What Jesus Runs From

The son of Mary, Jesus, hurries up a slope

as though a wild animal were chasing him.

Someone following him asks, Where are you going?

No one is after you. Are you the one

who says words over a dead person, so that

he wakes up? I am. Who then could possibly

cause you to run like this? Jesus explains.

I say the Great Name over the deaf and the blind,

they are healed. Over a stony mountainside

and it tears its mantle down to the navel.

But when I speak lovingly for hours with those

who take human warmth and mock it, when I say the Name

to them, nothing happens. They remain rock,

or turn to sand. Other diseases are ways for mercy

to enter, but this nonresponding breeds violence

and coldness toward God. I am fleeing from that. As

little by little air steals water, so praise

dries up and evaporates with foolish people who refuse to

change. Like cold stone you sit on, a cynic steals

body heat. He does not feel the sun. Jesus was not running

from anything. He was teaching in a new way.