Author: admin

("Bennachie: For Aileen.") Tapestry designed in memory of our daughter Aileen who loved this view of the hills.)

When the world around us changes rapidly, and beyond recognition, it helps if we can hold on to something familiar. These days though, our world has become strange and unfamiliar and the landscape around us more threatening than reassuring.

These past few weeks we’ve very quickly had to get used to the reality that the world is not in a good place. Yet our lives must go on. Our journey continues, even as we try to discern the presence of God in all that’s going on?

Psalm 121 was written for pilgrims heading off to Jerusalem, hundreds of miles away through desert, mountains and bandit country. It was sung by anxious travellers as they set off on a journey full of risks, many of them unseen but real. Here are some questions to ask as you imagine those scared but determined pilgrims: What was it like for pilgrims setting out on the long dangerous journey to Jerusalem, hoping to get there safely to worship God at the Temple? How would they know the way? Could they trust the guides? Would there be bandits on the road? What about wild animals, landslides, or sunstroke in a desert with no water?  Where would help come from in life threatening emergencies? This Psalm answers questions like these.

“I look to the hills, where does help come from? Help comes from the Lord.” Faith isn’t permission to close our eyes to danger. Nor is faith reckless about taking risks. But on the long journey of our lives, as we look to the hills where danger, risk and trouble might await us, faith is knowing the Lord is to be trusted.

Psalm 121 is a faith tonic. It was prayed before the pilgrims left on the journey, and it was sung on arrival at the Temple. In between, there was the journey, long, scary, far from home, and no guarantees of safety. Who can they rely on in a strange land, tramping along an unknown road, passing through dangerous mountains? Same answer. The Lord. Help comes from Him.

“He will not let your foot slip” – think of rocky screes like the Cairngorms, and walking in sandals or even bare feet. But the Lord guides your footsteps and will not let your foot slip.

At night, when sleeping round a campfire with somebody else keeping watch, don’t worry. Even if they fall asleep, the Lord doesn’t nod off and leave you unguarded. “The Lord neither slumbers nor sleeps…”

Yes the sun will be hot, relentless, and drain you of energy and hydration, but the Lord is like the parasol over your garden table, you won’t get sunstroke. Even at night when the moon was thought to affect people’s minds and emotions, the Psalmist says, God has that covered too.

“The Lord will keep you from all harm” – he will watch over your life.” We never walk alone, whatever the landscape. Whatever the dangers and risks and troubles, the Lord is our keeper. That doesn’t mean nothing can happen to us; it does mean nothing can happen that separates us from the love of Christ.

“The Lord watches over your comings and goings”, out and in, all the way there and all the way back. This is a Psalm to be said or prayed or sung, especially when the journey ahead scares us. I’d like to suggest we take it as our prayer for this week, and beyond. I’ve included it below in the words of the old Scottish Paraphrase.

What this Psalm does is lift our eyes to the hills, and then beyond the hills to the Lord who made heaven and earth. Praying this so long ago psalm lifts our eyes and our heart beyond our fears about the pandemic, and our anxieties about the journey ahead which will take us over scary territory, in a world now made strange. Remember, “Help comes from the Lord”

The instincts of Israel were to trust and to depend on the God who promised to be there for them, and with them. As Christians we have come to know this same God revealed in Christ, crucified and risen. Ours is a faith whose foundation pillars are plunged deep in love that is eternal, grace that is sufficient for our needs, and an everlasting mercy underwritten by the power and purpose of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In coming days and weeks we will all lift your eyes to the hills, and wonder where help comes from. Listen for the answer, “Help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” And daily pray this Psalm, about the “Lord who watches over your coming and going, both now and evermore”,

"Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up."

Sometimes the Apostle Paul writes one liners as if he was looking for a new T shirt slogan! When it comes to having a good argument, Paul's your man. He was never going to be a stand up comedian, but he had an instinct for the knock out punch line. 

"Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up." So that puts all the know-alls in their place. But wait a minute. Paul isn't having a go at knowledge. He's more concerned with what we do with what we know, and with what our knowledge does to us.

