Strepitus

The Good Friday readings

roll like a stone downhill

gathering speed

until they slam

the tomb shut

on our Lord in death.

The liturgical strepitus

shocks/scares us 

into silence.

I know it’s coming, of course,

but it gets me every time.

I don’t like loud noises

that startle suddenly

like a crashing emergency

that slams life down

and pins it to the mat

like some abducting wrestler

named God

wounding Jacob

in order to win the day.

We knew you were dying

but it crashed/crushed us still.

Usually the strepitus 

involves a little stagecraft—

shaking a metal sheet 

like a Foley artist making thunder

or dropping a heavy stone

on a wooden sanctuary floor

so no one knows what happened,

but it doesn’t sound good,

like when kids are playing

upstairs and something crashes

to send parents running, alarmed.

I heard of a pastor once

who took the Paschal candle 

from the year passing

and smashed it violently

on the altar table for the strepitus.

Old Mrs. McMurphy 

was picking shards of wax 

out of her wig for months afterwards. 

The congregation had no light

of the world for a whole day,

no surety of its return.

After your funeral

I sit shocked in your office

amid all your books,

remembering all the times

I’d sat in that chair

talking sacraments and Word

and performance theory 

with you so lively, so alive,

a big fluffy dog spread out

between us lapping up affection

and laughter flowing with tears.

Shards of those times

pick up speed,

threatening to melt 

my Stoic façade.

I need to process, think, honor

with thoughtful words of gratitude

for how your gracious care

changed my life, but all crashes

on the word you taught me, 

the only word that comes: 

“Strepitus!”