Don Carson’s New Easter Poem: ‘Dismissed by God’s Laugh’

The powers of darkness descended in hate,
Maliciously, leeringly trying to bait
Their Victim, Creator, this self-emptied Man,
Committed to wrecking their Maker’s bold plan.

Seducing Iscariot, whipping the crowd
To lynch-mob ferocity (fear rages proud),
Self-righteousness hoodwinked to murder the Lord—
The angel of light is the lion that roared.

Disowned and alone, by close friendship betrayed,
Contemptuously punched while in purple arrayed,
Raw meat for the lash, bleeding target of hate,
The Crucified One seemed the plaything of fate.

But princes of darkness could not comprehend
The still acquiescence no suff’ring could bend—
No victim of fate or of plans that had strayed—
Such stillness was born in a Son who obeyed.

What seemed his destruction to rebels whose glee
Erupted too soon in perverse ecstasy
Would prove but a sentence of unrelieved doom,
Sealed up by the witness of one empty tomb

Repulsively shocked, the defeated archfiend
Discovered his loss in the death that had seemed
Another’s destruction, heav’n’s own Ichabod—
Deep wisdom mislabeled the folly of God.

No demon foresaw that the God-man himself
Would triumph by weakness, not power or stealth.
The plan of hell’s cohorts, too clever by half,
Was crushed by Christ’s cross and dismissed by God’s laugh.