My guess is that we have all met the arrogant always right person, somebody who knows a lot but thinks they know more than they do. And especially thinks they know more than you do. Which might be true. But that isn't the issue. If a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, an inflated sense of our own cleverness is hardly risk free.

Paul drops his one liner into an argument that was dividing opinion in Corinth, and was dividing the fellowship in Corinth. The issue was whether it was right or wrong to eat meat that had previously been sacrificed to idols. The whole passage is a lesson in ego reduction.

"Concerning food that has been offered to idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love build up. If anyone thinks that he or she knows something, that one does not know as he or she ought to know. If someone loves God, that person is known by him." (I Cor 8.1-3)

In Christian spirituality and ethics, love is the defining quality of life, behaviour and relationships. However knowledgeable and experienced a Christian is, they only half know what they know, if their knowledge doesn't build up and strengthen the life of the Christian community. Those who think they know better than others, also think their knowledge makes them better than others; they simply haven't learned the first principle of Christian knowing.

"Knowledge puff up, but love builds up."

"We all have knowledge" is Paul's way of breaking the monopoly claimed by the super spiritual would be post-graduates in Christian knowledge. What matters though, is not what we know, but whether we love God and are known by God. Love is itself the deepest form of knowing. Those who have come to know Christ have been recreated and renewed by the self-giving love of God and the formative dynamic of the Holy Spirit. They know God and are known by God. They build one another up in love.

In the life of the Christian community there will always be occasions of difference, arguments and discussions and contested opinions. Often there will be those who claim the high ground, "We have knowledge…" – often with the claim that their position is the 'biblical' position. But Paul says of the Christian community then and now, "We all have knowledge." The real issue isn't what we know; it is whether we are known by God and know God. That knowledge is based on a relationship of love, we love God and are acknowledged by God. 

"Knowledge puff up, but love builds up."

Paul isn't setting knowledge against love; he is bringing them into their proper relation. Real Christian knowledge is embedded in the love relationship between God and the believer. We know because we are known; we love because we are loved. Knowledge can become detached, a form of intellectual control that feeds the ego; knowledge puffs up.

By contrast, love is a way of knowing the other person. That mutual knowledge and love, of each other and of God, enables the Christian community to deal with difference. To know we are loved by God, and to love God, is to know we are known, and to understand that we are understood. "Love builds up."   

   

A lot of humour and imagination is hidden behind various memes and photos circulating on Facebook.

Amongst them this picture of a rhinoceros on a treadmill.

The caption is one of those life coaching motivational one liners.

Except, if I was a rhinoceros why would I want to be a unicorn?

Beauty is not the prerogative of those who think they are beautiful; nor is beauty defined by the cliches, images and prejudices of a self-obsessed culture.

Dreams are those stories we tell ourselves about how we would like our world or ourselves to be.

That's OK. What isn't OK is a dream imposed by others' expectations.

Dreams like that are built on guilt, undermined self-esteem, and someone else's image of what beauty and fulfilment look like.

In this picture the rhinoceros is real, the unicorn is a fantasy. 

In any case a beautiful, healthy rhinoceros will always be the distilled essence of a rhinoceros, it would be a visual display of rhinocerosness at its best.

Instead of this meme reinforcing our already felt inadequacy, it's good to subvert it, and be proud of our identity, image, dignity and right to be who you are. 

This meme and its slogan encourage us to attempt the impossible, to live a fantasy.

Better to live the real life of a rhinoceros with contented gratitude, than the impossible fantasy of a unicorn trying to convince itself it is more than a badly hung poster. 

The Emmaus Supper

“Well, at least nobody died.”

That flippant life coaching quip sometimes works,

usually by minimising the trouble we’re in.

Trouble is, this time somebody did die.

 

We met Jesus a few years ago. He was a life changer.

The way he lived made us want to be near him,

the things he said turned all the politics and good manners upside down.

The last to be first, to serve not be served,

love your enemies, lust the doorway to adultery,

peace-making as family likeness to God, losing life to find it.

 

His laughter came from some well of living joy deep inside him;

he looked at people, not through them;

he listened, understood, and paid attention.

 

He gazed into the heart of who we are, and wasn’t put off,

and for all our fears and uncertainties, he never once walked away from us.

