Holy Saturday is about emptiness. Empty hope and an apparently empty future. An empty cross and that looming emptiness we know as bereavement. Words like disillusion, aftermath, undone, waste, hiatus, paralysis, unreality, each lacks precision for that confusion that faces a future certain only of not knowing, of not knowing how, and not knowing why.

Chris has captured something of the bewildering ambiguity of the great heart cry of Christ, "It is finished", in her Good Friday reflection posted yesterday. Particularly the unreality of that which was finally and irrevocably real in the death of Jesus, and the brute fact not only of crucifixion, but of a cross now empty. Today's passion poetry can be read there, and thanks Chris for a powerful evocation of that liminal time between Good Friday, Holy Saturday and what comes after, and what it might have felt like to not know, and to disbelieve for grief.

Salvator Mundi: Via Crucis

Maybe He looked indeed
much as Rembrandt envisioned Him
in those small heads that seem in fact
portraits of more than a model.
A dark, still young, very intelligent face,
a soul-mirror gaze of deep understanding, unjudging.
That face, in extremis, would have clenched its teeth
in a grimace not shown in even the great crucifixions.
The burden of humanness (I begin to see) exacted from Him
that He taste also the humiliation of dread,
cold sweat of wanting to let the whole thing go,
like any mortal hero out of his depth,
like anyone who has taken a step too far
and wants herself back.
The painters, even the greatest, don't show how,
in the midnight Garden,
or staggering uphill under the weight of the Cross,
He went through with even the human longing
to simply cease, to not be.
Not torture of body,
not the hideous betrayals humans commit
nor the faithless weakness of friends, and surely
not the anticipation of death (not even, in agony's grip)
was Incarnation's heaviest weight,
but this sickened desire to renege,
to step back from what He, Who was God,
had promised Himself, and had entered
time and flesh to enact.
Sublime acceptance, to be absolute, had to have welled
up from those depths where purpose
drifted for mortal moments.
(Denise Levertov, New selected Poems, Bloodaxe, 2002, page 182)

One of the most important contributions to Western theology made by Jurgen Moltmann's seminal The Crucified God, was to recover confidence in the theology of the cross as a way of understanding the inner relations of love in the life of the Triune God, and to explore the nature of divine self-surrender through the experience of Jesus as God revealed in human flesh. The incarnation as an historic event, and as occasion for the outgoing redemptive love of God to a creation fallen, finite yet the object of eternal purpose and infinite love, opened for Moltmann and subsequent theological explorations, a rich seam of reflection on the nature of divine and human suffering. And in various occasions of reflection in his work, Moltmann takes with reverent seriousness and theological courage, the far reaches of meaning in the great cry of dereliction. The God-forsakenness of Jesus has its deepest echo in the heart of the Father, amplified by the Spirit, and borne as unutterable anguish constrained to the human words, "My God, why have you forsaken me?"

In his autobiography, A Broad Place, Moltmann tells of his experiences as a young soldier, the God forsakenness of young men cowering under air attack, and witnessing comrades shattered into oblivion before their eyes as bombs rained from the darkness. Such personal anguish can never be irrelevant to the developments of later theological reflection. In a border village in Austria is a beautiful modern church we visited some years ago while on a walking holiday. At the entrance is placed a War Memorial Plaque, in black marble, with a young soldier cradling his dying comrade. And in German the same words that are on countless similar plaques in British churches, "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

Good Friday is a complex intersection of emotion, memory, past pain, heightened awareness of loss, and for people of faith the puzzle we dare not try to solve, the holy enigma of God's broken heart, the tear of separation that signals ultimate bereavement, the grief of God. What makes it Good Friday is the love that is revealed yet mysterious, infinite yet personal, pushed to the utter limits of endurance, yet not giving in to

this sickened desire to renege,
to step back from what He, Who was God,
had promised Himself, and had entered
time and flesh to enact.

Levertov displays profound theological insight into the psychological anguish created by uncertainty, as inner resolve seems shattered by physical agony, and yet from somewhere deep in the truth of who God is, final purpose perseveres, "enduring the cross, despising the shame". Few poems idenytify with such precision, exactly what John meant when he said, "For God so loved the world….".

