“Trajectory: Easter Tunnel”

My daughter, Gwen, celebrates in this poem a wonderful but often unrecognized truth about Easter: resurrection is not resuscitation. Lazarus was resuscitated; Jesus was resurrected. Lazarus came back from death the same way he entered. Jesus came forth from death by bursting through the other side. Lazarus returned to the same life he had known before. Jesus entered into an entirely new life that no man had known before. Lazarus cheated death. Jesus defeated death. Praise God, Jesus is risen! He is risen indeed!

Trajectory: Easter Tunnel

When Christ stood up, he did not come

backwards out of the earth like Lazarus

still wearing those strips. He was not unswallowed,

sucked out of the dark the same direction he went in,

leaving a hole savior-sized. No, he explored

deeper, dividing the dry land

in two, ripping the belly

wide.

Out again on the other side

he came while the linen

sighed into empty folds behind

him, and the dirt beneath his fingernails

smelled of a path no one had found

before. And God who had buried him in the East

looked to the West as out of death He called

His Son.

–Gwen Burrow