So yes, we were prepared to follow him.

To build the Kingdom of God, to take up the cross and follow,

To not be anxious about food and clothes and instead trust God.

We walked and learned and travelled and lived the way he showed us,

And when we failed and made mistakes, he understood.

 

Then we realised he was serious.

He was going to Jerusalem and he would be put to death.

Jesus had become scary, unpredictable,

way too extreme for his own good.

That outburst in the Temple, riding into Jerusalem like some self-appointed prophet,

Arguing and criticising and judging and publicly contradicting powerful people.

He knew perfectly well our faith Leaders wouldn’t let it go,

And he knew that once Rome was involved,

it would need to be settled, one way or another.

 

So they crucified him. Finish. End.

Rome trades on finality, no one survives crucifixion.

“It’s finished!” Famous last words of Jesus.

And he wasn’t wrong. It was finished. It is finished!

 

So what in heaven’s name were we to do next?

You give up your life and family, you go walkabout with Jesus,

you build your hopes on a new world of God’s Kingdom,

of freedom, justice, peace and new beginnings.

And what have we left? Nothing.

Jerusalem wasn’t safe anymore.

 

So Cleopas and I decided to travel to Emmaus.

Walking might get life moving again, give us some impetus,

some idea of a way forward, some hope.

Cleopas was usually clear headed and positive,

he’d know what to do .

 

But Cleopas was as shattered as the rest of us.

Confusion and fear, sadness and regret,

broken dreams and emotional pain,

minds closed to hopefulness

by the trauma of already shattered hope.

 

We talked as we walked,  

because talking about things somehow eased the pressure of hurt,

by talking we recognise and own that deep human need we all have,

to make sense of what messes up life,

to rewrite the pages torn from our story,  

to put into words what we fear can't ever be fully described.

 

Maybe it’s just knowing another heart feels something similar,

that the loss and hurt aren't borne alone,

that by talking we might salvage some sense and purpose

out of what has wrecked a hoped for future.

 

And then, as if heaven sent, a stranger caught up with us.

We were glad of the company, and another voice.

Someone who could confirm the horror, share the shock,

sympathise and understand and give us another perspective.

 

But he didn’t know what we were talking about.

So we explained about Jesus the prophet, (how could he not know?)

The chief priests and the Romans, the trials and the crucifixion,

And our sorrow, our emptiness, our despair,

and that mixture of resentful anger and lost love

that is grief at its most bewildering and fear at its most disabling.

We told him about the burial and the waiting,

and the women in denial with their stupid fairy-tale endings.

 

But he said it was us, we were the stupid ones,

We were the ones in denial, we who couldn’t see and wouldn’t believe.

He looked us in the face,

and spoke out of depths beyond our imagining,

“Foolish and slow of heart to believe all the prophets

Have said about the glory of the suffering Christ.”

 

And as he talked and explained, we began to feel strangely safe,

His words began to make sense of the whole, tragic, holy mess.

Maybe there was more. Maybe it wasn’t all gone.

He seemed to know the heart of things; and to know the world by heart.

 

He sounded just like Jesus, the way he said the words,

The tough kindness, that faraway look that isn’t fantasy,

but is more real than even that aching, empty space

that used to be meaning and purpose and, God help us, hope.

All hope needs is a promise, a gesture towards a different future,

and a trusted presence to take us there.

 

By the time we got to Emmaus he stopped talking and began walking away.

We asked him to stay, we had to keep him talking.

His words flickered and flamed with truth.

We could feel the energy, see new possibility by their light,

they were words that reconstructed our world.

He told us our story as he told us God’s story,

and he told us the story of Jesus as only Jesus could have told it.

And our hearts burned within us with new possibility.

 

It’s getting dark we said, stay with us.

You must be tired we said, come, stay with us and rest.

You must be hungry and thirsty, stay and have supper with us.

It isn’t safe to travel alone, stay with us, your friends.

 

And he did. He was our guest, but he acted like the host.

And when we were seated at the table, he took the bread and broke it –

And once again like that broken loaf, our world fell apart,

But this time the pieces fell into place – It was Him!

