It was on the Tuesday
that he let them have it.

If you had been there
you would have thought
that a union official was being taken to task
by a group of mobsters.
Or that the chairman of a multinational corporation
was being interrogated by left-wing activists
posing as shareholders.

They wanted to know why
and they wanted to know how.

They were the respectable men,
the influential men,
the establishment.

The questions they asked
ranged from silly schoolgirl speculations
about whether you would be a bigamist in heaven
if you had married twice on earth,
to what was the central rule of civilized behavior.

They knew the answers already…
or so they thought,
otherwise they would never have asked the questions.

And like most of us
they were looking for an argument
with no intention of a change of heart.

So he flailed them with his tongue…
those who tried to look interested
but never wanted to be committed.

And that was on the Tuesday…
the day when he let them…
let us…
have it.

For Holy Week, I’m sharing a series of poems that come from Stages on the Way, a book of worship resources for the Easter season prepared by the Iona Community, a Christian ecumenical community headquartered in Scotland and devoted to peace and social justice.