Plato in a Suit

Track eleven is the album's meta-diagnosis - the one song that names the operating system under all the others. He didn't leave when the apostles wrote the letters. He just changed his clothes. Plato. Still here, wearing our suit now, hiding in plain sight at every wake and catechism and Sunday sermon.

The diagnostic device is simply learning to spot him. Catch the funeral homily calling the body a wrapper she got out of. Hum I'll fly away with no resurrection anywhere in it. Read the half-quoted Paul on the bumper sticker - absent from the body, the verse keeps going, they leave it there. Hear the sermon say the flesh is the enemy as if Paul had not meant a redeemable this body. The chorus names the smuggling operation. He's smuggling Athens past the cross. He's wearing the Republic like a robe. You can't see him 'cause he's wearing OUR clothes.

But verse three is the rebuttal, and it is all flesh. I read the gospels with a body in mind, and there was Jesus - walking, eating, sleeping, weeping, sweating, bleeding. There was Easter, a real body asking for fish. There was Thomas with a hand in real wounds. There was Paul promising my body would be raised, not abandoned. The bridge hammers it home. The Word became flesh. The Word stayed flesh. The grave gave the flesh back. The flesh ascended. The flesh is coming back. Plato hates this story. That's how you know it's true. The cross was a body, the throne is a body, and the only one in this room wearing a costume is the Greek.