He is alive! The women were right! He kept his promise!

He lived his word because he lives and is life itself.

 

He had said we were foolish not to believe;

But how foolish we only just realised.

 

To the light of the World we said,

“It’s getting dark, stay with us.”

 

To the One who says to the heavy laden “Come unto me”

We said, “You must be tired, come stay with us and rest.”

 

To the bread of life, and to the living water,

We said, “You must be hungry and thirsty, stay and have supper with us."

 

To the one who is the Resurrection and the Life,

who laid down his life for sheer love of his friends,

who walked the darkest places of sin and judgement and suffering

we said, “It isn’t safe to travel alone, stay with us.”

 

That blessed broken bread! That blessed bread broken,

as only he ever broke it, given as only he could give!

No wonder he knew the story of Jesus inside out.

No wonder we felt ourselves understood.

No wonder the old love rekindled.

 

And as soon as we knew it was him, he vanished!

But by then we knew. That broken bread,

And the way it was broken, and the words that blessed it,

It was Him alright, and because it was him, it’s all right.

A A question from Dietrich Bonhoeffer in a letter to his best friend, Eberhard Bethge; "Where do you see an intellectual 'life's work' these days?"

Bonhoeffer is writing from the confinement of prison, where he regularly experienced interrogation and intimidation. In addition to physical isolation and daily threat to his health and his life, he wrote often of the constriction of his mind by continuing enforced loneliness and separation from family, friends and his fiance.

Yet despite such emotional and intellectual deprivation, he is reflecting on the crucial importance of intellectual culture, scholarly activity, the ethics of learning and the work of human cultivation as the foundation of human culture and renewed civilisation. Somehow he is able to think beyond his own dangerously limited circumstances and his immediate personal future, to ask what would provide the moral and cultural framework to build a better future for him and for his nation. 

One of my own interests is the place of the humanities in education, from earliest learning to higher education and beyond. Music and art, literature and history, languages, philosophy and theology, are dimensions of human learning which we call the humanities for a good reason. They arise out of human experience, they reflect upon and deepen understanding of that experience, and in so doing they provide the opportunity for each of us to better understand our own and others' humanity. With such understanding will also come humility, humour and humane responses to the world around us. Study of the humanities humanise us; an obvious but necessary reminder.

So it is no idle question Bonhoeffer asks. Here is his fuller exposition of what troubles him: 

"Where do you see an intellectual 'life's work' these days? Where is anyone gathering, working through and developing what it takes to accomplish such? Where is there the blissful lack of fixed goals and yet the planning in broad strokes, which belong to such a life?  I think even for technicians and scientists, who are the only ones who still have freedom for their work, no such thing exists anymore.  If the end of the eighteenth century means the end of 'universal scholarship,' and in the nineteenth century intensive  study takes the place of extensive learning, and finally toward the turn of the century the 'specialist' has developed, today really everyone has become nothing more than a technician — even in the arts (in a good form in music, but in painting and poetry a mediocre one at best). Our intellectual existence remains but a torso." (306-7)

Context, of course, modifies such drastic judgement. Germany was fighting a losing war and becoming increasingly desperate to produce and develop armaments. For that you needed scientists, engineers and technicians rather than musicians, writers and artists. But Bonhoeffer was well aware that the necessity for war machinery was at least partly due to a more mechanised view of human society, a new machinery of political dominance and new goals for economic efficiency. Indeed, as Bonhoeffer had long recognised, the reduction of human educational formation to such priorities as technical mastery, mechanised mass production, and social engineering towards such goals, was itself inescapably dehumanising.         

We should also remember that Bonhoeffer was viewing German culture through the broken lenses of catastrophic national, moral, and social collapse. The Germany of Bach and Beethoven, of Goethe and Schiller, of universities whose international reputation was the envy of Europe for rigorous scholarship and advanced academic disciplines had become a war factory. And he sensed an abyss had opened up over decades, out of which destructive ideologies erupted and fused with intellectual power and technical know how to become the driving force of National Socialism. 

