More Than a Prophet (Mustard Seeds 9)

Ann Nadge, a poet I know, has distilled some of the posts from this blog into poetry. She has used my words verbatim, captured the essence of the post, and moulded it into a poet's vision. 

This poem consists of verbatim fragments from an original post on 5 December, 2020.

  

More than a Prophet

Prophets: those they come to save

are on the other side of the dividing line,

those who are condemned

have to make it

to the prophet’s side of the river.

A nice, easy division between

those in, those out, the good and the bad,

the blessed and the damned.

 

More than a prophet, Jesus stands apart-

His willingness to identify

with those he came to save;

Jesus’ death on the cross

to the point of godforsakenness;

His good news of the kingdom

more than dividing sheep and goats

was full of grace and truth.

 

We all have a bit of black and white

condemnation in us.

God is with us in our human failure,

not as a prophet, more than a prophet.

We are not those who have fallen

into despair or cynicism,

we live by hope

because it is God’s kingdom.

 

Grace is alive and well in the world.

Jesus is risen.

The Triple Revelation of the Cross (Mustard Seeds Poetry 5)

 Poetry by Ann Nadge, inspired by the post (April 17, 2025), The Cross of Jesus: A Reflection on Love, Judgement and Obedience (Part 2).

 

“Behold humanity!". This is what 

we do to each other, and this is what 

we have made ourselves into. Our fall is revealed in the flesh 

of one of us, Jesus Christ. 

 

This is a double revelation: 

God so loved the world 

that he sent his only Son. 

In Christ God suffers and dies 

at the hands of sinners 

to show us who and what we are. 

There is a third revelation: 

In the crucified Jesus, who dies for love, 

we see our true humanity, 

distorted humanity in his wounds. 

His wounds (the price of love) 

reveal to us the love that is 

our true calling. We are invited 

to look at the cross, the revelation 

of love and our need of God's healing love, 

to be set on the path of faith. 

 

 Look and live. We see what we are 

in the broken body of Jesus; 

we see on the cross the true 

humanity to which we are called - 

A faithful humanity, obedient 

to the loving will of God 

for the sake of others.

The Resurrection of Jesus (Mustard Seeds Poetry 4)

 Ann Nadge, a poet I know, has distilled some of the posts from this blog into poetry. She has used my words verbatim, captured the essence of the post, and moulded it into a poet's vision. This is the fourth of more to be published over the course of the year.

This poem consists of verbatim fragments from an original post on 27 April, 2008.

 

 

The Resurrection of Jesus

 

The resurrection of Jesus 

is a unique event, 

without precedent in history. 

The resurrection of Jesus 

is not to be justified 

by historical precedent, 

as though to be ordered to the past 

to gain credibility. 

 

It is the other way round – 

In the Christian scheme of things 

History is ordered to the resurrected Jesus. 

The resurrection of Jesus 

is the future come to meet us. 

The resurrection of Jesus 

is God's action in breaking us out 

of the cul-de-sac of history, 

why faith in the resurrected Christ 

is liberating.

The Death of Jesus (Mustard Seeds Poetry 3)

 Ann Nadge, a poet I know, has distilled some of the posts from this blog into poetry. She has used my words verbatim, captured the essence of the post, and moulded it into a poet's vision. This is the third of more to be published over the course of the year.

This poem consists of verbatim fragments from an original post on 31 March 2021.

 

 The Death of Jesus

At the last supper Jesus gives 

a portion of bread to his betrayer- 

Is this an act of forgiveness, 

an offering of his body? 

One can't help feel the poignancy 

the moment, Jesus' world collapsing 

and he offers the bread to Judas, 

makes his way to Gethsemane. 

 

He needs his friends as his world darkens. 

They fall asleep. 

 

"Take this cup from me ..." 

The God who has been responsive, silent. 

 

Where will this end? 

On the cross, with loud crying, lament, 

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" 

I feel our common humanity- 

know something of anguish, suffering.

Lazarus (Mustard Seeds Poetry 1)

Ann Nadge, a poet I know, has distilled some of the posts from this blog into poetry. She has used my words verbatim, captured the essence of the post, and moulded it into a poet's vision. This is the first of more to be published over the course of the year.

This poem is from an original post on 28th March 2020 that was written at the beginning of COVID-19.

 Lazarus, a figure of conversion 

life of discipleship, moves 

from life to death to a life given back. 

So too, we move deeper 

into God’s love - movement 

from life to death to a life renewed 

in daily dying and rising with Christ. 

We die to the false self, in Christ 

receive a renewed sense of self. 

Imagine Lazarus smelling the roses 

after he was raised, living the gift 

of life despite the dark times. 

We too are called to smell the roses 

for we have gained our lives, 

not lost them. 

