Did Jesus make the cock crow?

During the Supper on Maundy Thursday
He must have felt low down and demeaned by His apostles.
He was alternately solemn and ceremonial
Because He knew that injury is healed by ritual;
And depressed, hurt, and mistrustful
Because He knew what dogs such men could be.
The night had captured them in its fear-filled mysteriousness.
Birds and crickets were hunkered down with shoulders
Pinched about their ears fearful of a forthcoming
Cataclysm or calamity.
The Anointed One knew that the men
Surrounding Him at the table cared little for His plight,
Bore scant attention to His horrible fate about to happen
That there could be no other truth worth stating:
He accused them, instructed them, fed them
His Body and Blood but obviously thought them
Incapable of cherishing His most personal, perfect gift,
For in the end He called them traitors and doubters
And cowards who would abandon His pained heart.
This Christ must have known that it is those closest,
Those who hold the highest positions of trust,
That betray and destroy with the greatest fury.
The Lamb who taketh away the sins of all man
Stands to look about, recognizing these souls
As slovenly and slothful and certainly unable
To prevail against threat, to stand strong
When terror arrives and danger darts from the dark.
These men who would never withstand interrogation,
Would buckle and crumble under the weight of self-doubt
And social disapproval and turn Him into the first
Roman cop who came by, the first judge who'd hear the case.
Had He, the Son of God, from the start, fallen in with
This coven of louts for the very reason that
They would break His heart when the moment came
To show their love?  Did He, in fact, own so much
Power and glory to make the moon wane, the sun rise?
The sensitive heart can easily understand how a man,
Even a Chosen One feeling vulnerable, might
Give expression to a slight pettiness
And instruct a chicken to crow to make a point.

© louis j. carro     january 1993

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