Late in his own imprisonment, only a year before his execution, Bonhoeffer was asking the question that would require answering to enable post-war national, cultural, and economic recovery. But it was also the question that would require asking and answering for even more critical reasons; how to recover his nation's soul when so much of its previous history was discredited; how to restore a sense of identity more deeply rooted in humane learning whose goal was a more creative and compassionate humanity; how to redress the balance of human education and learning so that technical mastery would not outstrip moral capacity, and technological development would be harnessed to more peaceful ends in the the new world order of nations; how to do all this? 

The intellectual life's work of the thinkers and poets, the artists and scientists, the philosophers and engineers, the musicians and technicians, cannot continue to be on separate tracks towards very different goals. Bonhoeffer sensed much of this as the war came near to its end, and his nation faced certain defeat. Like much else in his prison writings, his words are prescient, and remained undeveloped. But like the most significant prophetic voices, he had asked the life giving question, which we 75 years later have to live with, and go on seeking answers to it, for our own day.

This is being written in the midst of a pandemic, the most serious threat our world has faced for generations. We will need scientists and technicians, engineers and inventors, new technologies and industrial scale medical resources. But we will also need a revival of humanism, defined as respect for humanity, care for nature which is our living context, moral visions of human life committed to the common good, the nurturing of a culture of the mind, the imagination, the conscience and of strengthened human values. So we will need artists and poets, musicians and novelists, historians and lovers of language. Because our context, no less than Bonhoeffer's, is now a place of urgent questioning of what a human life is, what a human being is for, and what can safeguard and nurture the values that enable not only survival, but human flourishing that does not threaten the health and life of the world which is our home.  

                    Easter

Rise heart; thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise
                                    Without delays,
Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise
                                    With him mayst rise:
That, as his death calcined thee to dust,
His life may make thee gold, and much more, just.

Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part
                                  With all thy art.
The cross taught all wood to resound his name,
                                  Who bore the same.
His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key
Is best to celebrate this most high day.

Consort both heart and lute, and twist a song
                                  Pleasant and long:
Or, since all music is but three parts vied
                                 And multiplied,
O let thy blessed Spirit bear a part,
And make up our defects with his sweet art.

I got me flowers to straw thy way;
I got me boughs off many a tree:
But thou wast up by break of day,
And brought’st thy sweets along with thee.

The Sun arising in the East,
Though he give light, and th’ East perfume;
If they should offer to contest
With thy arising, they presume.

Can there be any day but this,
Though many suns to shine endeavour?
We count three hundred, but we miss:
There is but one, and that one ever.

"Rise heart; thy Lord is risen." Jesus is risen and shakes us awake, pulls us out of sleep half awake, and hauls us unto the daylight of a world made new to join in the singing and music making of life in all its fullness. The lines have urgency and excitement and move from the imperative mood "Rise heart!" to a more persuasive tone of promise that pulls us up and out of whatever pulls us down. 

"That as his death calcined us to dust, / his life may make thee gold, and much more just." Trust Herbert to send us back to the dictionary. But his word is well chosen; "reducing a mineral to its purest form by burning off impure substances." The atonement is a purifying process, a restoration of God's image in human life, as Christians are united with Christ crucified and risen.

The lovely line, "The cross taught all wood to resound his name" imagines the novice musician learning from the maestro. The definitive music of creation restored, was  played on the cross, and it is the Christian calling to celebrate and praise using such art and skill as can be learned in order to reproduce the music of redemption and resurrection. Incidentally, I'm convinced this verse is one of the defining sources that lie behind R S Thomas's remarkable poem, The Musician. 

So in the resurrection praise of Easter heart and lute orchestrate a long joyous song. And to complete the tree part chord the Holy Spirit is invited to take part in order to perfect the music of praise. "Rise…Awake…Consort" are three imperatives to praise, to come alive with Christ the risen Lord, to make the best music humanly possible, and then to sing the song of the redeemed with the Holy Spirit as the lead instrumentalist whose improvisations perfect the performance. 