Brian Wren is a provocative, imaginative and at times controversial hymn writer. Several of his hymns have a secure place within my personal canon, and one of them (Lord God your love has called us here) is amongst the very best communion hymns extant. His book, What Language Shall I Borrow manages to argue for gender inclusive language, and for non hierarchical images of God, with cogency, passion, informed theological reflection and at times a noticeable impatience, even resentment at resistance to experimentation with metaphor, image and vocabulary. In Wren's hymns God is the Holy Weaver, deftly intertwining; the Dancer, the Sending One, the Wild One, the Storm of Love, the God who changes place.

He is also unafraid of hymns that have political and ethical edge rooted in the Gospel story, and fuelled by the abrasive protests and angry compassion of the prophets. Interestingly Wren's D PHil is on the Hebrew prophets and he has degrees in Modern Language and in Theology – a fair tool kit of disciplines, ideas and sources which he exploits again and again in hymns that enable worshippers to sing about such scandals as child labour, racist violence, economic tyranny, life shattering loss, aching grief and most of the bad stuff in the news. But it is always juxtaposed with Gospel, with what God is about in a creation so in need of redemption that God takes matters into his own hands to heal, to make new, to begin again….and again.

Holy week, and the events that led inexorably but purposefully to the cross, are frequent themes on which he writes with a fresh understanding of our understandable human recoil from such incomprehensible suffering for love's sake. The first two stanzas of his poem 'Hope against hope', is a condensed theology of the cross, replete with pastoral intent. It's a good example of Wren's approach

Here hangs a man discarded,

A scarecrow hoisted high,

A nonsense pointing nowhere

To all who hurry by

Can such a clown of sorrows

Still bring a useful word

Where faith and love seem phantoms

And every hope absurd.

The following hymn is more political, contemporary, but no less insistent on radical Christian protest, and the importance of saying "No!".

The hymn is a frank recognition that peace at any price can never be an option for those who understand the meaning of incarnation, atonement and resurrection – for God, and for the world. In other words the Gospel Story is indeed about peace at any price – the cross even redeems our search for peace, saving us from those short cuts that merely prolong injustice by ignoring the actual cost. Holy Week sets out the timetable of Jesus last days, when again and again, he said no to peace, in order to say yes, and so bring peace.

Say No to Peace!

Say "No" to peace
if what they mean by peace
is the quiet misery of hunger,
the frozen stillness of fear,
the silence of broken spirits,
the unborn hopes of the oppressed.

Tell them that peace
is the shouting of children at play,
the babble of tongues set free,
the thunder of dancing feet,
and a father's voice singing.

Say "No" to peace,
if what they mean by peace
is a rampart of gleaming missiles,
the arming of distant wars,
money at ease in its castle,
and grateful poor at the gate.

Tell them that peace
is the hauling down of flags,
the forging of guns into ploughs,
the giving of fields to the landless,
and hunger a fading dream.

Brian Wren.

Easter, then, isn’t about eggs, bunnies, pastel coloured cards and half
full churches. It’s about peace rooted in reconciliation, hope that grows out
of justice, and faith that radiates new possibility in a world where Jesus is
Risen. The resurrection of Jesus wasn’t just God’s last minute equaliser in the
ultimate power contest. The resurrection of Jesus is God saying no today to any
peace built on injustice and the suffering of others. Easter is God’s promise
of life contradicting death, love overcoming hate, and peace won through costly
reconciliation. Easter is God's yes to peace.

I was standing in the rain on a Saturday afternoon in Law Village, Lanarkshire. I was 17 years of age. I had just for the first time told the story of how I had met Jesus a couple of weeks earlier – I gave my testimony, told how my story and the Gospel story coincided. And how those two stories intersected in an encounter between a confused and uncertain teenager and One who offered gift and demand, and all the risks attendant on making life meaningful. I had written it all out carefully with a Woolworth's cheap fountain pen, in royal blue ink – and it was raining. The paper was sodden, the ink had run, my words illegible, and I was left with a battery powered megaphone to tell anyone who was listening that Jesus had changed my life, that he had died for me and I had now given my life to Him. I gave testimony – in the rain – without notes, and with a heart thumping from either terror or joy, and probably both.

I was with several other Christians, including two Faith Mission pilgrims. In the 1960's Faith Mission Pilgrims provided a first-hand opportunity to encounter experiential Evangelicalism in which evangelism was primary and the approach utterly anti-cultural in its oddity. Those wonderful people lived for evangelism, and tried to live by the Gospel, and at the time I met them I regarded them with awe and a puzzled admiration. They asked me to tell others what the Lord had done for me. So I did.

