Walls

A poem based on the lectionary reading for Sunday, April 3, 2016–John 20:19-31

They had locked the door,
heard the latch click
shut.

But there Jesus was anyway.
With them.

Walls were of no matter to him.

Seems odd, don’t you think,
after all the stuff Jesus made matter
in strange and wondrous ways:

Sandals with dust shaken off.
Bread broken and blessed and eaten.
Dinner tables and hillside picnics.
Nard dripping from a woman’s hair onto bare feet.
A well and a drink of water and a bucket left behind.
Lives and bodies
of a man born blind
a bleeding woman
a daughter dead
tax collectors and bread makers
and farmers sowing seeds in rain-wet fields.

Jesus made everyday stuff matter.
People’s lives mattered.

Maybe Thomas got it
when he demanded to put his hand in the wounded side
of the one for whom walls were of no matter.
Peering into that laceration–
Matter mattered.
All of it–more than we know.
More real. More mysterious.
Whole worlds
in a lesion
a loaf
a cup of water
a human life.

Maybe that’s how it all comes to matter
to us
and change us.
When we see.
Walls were of no matter to Jesus
and they should be of no matter to us.

Jesus stretches to the limits
human senses.
Immaterial materiality in a broken human body
and a resurrected truth:
We live and work and play everyday in the shoals of infinity
and here and there, now and then
walls are of no matter.
We see.
We believe.