Tag Archives: walkingwithjesus

Falling Fire

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This sonnet is based on Acts 2:1-13 and the Holy Spirit’s coming at Pentecost which the church will celebrate this coming Sunday. Pentecost seems to be an under-realized holy day in the church. One it seems, cannot trust to rely on anyone relegated to “spirit” status. Nevertheless, the Holy Spirit is the gift which the Father gives without begrudging (Luke 11:13). Shouldn’t we ask for the river of the water of life to well up in us to spilling over? Sounds messy, I guess. But better that kind of mess than the powerless wasting and vacuum of self-concern, eh?

Happy Pentecost! Come Holy Spirit, come!

Suddenly, like a mighty, rushing wind,
Love fell upon us as fire and flame,
Winding and binding, empowering to send
Us to the nations proclaiming his Name.
The exalted Name, above all others,
The only Name by which one may be saved
Whose salvation unites, makes enemies brothers
Whose dying gives life, frees the enslaved.

Light and Life, the crystal river flowing,
Effulgence, increase, pours out, spills over,
Enwraps, enfolds, breath of life, breeze blowing,
Love welling up, beloved and lover.
Falling fire in tongues, Babel’s blather breaks
With word of the Word whose voice Kadesh shakes.

© Randall Edwards 2017.
This poem 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: Jean Restout le jeune (1692–1768) Oil on canvas 1732.

Legion

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This sonnet is based on the following passages which tell of the healing of the Gerasene demoniac from Mark 5:1-20, Luke 8:26-39, and Matthew 8:28-34. Jesus, having delivered the disciples from the terror of the night storm, arrives on the other side of the Sea of Galilee and is confronted by a demoniac who roams naked among the tombs of his people. The story of the demoniac’s ruin, isolation, and degradation is particularly desperate and sad. His neighbors have given up on either helping or managing the demoniac in his ravings, and he himself is as good as dead, living naked among the tombs. A question provoked by this event is, can there be hope when there is no hope…when one has been given over to demons and death?

Long since, I left my people and my home
Who had long since quit, given up on me
To dwell in undwelling, midst death and bone
Among these tombs by the Galilee.
When he came, I rushed, was all in a rage;
As he called them out, rebuked the unclean,
His call I thought, was back into the cage;
Leave me alone! Don’t look! Leave me unseen!

What if we would step out, wait, let him speak;
Let him see our hearts, untie the twisted;
Be bold yet humble, use strength to be weak?
What if in peace, we could just sit and listen?
What if Power came in Peace with Affection
To bring news of coming resurrection?

© Randy Edwards 2019.
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: James Tissot (French, 1836-1902). The Swine Driven into the Sea (Les porcs précipités dans la mer), 1886-1896. Opaque watercolor over graphite on gray wove paper, Image: 10 3/16 x 6 11/16 in. (25.9 x 17 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Purchased by public subscription, 00.159.107 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 00.159.107_PS1.jpg)

Waking to Our Fear

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This sonnet is based on Mark 4:35-41 when the disciples and Jesus cross the Sea of Galilee and are caught in a storm. What I imagine confounds the disciples, is that even though he delivers the disciples from the storm he seems indifferent to the threat (these sorts of storms happened and these seasoned fisherman knew it). Even so, Jesus leads them out. Having led them into probable trial, not only does Jesus leave the tiller untended, he falls asleep at the wheel.

At the end of Jesus’ ministry, I wonder how the disciples imagined Jesus’ crucifixion and burial played into the plan of God’s bringing peace? Did he always intend to lead them into the storm? Or did he do so that he might rise when all hope seemed lost and speak, ‘Peace!”

It was because you wanted to that we
Started for the other side that evening–
Crossing at night Galilee’s fitful sea
When the cool of Mt Hermon comes beating.

And as we’d seen a hundred times before:
You lose when caught in the night-storm’s billow;
Reeling in fear, we pulled and pushed to shore
While you slept sound on the tiller’s pillow.

And shouting, Lord! Don’t you care if we die?
We did as you asked! Ignored our warnings!
Waking to our fear, he spoke to the sky
Which fell still as a spring Sunday morning.

Who are you that into the storm you lead
Permitting despair, that your friends be freed?

© Randy Edwards 2016
This sonnet is for Christ’s church and is included my collection of poems, Walking with Jesus. 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: Gustave Dore

Suddenly He Comes

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Rise and shine, campers, the Lord has suddenly come to his Temple!

February 2 is Candlemas and is the fortieth day after the church celebrates the birth of Jesus. The event is recorded in Luke 2:22-38, and recounts when Jesus was presented at the Temple in Jerusalem and his parents paid the redemption price for a firstborn son (Leviticus 12).

In the United States, the significance of the Lord’s sudden appearing as promised in Malachi 3:1-3 is either lost or ignored much as Jesus was by those in Jerusalem in his day. Instead, on February 2, we mark Groundhog’s Day imagined to be the half way point between the first day of winter and the first day of spring.

Borne in arms to his house as a pilgrim
The Anointed who’ll bear our salvation;
Redeemer redeemed with two young pigeons
For the desire and wealth of the nations.

Suddenly, he comes to those who waited,
The refiner’s fire, promised fuller’s soap;
Simeon and Anna, made young again
Seeing Israel’s consolation and hope.

Lord, in the light of Candlemas I see
In the heart of my own mid-winter way
You gave your wealth, to become poor for me
That I might be young and long for the Day
When the sudden shaking of your revealing
Dashes the proud, but the poor and pierced, healing.

© Randy Edwards 2018.
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: Saint Simeon with the Christ child. 2014. Oil on canvas. 90×70. Artist A.N. Mironov
By Andrey Mironov (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

Goodness Reached Out

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This sonnet is from my chapbook collection of poems inspired by the Gospels and is entitled Walking with Jesus. This sonnet is based on Mark 3:1-6 and Luke 6:6-11 when Jesus enters the synagogue and heals the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath.

I sat there each Sabbath in that same place
Pitied and lonely with my withered arm;
Friends couldn’t even look me in the face
For them a reason of subtle alarm
That Providence’s purpose and pleasure
Is not easily read or understood:
Why not all judged with the same measure?
Why the wicked thrive though doing no good?

But goodness reached out on this Sabbath day,
Freed me from power’s weighty, with’ring yoke
His question left them with nothing to say
He worked with a word. He healed when he spoke.
To what length will this rabbi stretch out to take,
The broken in arm whom the powerful forsake?

© 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.