And then we are given the words of the song in three festive verses celebrating the gala day of Christ's resurrection. But we are never ahead of Christ. He is up before us, goes ahead of us, anticipates our praises, and joins the Easter procession bringing his gifts to reciprocate the joy of the praising community

The sun can't compete with the Son, a pun Herbert enjoys using; and the playful rhyming of perfume and presume hints at the light-hearted dismissing of any comparison between the brilliance and timeliness of the rising sun, and the radiance and permanence of the rising of the Son. The last stanza says the same thing, ending with the promotion of Easter day and resurrection morning as the best day, ever. 

This is a the strangest Easter in our lifetime. I'm not sure there has ever been an Easter Sunday when all over the world, congregations have been unable to gather and celebrate the central event in Christian faith. Herbert's poem offers a counterbalance to what many of us are feeling as we contemplate a world changed beyond anything we have known, or even imagined. More than in previous Easters, I sense and own the sombre realities of Paul's words, "If Christ be not risen we are of all people the most miserable…" But says Paul, "Christ has indeed been raised." 

While we are living through these times of suffering, loss, anxiety, danger, isolation, and having to do so without the natural human comforts of togetherness, touch and shared presence, there is no place for a shallow triumphalism Nor are we being faithful to the Gospel by denial of the tragic in all of this, or despairing of God's future.

One of the older friends in our church seemed to find the right words: "We just have to get on with it, God love us." The courage to go on affirming the life God has given, and the assurance of a Love that will not let us go, stated with such common sense and hard won faith, echoes in the life of a 21st Century octogenarian the very same conviction that impels Herbert's first words in Easter: "Rise heart; thy Lord is risen."

(Tomorrow we will think about Herbert's pattern poem, Easter Wings. That will be the last in this series on George Herbert's poems. The image is of two relaxed angels for whom resurrection is the new normal in a post resurrection world! )

 

 

 

 

                          Sepulchre

Oh blessed body!  Whither art thou thrown?
No lodging for thee, but a cold hard stone?
So many hearts on earth, and yet not one
                                      Receive thee?

Sure there is room within our hearts good store;
For they can lodge transgressions by the score:
Thousands of toys dwell there, yet out of door
                                      They leave thee.

But that which shows them large, shows them unfit.
Whatever sin did this pure rock commit,
Which holds thee now?   Who hath indicted it
                                      Of murder?

Where our hard hearts have took up stones to brain thee,
And missing this, most falsely did arraign thee;
Only these stones in quiet entertain thee,
                                      And order.

And as of old, the law by heav’nly art,
Was writ in stone;  so thou, which also art
The letter of the word, find’st no fit heart
                                      To hold thee.

Yet do we still persist as we began,
And so should perish, but that nothing can,
Though it be cold, hard, foul, from loving man
                                      Withhold thee.

Holy Saturday has nothing of Good Friday's long, anguished narrative soaked in sorrow, suffering and sadness. Holy Saturday knows nothing of Sunday morning's dawning of a new day, and with it a new creation, because the sun has risen, and the Son has risen.

Holy Saturday is a hiatus, almost as if history has come to a juddering halt, unable to move on beyond the chasm that has split the universe, and time itself. All being holds its breath during an interval where nothing is happening because the worst has happened; the One "without whom nothing that exists was made", is himself dead.

Herbert's treatment of Jesus' in the tomb is entirely based on the metaphor of stone; the cold hard stone on which Christ lay and which in its enormity sealed the tomb closed to keep his body in; and the cold hard human heart which has no space even for the body of Christ, and is sealed even more tightly to keep the Saviour out. The metaphor is heightened by the verb "thrown", which is taking a liberty with the Gospel text in which Jesus body is treated with tenderness and care, wrapped with loving hands and laid in the tomb.  

But the fate of Jesus in human hands remains for Herbert the story of the one who had nowhere to lay his head, who was born outside because there was no room at the inn, and who was "despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." For Herbert that grief is deepened immeasurably by human indifference to the love of the one crucified for sins. The second and third stanzas compare human hearts with enough accommodation for any amount of sins, but none for Jesus, and the hard, newly hewn rock tomb which gives Jesus rest.

Mid-ministry Jesus was nearly stoned for what he taught, and now it is stone, not any human heart, that gives him the hospitality of space. The image changes again to the law written on stone, and God's great purpose to inscribe his law on human hearts; but there is no heart available or receptive enough to absorb the ink of God's love letter. 