That afternoon I handed the megaphone back to Margaret (whose large wide-margin RSV Bible I still have, cherish and use, as the gift she later passed on when I started training for ministry), and Margaret decided it was time to sing. Now in those days Law Village wasn't a place where many people sang in the streets on a Saturday afternoon – late Saturday night, yes, but not a wet and windy weekend 2.o'clock ad hoc Gospel sing song, with accordion and solo female voice. The song and its singing acted like a spiritual seal on what I'd tried to say, and what I so deeply felt but hadn't discovered the words and ideas to fully grasp.

The words weren't the best poetry in the world – and Margaret wasn't the best singer in the world, and didn't claim to be. But this Holy Week, in honour of Faith Mission Pilgrims like Margaret, whose courage and resilience remains for me an inspiration, I wanted to recall those words. And to recall too that first act of public testimony from a converted teenager. That the song also happens to have been one of my mother's favourites, simply makes it more poignant, and gives it even deeper inner resonances. I've long reserved space for sentimental verse and song as an essential element in a balanced diet of spiritual health foods! Not all hymns need to be good poetry – sometimes it's enough that they are genuine prayers. And this was prayer, pure, simple and to the point, when Margaret sang it that dreich Saturday afternoon.

Lead Me to Calvary

King of my life, I crown Thee now,
Thine shalt the glory be;
Lest I forget Thy thorn crowned brow,
Lead me to Calvary.

Refrain

Lest I forget Gethsemane,
Lest I forget Thine agony;
Lest I forget Thy love for me,
Lead me to Calvary.

Show me the tomb where Thou wast laid,
Tenderly mourned and wept;
Angels in robes of light arrayed
Guarded Thee whilst Thou slept.

Refrain

Let me like Mary, through the gloom,
Come with a gift to Thee;
Show to me now the empty tomb,
Lead me to Calvary.

Refrain

May I be willing, Lord, to bear
Daily my cross for Thee;
Even Thy cup of grief to share,
Thou hast borne all for me.

Michelle Mitchell, charity director for Age Concern and Help the Aged,
said: "Attitudes to older people are stuck in the past, the care and
support system for older people is on the brink of collapse and older
people's experiences of isolation and exclusion have largely been
ignored by successive governments." This quote comes from this report on life getting worse for the elderly.

So much for Robert browning's Victorian optimism a century and a half later and 60 years after the Beveridge Report!

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God:
see all, nor be afraid!"

Obviously Browning's optimism about encroaching old age isn't shared by everyone. In a society in which the average age is rising, and where the increasing number of elderly people is now spoken of as a looming care crisis, ours isn't a culture in which old age is revered, and the care of elderly people a priority. And in our culture priority is far too often preceded by the dread word "funding" – care of the elderly as a "funding priority" is an almost quaint thought for many.

Sunday night I watched The Secret Millionaire. Leaving aside the quite complex ethical questions about being an undercover millionaire, like the fairytale of the prince who becomes a pauper in order to understand the struggles of the poor, last night as I watched, a collision of values took place in my head. A couple, weeks away from their 50th wedding anniversary, now live in one room of their house. For eight years the woman has been diagnosed with and suffered from Alzheimer's disease, and her husband now cares for her in an increasingly constricted life for both. The local charity that gives respite, and allows the man a few hours a week with his pals may have to cut the service for lack of funding. A cheque for £10,000 keeps it going for another year. The wee calculator in my head (it works with both figures and ethics) didn't take long to go ping. You could fund 70 charities like that every year to that amount for the equivalent of a recently early retired bank CEO's annual pension.

The value we put on human life, its quality and dignity, and the crucial question of how we care as a community, is just as tough a test of a government's credibility, as rescuing financial institutions addicted to greed. Sure, economic efficiency, fiscal revenue, GNP, financial stability, lending liquidity, consumer confidence, and a catena of other phrases from the Revised Financial Liturgy have necessary reference to the economic realities of our globalised markets. But long before the credit crunch the disturbing question was being asked, how we fund community care into an expensive future, both financially and with sufficient resources of human compassion and dignity. That question is now both urgent and defining of what matters most when the chips are down – to use the ugly phrase, how important is "the bottom line" when the choices get hard.

Holy week is a good time to ask questions about what we do when we encounter bottom line choices. How will we deal with the vulnerable anxieties, the life choices open to those whose purchasing powers have gone, the essential compassions of support, resources and friendship that enable carers to go on caring? When will we insist on a revision of what constitutes "the bottom line"? Because that is what Holy Week does – it reconfigures all priorities, God reads the bottom line, and pays it.

