East of Eden: It Troubles Him

He reads it online

in the waking light of morning,

joining others for prayer

with Leeds Minster in the background—

stone, candlelight,

old memorials to war

fixed quietly in the walls,

names held still

by cold brass and silence,

boys once sent out

and returned as names.

The city is already stirring.

Buses cough awake.

Shops lift their shutters.

Someone sleeps in a doorway

beneath a bank’s bright window.

Leeds remembers, again,

what it kneels to.

Psalm first.

Then Exodus.

Then the trouble.

Because in Exodus

YHWH says:

Let me alone,

that my wrath may

burn hot against them.

And later—

Kill your brother,

your friend,

your neighbour.

And the priest flinches.

Because he knows

what happens

when men with power

find God on their side.

The mountain burns.

The people dance.

Gold shines

like something holy

and something false.

East of Eden,

the old violence survives.

Abel is still bleeding.

Cain still builds cities.

Pharaoh only

changes uniforms.

And he reads it

with Gaza in his chest,

with Ukraine under sirens,

with Iran spoken aloud

by men who discuss missiles

like accountants discussing rain.

Children lifted from rubble

like broken liturgy.

Mothers learning grief

by repetition.

Flags flying proudly

over someone else’s grave.

And behind the prayers,

those memorial stones—

young men taught

to call slaughter duty,

their names now kept

by pigeons and dust.

So when the text says

the Lord commanded it—

three thousand fallen,

the camp running red—

he does not tidy it.

He lets it accuse him.

Because he knows

scripture can be used

like a weapon

with very clean hands.

He has heard empire pray.

He has watched nations

baptise bombs.

He has seen the poor

pay for the rich man’s calf.

The idol is never

only an idol.

Sometimes it is gold.

Sometimes a flag.

Sometimes an economy.

The calf still glitters.

It just has

better branding.

And deeper still—

he wonders about God.

Is this who YHWH is?

Fire and mercy

in the same mouth?

Does Exodus reveal God,

or only a people

trying to name holiness

with blood still on their hands?

Is the Lord divided—

Sinai one day,

Sermon on the Mount the next?

No.

He has seen

too much Jesus for that.

Too much table fellowship.

Too much mercy

for failures and fools.

Too much bread broken

for enemies.

Too much blood

that says forgive them

instead of finish them.

Christ is the measure.

Not the polite Christ

framed safely

on church walls,

but the wild Messiah

who touched lepers,

overturned tables,

and let empire nail Him up

rather than become it.

If God is like anything,

God is like Jesus.

So Sinai must walk

through Calvary.

The fire must pass

through wounds.

And still

he will not soften Exodus.

He will not bleach

the blood out.

Will not make

the dead symbolic.

Some texts arrive

like bricks through windows.

Some passages

must be carried

more like stones

than slogans.

Quietly,

he is grateful

he does not have to finish

the reading and say

This is the word of the Lord.

Not yet.

Not before Jacob’s limp.

Not before Emmaus.

Not before the long argument

between the text

and the heart.

Because scripture

is not dictation.

It is a road at dusk.

A stranger beside you.

A conversation

that leaves your chest burning.

He reads the text

and the text reads him.

It asks him

which calves

he still protects.

Which empires

he still calls normal.

Which violences

he has learned

to rename as policy.

Prayer becomes argument.

Argument becomes prayer.

And perhaps faith

is simply refusing

to leave the table.

Staying long enough

for bread to be broken.

Long enough

for the stranger

to be recognised.

Because in the end

the truest word

is not the sword

but the scar.

Not violence blessed,

but violence borne.

Not revenge,

but resurrection.

The final mountain

is not Sinai in flames,

but Calvary—

where Love

takes the worst thing empire can do

into His own body

and answers still

with peace.

—Rev’d Jon Swales

Artwork: Adoration of the Golden Calf — Nicolas Poussin