The last stanza begins with the likeliehood that Christ's death has been in vain. As he lies in the tomb, throughout the long hours of Good Friday evening, the whole day of Saturday, and into the early hours of Sunday, Jesus is between a rock and a hard place. If human hearts stay closed, hard, sealed from the inside, what then of the one who died for the sins of the world? 

The human heart which gives lodging to morally foul and spiritually fatal sins, is no fit place for the one who bore and "taketh away the sins of the world". So having rejected the Saviour each human heart becomes its own sepulchre, a place of perishing. Except. "But that nothing can, though it be cold, hard foul, from loving man withhold thee."

This is Romans 8.38: "nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Even the best intentioned Christian heart gives living space to sin, forgets the love that died to take away sin, is at times impervious to the law of love God would write on the heart. The miracle of Holy Saturday is this; the sepulchre in which Jesus lay does not entomb the love of God, still less can human hearts defeat a love that is eternal in duration and determined in redemptive purpose.

'The Sacrifice' is Herbert's longest poem. (See below at the end of this post for a link to the full text of the poem)

The Sacrifice is the only poem in The Temple in which Christ is the speaker. The reader or hearer is directly addressed by Christ, who tells his story as the unfolding drama of redemption from the perspective of the Crucified.

The utter self-giving that is the sacrifice of the cross is narrated, described and impressed on the reader, by a relentless tone of grief internalised in the heart of the Saviour whose heartbeat thuds in the rhythms of sixty three stanzas in iambic pentameter. The effect is cumulative, " with five short-longs or light-heavies to every line. This Latin metre gives his monologue a solemn and insistent monotony like a tolling bell, rounded off by the three iambics of the refrain." (Drury, 8) 

The voice of Christ is profoundly ironic throughout. The unthinkable has to be thought, the impossible is taking place, the one who is human suffers beyond the scale of human experience and the one who is divine dies. The insistent use of the first person singular is inescapable; the refrain reminds the reader that unspeakable anguish, inconsolable sorrow, infinite suffering and eternal loss are fully owned by the God who in Christ is reconciling the world to himself.

"Was ever grief like mine?" is a rhetorical question intended to jolt the reader into awareness. This grief and suffering has no legal, moral or judicial justification. It is planned and inflicted by human structures, institutions and spiritual wickedness in high places as all the political, religious and legal powers are unleashed. The Passion of Jesus is the ultimate human rebellion against God, the crucifying of love, the rejection of the hands of reconciliation by nailing them down, once and for all.

Only twice in sixty three verses does that refrain change,"Was ever grief like mine?" Throughout it expects the answer No. When it comes to the cry of dereliction in stanza 54, the change brings the poem to a stuttering failure of rhythm, as the whole universe faces the existential threat of God's all but unbearable anguish at human sin, and God suffers God-forsakenness as "Being begins to die":

But, O my God, my God! why leav’st thou me,
The sonne, in whom thou dost delight to be?
My God, my God ——
                           Never was grief like mine.

The poem falters, and only picks up again when Christ answers his own question, "Never was grief like mine." The answer to the question asked throughout the poem, is answered by the one who has relentlessly asked it, and the answer is torn from a soul tormented beyond human comprehension, and, perhaps, beyond even divine articulation.

The only other time the refrain is changed is the last verse. The long winding road is almost ended; from Gethsemane to Caiaphas, from Pilate to the via dolorosa, from the Cyrenian's help to the soldiers' nails and dice and sour wine, from crucifixion to abandonment and anguished speech. And now the final word:

But now I die; now all is finished.
My wo, mans weal: and now I bow my head.
Onely let others say, when I am dead,
                            Never was grief like mine.

Herbert's long poem is like a slowly unfolding commentary on the stations of the cross. I have long thought that on Good Friday, it could be performed in its entirety, read in the tones of lamentation. (See below for a link to the full text of the poem).Of course, the refrain comes from Lamentations 1.12: ^"Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger."