Reflecting on what it means to grow older, Christina Rossetti's poem touches on the ambiguity of blessing that's hidden in the experience of growing older. To retain a sense of value, meaning, fundamental worthwhileness beyond mere usefulness, she thought herself into a different future. Whatever else eternal life is, both now and then, it is about renewed life, restored hope, the affirmed value of what it means to be, what it means to die into God and thus to live forever in Christ – who comes, and comes again.
 

If I might only love my God and die!
But now He bids me love Him and live on,
Now when the bloom of all my life is gone,
The pleasant half of life has quite gone by.
My tree of hope is lopped that spread so high,
And I forget how summer glowed and shone,
While autumn grips me with its fingers wan
And frets me with its fitful windy sigh.
When autumn passes then must winter numb,
And winter may not pass a weary while,
But when it passes spring shall flower again;
And in that spring who weepeth now shall smile,
Yea, they shall wax who now are on the wane,
Yea, they shall sing for love when Christ shall come.

In Elizabeth Jennings' Collected Poems, this "Prayer for Holy Week" comes after a profound reflection on human pain – that is, pain inflicted on humans by humans. It is followed by a poem on the human experience of love's struggle, the sense that love can't last but we trust it can. And in between, this poem "Prayer for Holy Week". Whatever else this week is about, it is about pain and love's struggle – the pain and struggle of God to redeem and reconcile, to heal and renew, to love with a persistence both eternal and infinite. Yet at the same time, indeed at one specific historic point in time, that inexhaustible love surrendered to crucifixion, which far from being love's negation, became love's divine fulfilment.

This prayer is also about the struggle we all have, to love as Christ loves, with Christ's energy, with Christ's vision of a poor world. And perhaps the most we can pray is in that modest but incalulably costly concession -"I'll try to do / What you need".  And the poem ends with Gospel not law – "I trust your energy. / Share it then with me."  Jennings remains in the top several of those poets whose work informs both my understanding of Christian existence, and my awareness of personal limitation as pre-requisite of divine grace.
 
Prayer for Holy Week

Love me in my willingness to suffer
Love me in the gifts I wish to offer
          Teach me how you love and have to die
                    And I will try

Somehow to forget myself and give
Life and joy so dead things start to live.
          Let me show now an untrammelled joy,
                   Gold without alloy.

You know I have no cross but want to learn,
How to change and to the poor world turn.
          I can almost worship stars and moon
                  And the sun at noon

But when I'm low I only beg you to
Ask me anything, I'll try to do
          What you need. I trust your energy.
                  Share it then with me.

Post Script. The Sculpture.

The wonderful sculpture which illustrates this post is by Lyn Constable Maxwell. It was commisioned in 1994 and is titled ‘The Crucified and Risen Christ’. It adorns All Saints Pastoral Centre, London Colney – and it is hard to envisage a more appropriate symbol than that of Christ in suffering and in sustaining and life-giving grace. You can visit Lyn Maxwell's website here. Look at her present commission on the Staions of the Cross. Beautiful.

This is one of my favourite wee books. Bound in soft green leather and published late 19th Century by Nelson of Edinburgh, it often goes in my pocket if I'm away and want to have something of substance to browse. The devotional poetry of the 17th Century is a theologically enriched vein of prayerful reflection. To be sure there are extravagances and conceits, and an impression of overdone cleverness and overwrought emotions. But much of that is because we live in a wildly different age, when we are likely to balk at the language of devotional intimacy and intensity, even when it is written in beautiful cadences and theological precision laden with metaphysical depth. We prefer the contemporary praise song with all its………………………(please fill in as appropriate).

But poets like George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, John Donne, Robert Herrick, Richard Crashaw, wrote their verse with devout seriousness and intensely stoked religious affections. And they wrote out of an instinctive sense of the soul's dependence on God, and with an unflinching honesty about human fallenness enountered by a love both infinite and holy. Leading up to Holy Week I'm going to post a 17th Century poem a day, offering a brief comment which alongside the poem, you can take or leave – but please take the poem. I'm leaving this one with its original spelling and punctuation – so all you incurable correctors of errant apostrophes, take it up with Herrick!

Gods boundlesse mercy is, to sinfull man,
Like to the ever wealthy ocean:
Which though it sends forth thousand streams, 'tis n'ere
Known,or els seen to be the emptier:
And though it takes all in, 'tis yet no more
Full, and fild-full, then when full-fild before.