(A poetic reflection on Matthew 27:1-10): Daily Office Readings for Friday, July 22, 2022
We all grew up
Hearing about “the potter’s field”
But most of us
Probably didn’t understand why
A field for paupers, criminals,
Unidentifiable remains,
And “outsiders”
Has that name.
You see,
There was a place outside Jerusalem
In the Hinnom Valley
Where potters found the most exquisite red clay
But the valley was tainted
With the history
Of child sacrifices to Moloch.
So the holes and trenches
The potters made
Were left standing open
(after all, no one wanted
To stick around on haunted ground
For very long)
And the land became a wasteland.
Yet it was easy to bury someone
Because the holes were already there.
Even without that history,
we all grew up knowing
The potter’s field
Was a place
To dispose of the remains
Of the unwanted,
The unknown,
And the unloved.
Today we know it
Through places like
Hart Island in New York City,
Where over one million people
That the world forgot
Are interred.
Although we generally assume
Judas was buried there,
We don’t know that for certain.
Yet, in a way, I hope that he was–
Because really, when it comes down to it,
Don’t all of us
In some way or another
Take our guilt and our shame
And bury it in unmarked fields,
And hope that through a grace
Far beyond what we can see,
The commonality of human shame and guilt
Is somehow redeemed
By lying alongside the pain of others?
Maria Evans splits her week between being a pathologist and laboratory director in Kirksville, MO, and gratefully serving in the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri , as Interim Priest at Trinity Episcopal Church in Hannibal, MO.
