Palm Sunday

Posted on April 5, 2017 by randamir

This sonnet is for Palm Sunday and serves as both a part of a series for Lent entitled, Ashes to Eternity (which is an art exhibit) and is also a part of a series of Sunday sermon passages from the Gospel of Luke entitled Walking with Jesus. The sonnet is based upon Jesus’s Triumphal Entry in Jerusalem as recorded Luke 19:28-40.

In this sonnet I try and capture both the expectation of what he will do over the course of the next week, but also touch on the irony of what will actually happen.

If it is helpful you may listen to me read the sonnet via the player below.

Time’s Fullness comes to Jerusalem
Midst the throng of waving palms and praise;
“Son of David!” we all cry in unison
Beholding our king, our hosannas raise!
This is the sudden coming, the long-awaited hour —
Riding on a donkey’s colt, bearing our salvation;
No longer secret, now wielding his power,
In this display of prophecy, he unites a nation.
Now is the fullness; now, the expectation.
The rumor becomes real, promise becomes plan;
Our enemies, shall kneel, shall see the revelation,
Lift up the King of kings, exalt the Son of Man.
Who could not Hosannas bring, not welcome his renown?
Who seeing would disown him, deny to him his crown?

© Randy Edwards 2017.
This sonnet is for Christ’s church. If it is helpful, please feel free to copy or reprint in church bulletins, read aloud, or repost. I only ask that an attribution be cited to myself (Randall Edwards) and this blog (backwardmutters.com). Thanks.

Artwork: Albrecht Dürer, Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, probably c. 1509/1510. woodcut

Wilderness

Posted on March 18, 2017 by randamir

This is a sonnet from a series I am doing as a part of a collaborative effort with artists: Asher McClain and Jennifer Edwards entitled Ashes to Eternity. Each Sunday through Lent, the three of us are installing a piece which corresponds to a weekly theme. These themes of Lent and Easter are: ashes, baptism, wilderness, temptation, pilgrimage, palm, love, rent, and resurrection. The installations include a poem which I am contributing, a wood burning which denotes the theme by Asher McClain, and an abstract tapestry weaving by Jennifer Edwards.

This week’s theme is “wilderness”, and I’ve written a sonnet for it. In this poem, I imagine our own wanderings in places of isolation and difficulty in the way in which the Israelites wandered in the desert. We do not willingly choose the wilderness, but it is thrust upon us. In the wilderness, that for which we desire and long is oftentimes frustrated or delayed, and we must come to surrender to the confession, “Thy will be done.”

In the sonnet I make use of a play on the words: “wild”, “willed”, “would”, and “wold”. I can’t quite explain it, but I continue to be captivated by George Herbert’s uses of the same which in his day could have been spelled the same and read as interchangeable because spelling had not been codified. Malcolm Guite comments masterfully about Herbert’s poem, The Pilgrimage” in his Lenten devotional, Word in the Wilderness.

Our “wills” and “woulds”, those things which denote our plans, purposes, and conditions, ultimately find their exposure and surrender in the transposition of the wilderness, but thankfully we are not left there. In the wilderness, though we find our hearts laid bare, we also find that God, in Jesus Christ, has laid bare his heart for us and that his heart pours itself out in love to us.

If it is helpful, you may listen to me read the sonnet via the player below.

I was driven into this wilderness
By threat pursued. I had no other choice;
Turned out of comfort, to drink bitterness;
Stifled in silence, none hearing my voice.
I cried my willed plans there in the wild;
My tears of would littered, watered my wold;
Dejected, alone, helpless as a child,
Struggling to keep my heart from growing cold.

But Your will in this wild, I now can see
O’ershadows above as cloud and fire;
Your presence, a banner of love over me
Foretasting my thirst’s hope and desire.
For you, in the wild of my want and thirst
Brought water from a Rock, who for me was cursed.

Artwork: Francois Perrier (1590-1650) Moses draws water from the Rock, oil on canvas, 1642.

Perichoresis

Posted on March 7, 2017 by randamir

“Perichoresis” is a Trinitarian term describing the the interplay in the Godhead of mutual love and honor. It means “around” (peri-) and “move toward”(-chorein). It is oftentimes described in terms of a dance.

Dr. Timothy Keller in his book, Jesus the King, writes about perichoresis as it manifest at Jesus’ baptism in this way,

Mark is giving us a glimpse into the very heart of reality, the meaning of life, the essence of the universe. According to the Bible, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit glorify one another. Jesus says in his prayer recorded in John’s Gospel: “I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory that I had with you before the world began” (John 17:4-5). Each person of the Trinity glorifies the other.
In the words of my favorite author, C. S. Lewis, “In Christianity God is not a static thing … but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance.”

I make use of several images of the Trinity in this sonnet. The first is of the Godhead at the beginning, in creation. The second is at Jesus’ baptism, when again, the Spirit hovered over the waters, to alight on Christ (who is the Word made flesh), and the Father decrees. The third is the joy of our inclusion in that dance of love and honor reflected in sign by our own baptism.

You may read about Jesus’ baptism in Mark 1:9-11 which reads,

In those days Jesus scame from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

If it is helpful, you may listen to me read the sonnet via the player below.

Before time and light there IS, Three in One;
When darkness was not yet as darkness is;
Before stars took their place, before moon and sun,
Three danced as One in perichoresis.
From the top midst the wild world’s ruin
Chaos threatens to overcome the light
The Allemande-Three at Jordan breaks in,
“You’re my beloved in whom I delight!”
The Three’s contra dance, the world’s hall shakes;
The Father calling, pours praise from the skies.
The Spirit alights, enfolds with embrace;
As the Word steps to, with fire, baptize.
Let the Caller of Dawn in baptism call me
Gathered in the swing of the dancing Trinity.