A Liturgy of False Gold on a Sunday
He thumbs the namesake Bible
on his knee: leather smooth as a drone’s wing.
His kind of Jesus hangs clean
as it did in the 50s like a chrome fin
in stained glass, anachronistically
gilded—meek, they call
the one they believed cracked
the whip in the temple,
the one who wept blood
in the gardens of the Levant.
This Jesus doesn’t sweat.
Doesn’t taste of dust
or cheap wine.
Doesn’t kneel in the dirt
with the woman from Samaria—
only points, pristine,
from a megachurch stage
where the collection plates
gleam like missile casings.
On the cracked leather couch,
the man clicks his tongue
And tweets, peace,
a dry rattle in the ribs of mountains
where the olive trees hold their breath
like mothers in a market line.
We’ve grown used to the rhythm:
security, freedom, fire.
All words gone slick
with overuse—
another a cross
on a campaign lapel.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
the preacher used to say,
as if peace were a passive thing,
a quiet room, a closed door.
Not the wild work of mercy—
And when they would lift the cup,
I tasted only metal.
This is the new liturgy:
the body of Christ,
crushed like limestone
under the boot of empire.
I want to believe in a different Jesus—
the one who’d turn his back
on the marble steps,
walk past the armored cars,
kneel in the broken field
to cradle a child’s shoe
full of consecrated glass.
The one who’d say:
Put down the stone.
Love thy neighbor.
Bring the little children…
like those stories once told me
in the 90s–during the beginning
of the middle of The Fall.
But the stones are too many now.
The earth won’t absorb
all the plastic, the diesel, the ghost-scent
of pomegranate groves
as three continents away
we watch the weatherman’s map—
and chew our bread,
stained gold with margarine.
False and forgiving gold.
Gold that glints like the clip
on the President’s pen
as he signs the heavens shut
to us.
