He was a god you could have dinner with,
Even if it wasn't always a blast.
He was a god who ate and smiled and talked,
Instead of sitting on a thundercloud,
Sending down plagues and testing fathers
By killing and torturing daughters and sons.
In fact, it was we who tortured him,
Because he was a god you could nail to a cross,
Who would bleed and moan most pleasingly,
If you were into that kind of thing.
But he was also a god who rose again,
As if to show you how small you were,
With all your brightly armored Roman strength,
And thinking killing him would slow him down.
Instead it only made him bolder, and
His followers put crosses round their necks,
Which was, you felt, entirely missing the point –
But try explaining that to them.
In the end, it was the slaves who won.
There were more of them, and they outlasted you.
It's not a world for emperors anymore,
And all because that brash carpenter's son
Would not stop talking, even after death,
And people listened, and the world was changed.
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