 

Whatever cross you bear 

there is a flower on your path 

just waiting to be noticed. 

Live the gift of life given back, 

live it as the gift it is.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

Lines Composed Above Tintern Abbey

That blessed mood,
In which the burden of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened--that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,-
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul;
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.

William Wordsworth

A Hymn to God the Father

By John Donne.

Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which is my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still: though still I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.

Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin? And, made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year, or two, but wallowed in score?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.

I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by thy self, that at my death thy son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And, having done that, thou hast done,
I fear no more.

The Bright Field

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

R.S.Thomas

Journey of the Magi by T. S. Eliot

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For the journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins,
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death,
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

For The Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio (Part IV) by W. H. Auden

Part IV

CHORUS


He is the Way.
Follow Him through the Land of Unlikeness;
You will see rare beasts, and have unique adventures.

He is the Truth.
Seek Him in the Kingdom of Anxiety;
You will come to a great city that has expected your return for years.

He is the Life.
Love Him in the World of the Flesh;
And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy.


And check this out for a bit of commentary on Auden and what he was trying to achieve with this poem (and generally).

For The Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio (Part III) by W. H. Auden

Part III

Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,

Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes --

Some have got broken -- and carrying them up to the attic.

The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,

And the children got ready for school. There are enough

Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week --

Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,

Stayed up so late, attempted -- quite unsuccessfully --

To love all of our relatives, and in general

Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again

As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed

To do more than entertain it as an agreeable

Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,

Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,

The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.

The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,

And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware

Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought

Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now

Be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are,

Back in the moderate Aristotelian city

Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid's geometry

And Newton's mechanics would account for our experience,

And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.

It seems to have shrunk during the holidays. The streets

Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten

The office was as depressing as this. To those who have seen

The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,

The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.

For the innocent children who whispered so excitedly

Outside the locked door where they knew the presents to be

Grew up when it opened. Now, recollecting that moment

We can repress the joy, but the guilt remains conscious;

Remembering the stable where for once in our lives

Everything became a You and nothing was an It.

And craving the sensation but ignoring the cause,

We look round for something, no matter what, to inhibit

Our self-reflection, and the obvious thing for that purpose

Would be some great suffering. So, once we have met the Son,

We are tempted ever after to pray to the Father;

"Lead us into temptation and evil for our sake."

They will come, all right, don't worry; probably in a form

That we do not expect, and certainly with a force

More dreadful than we can imagine. In the meantime

There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair,

Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem

From insignificance. The happy morning is over,

The night of agony still to come; the time is noon:

When the Spirit must practice his scales of rejoicing

Without even a hostile audience, and the Soul endure

A silence that is neither for nor against her faith

That God's Will will be done, That, in spite of her prayers,

God will cheat no one, not even the world of its triumph.

Seven Stanzas at Easter

Make no mistake: If He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that - pierced - died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.


John Updike

Crux

by Peter Steele

Seeing you go
Where the dead are bound, and having no resource
To twist those timbers out of their lethal course,
I want at least to know

What I can say
Now that the boasts have blown away and even
The cursing has grown faint, while the pall of heaven
Abolishes the day.

I was never wise
In word or silence, never understood
The killer in my members, thought of good
At what one might devise

From scraps of evil.
How can I learn a way for me or mine
To stand beside you? Vinegar, not wine,
Is all we give you still.

Among the dice
And the dirt, with more of shame than love to show,
All that will come to heart is 'Do not go
Alone to Paradise.'

Love (III) by George Herbert

Rowan Williams says of this poem, "What more is there to say in the wake of this, the greatest Christian poem in the English language?" (Tokens of Trust, pp. 149-150.)


Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.

"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"

"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.

Where Two or Three Are Gathered

Cathedral Service

I’m only here because I wandered in

Not knowing that a service would begin,

And had to slide into the nearest pew,

Pretending it was what I’d meant to do.

The tall candles cast their frail light

Upon the priest, the choir clad in white,

The carved and polished and embroidered scene.

The congregation numbers seventeen.

And awkwardly I follow as I’m led

To kneel or stand or sing or bow my head.

Though these specific rites are strange to me,

I know their larger meaning perfectly-

The heritage of twenty centuries

Is symbolised in rituals like these,

In special modes of beauty and of grace

Enacted in a certain kind of place.

This faith, although I lack it, is my own,

Inherent to the marrow of the bone.

To this even the unbelieving mind

Submits its unbelief to be defined.

Perhaps the meagre congregation shows

How all of that is drawing to a close,

And remnants only come here to entreat

These dying flickers of the obsolete.

Yet when did this religion ever rest

On weight of numbers as the final test?

Its founder said that it was all the same

When two or three were gathered in his name.

Peter Kocan