The final song in Jesus Christ Superstar (1970), a rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, is "John Nineteen: Forty-One." In the Bible, John 19:41-42 (Good News Translation) reads: "There was a garden in the place where Jesus had been put to death, and in it there was a new tomb where no one had ever been buried. Since it was the day before the Sabbath and because the tomb was close by, they placed Jesus' body there." Here is a poem by Belle F. Owens about resurrection, a subject that Jesus Christ Superstar does not deal with.
THE GARDEN
The garden now is sealed and dead,
But, lo! a crocus lifts its head;
This is the tomb of Love, we feel,
But here an iris breaks the seal.
This is not death but wonted birth,
But resurrection of the frost-bound earth;
The silver rain unseals the crust
And through the sod green spears will thrust
Returning spring, renew our faith,
For he is risen as he saith.
Source of poem: Christ in Poetry (1952), an anthology compiled and edited by Thomas Curtis Clark and Hazel Davis Clark
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