Of a rabbi who would become
The most influential man of all time,
An evil king was trapped in his bedroom
With a vengeful woman and a terrifying question.

The fame of the prophet and healer
Resounded from one town to another,
As the masses wondered,
Who is he?
The late John, who baptized them?
Elijah? Or—
Perhaps another prophet of old,
Back from the dead.
As if the power who carries prophets
Dies when they do, or is swept away
In a chariot of fire when they are,
And the best God can do
Is return them.

...

And even the godless King Herod was concerned,
Because the senseless presentation of John’s head
To his own stepdaughter—
At the behest of his wife—
                                                                           Was his doing.

Palace walls and the plushest pillows
Never prevented reality or rumors
From entering the minds of kings
And stealing their sleep.
And so, he spent the night in strategy,
Making war and arranging battalions
Against these questions:

Is the Baptizer alive?
And what happens
When the man you execute
Comes back to visit?

If only educated men would have come
From the East in a dream or to the door—
Like when history and wise men brought
The message of a baby three decades before—
Because they would have said,
“The baby born in Bethlehem,
In search of whom your father thrust
A thousand spears through little ones,
Is not dead.
The one born king of Israel
Is now thirty years old—”
A message to open his deaf ears
And cut through the sound of infanticide,
And Rachel’s mourning for her children,
And the legacy of his father, Herod the Great.

...

But meanwhile, the rabbi was alone,
Praying with the ordinary men—
The ordinary sinners—
The ones he called
His disciples.

He looked at them with eyes
That always seemed to reflect
A low-burning fire,
Passion and compassion.
“Who do the crowds say that I am?”
He asked.

They answered,
“John the Baptist, or Elijah,
Or a risen prophet of old.”

…

The Spirit's gentle exhalation
Passed between the rabbi and them
As a midnight breeze blew through
That desolate place,
Carrying away their words
Like feathers into darkness—
To make space—
For a more important confession.

“But who do you say that I am?”
He replied.

And the most ordinary of sinners said,
“You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”