Herbert echoes the heartbroken sense of futility, wasted suffering, human desolation and bewildered anguish of those sitting in Jerusalem devastated, stripped of life, disfigured beyond recognition. And the tragedy is deepened beyond belief by the fact that there are those who pass by unmoved, who live their own lives as if all this had not happened, or who are too busy with their own priorities to even notice the Crucified God. 

If you take the time to read Herbert's version of the Passion, put into the mouth of the suffering Christ, you will begin to feel the cumulative power of the question asked of every bystander, and which stands as the opening of this great poem:

Oh all ye, who passe by, whose eyes and minde
To worldly things are sharp, but to me blinde;
To me, who took eyes that I might you finde:
                                 Was ever grief like mine?

(The image is a studio study of one of the Stations of the Cross, by my friend, Alexander Stoddart. This and two others in my study, form a triptych of the Crucifixion.)

(You can find the full text of The Sacrifice here)

               

                   Judgement

Almighty Judge, how shall poor wretches brook
                          Thy dreadful look,
Able a heart of iron to appal,
                          When thou shalt call
For ev'ry man's peculiar book?

What others mean to do, I know not well;
                         Yet I hear tell,
That some will turn thee to some leaves therein
                         So void of sin,
That they in merit shall excel.

But I resolve, when thou shalt call for mine,
                        That to decline,
And thrust a Testament into thy hand:
                        Let that be scanned.
There thou shalt find my faults are thine.

In three rapid fire stanzas Herbert dares to imagine his survival of a face to face encounter with the Almighty judge. Acknowledging up front in the poem, that each person is a poor wretch who has no defences against the dreadful look and apalling scrutiny, he knows there is no escape from the final reckoning. 

"Ev'ry man's peculiar book' is a familiar metaphor for the story of a human life. Deeds and words, thoughts and motives, achievements and failures, all the twisted turnings of relationships, chosen paths and culpable evasions, all are recorded as evidence of how a life has been lived. Each person has their own peculiar, particular, unique and personally written story.

But what to do? There are shameful sins and chosen wrongs, evil inclinations and toxic thoughts, persistence in known wrong and evasions of responsibility for what we ought to have owned as our fault, our true and deliberate fault. By this time Herbert should be terrified, but instead he takes time to speculate about how others will survive God's judgement. 

The middle stanza is a 17th Century Protestant critique of the Catholic doctrine of merit. Here and there in the book are pages of moral and spiritual achievement, whole days when no sin is recorded. These are evidence of good intent, of genuine effort, that the heart is in the right place. Herbert's criticism is in the irony "so void of sin that they in merit shall excel." In this verse the Reformation cry, "not of works lest any man should boast" is made doubly effective by its mere statement without explicitly argued contradiction.

Instead Herbert tells of his own intended strategy. The last verse is either irreverent presumption or it is blessed assurance. Indeed, in Calvinist theology one of the greatest spiritual dilemmas is the basis of assurance. What it is that gives certainty of faith to the Christian soul that on the day of judgement, they will survive the all seeing scrutiny of Almighty God. 

Herbert is so assured of acquittal and acceptance that he will "thrust" a Testament into God's hand, like a good defence lawyer throwing incontrovertible evidence of innocence on the table of the court for the Judge to read. Actually, in full flow now, Herbert even tells the Judge what to do – "Let that be scanned." Test it, weigh it, receive it as final proof – of what? Not of Herbert's innocence, but of something else.

"There thou shalt find my faults are thine." We are thrust into the mystery of sin and forgiveness, of guilt and righteousness, and the Testament has much to say about that in the court of God's judgement. "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Cor 5.21)  Herbert is with Paul when it comes to assurance on the day of Judgement: "That I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith." (Phil. 3.8-9)

There is something outrageous about the curt "my sins are thine." In four words Herbert condenses an entire atonement theology of substitution, the righteous dying for the unrighteous, the life given a ransom for many, being redeemed by the precious blood of Christ. The line between fully embraced forgiveness and assurance, and complacent contentment that all shall be well, is sometimes finely drawn. "There thou shalt find my sins are thine" comes close to crossing it, in its triumphant thrusting in God's face, the evidence of God's sacrificial love in the gift and death of his Son, for the world's sin, Herbert's sins, and ours.