Affliction II
Kill me not ev'ry day,
Thou Lord of life, since thy one death for me
Is more than all my deaths can be,
Though I in broken pay
Die over each hour of Methusalem's stay.
If all men's tears were let
Into one common sewer, sea, and brine;
What were they all, compar'd to thine?
Wherein if they were set,
They would discolour thy most bloody sweat.
Thou art my grief alone,
Thou Lord conceal it not: and as thou art
All my delight, so all my smart:
Thy cross took up in one,
By way of imprest, all my future moan.
Herbert wrote a series of five poems titled 'Affliction'. It was clearly a thing for him! It isn't a word commonly used today, perhaps because it carries a considerable freight of negativity.
For Herbert it refers to suffering in its many guises and disguises. Physical illness and pain (he suffered from tuberculosis), emotional anguish from anxiety and stress about his own mortality, and recurring guilt and a chronic sense of unworthiness, as well as those times in life when circumstances conspire to overthrow the always fragile framework of our life.
In this poem Herbert is saying that the suffering and death of Christ, for Herbert's and a world's sin, kills him every day. That one death of the Son of God haunts his thoughts so that even if he reached Methuselah's 969 years, and died every hour of every one of those years, the balance would still be on Christ's side. Why? Because while Herbert is mortal and will die as a matter of course, Christ is eternally the Son of God and the Lord of life, and his death is the death of life.
What afflicts Herbert is the thought that Christ died for him, that the Lord of Life died on behalf of a world's sin, and Herbert like Paul the Apostle, counted himself the chief of sinners. Those who are afflicted will weep with pain, sorrow, regret and other forms of human anguish, and that universal overflow grief is never, ever, to be discounted. But still, argues Herbert, if every human tear that ever fell, was gathered into one vast reservoir of waste, even in oceans deep and wide, their cumulative evidence of sorrow in affliction would be no match for the tears of the righteous crucified Christ.
That second stanza deliberately uses an incongruous image. Human tears, even all the tears ever shed, dilute the blood of Christ, as Herbert recalls Gethsemane and the agonising of the Son of Man made visible in sweat like great drops of blood falling on the ground. (Luke 22.44) Affliction for Herbert has a double meaning; there is the affliction of the Christian, and then there is the affliction of Christ. They cannot be compared in profundity of suffering, in eternal significance, in redemptive value, or in any way that tries to equate the human with the divine.
The last stanza plays out the paradox. The Lord of life has died for him, and Herbert has to live with the anguish of that. Yet that death has been the remaking of him; out of Christ's death comes forgiveness, new creation, reconciliation and a making of peace by the blood of the cross. So the death of Christ is grief and delight, cause for lifelong repentance and lifelong praise, a sacrifice bathed in sorrow and a gift drenched in love.
The cross absorbs into the heart of the eternal God all the anguish of alienated humanity, and through the death of Christ for love of the world, negates the violence, hatred, and destructive powers of death. Hence those last two lines: In one almighty death, Christ has put down the advance payments (imprest) for all Herbert's, and every Christian's future reasons for complaint, moaning and contrition. The poem started with Herbert paying in instalments (broken pay); it ends with Christ settling future debts, because by his death, the debt is paid.
AS Holy Week begins, and slowly we walk the uphill path to Calvary, Herbert is reminding us of the cost and consequence of sin, and also the delight and gratitude of the forgiven heart.
Leave a Reply