May 23, 2012
Holy Fire
In fire the LORD came down, and awe
Engulfed the people, flesh and blood and bone.
And then His prophet waited for the Law
To be inscribed upon the brittle stone.
And they, though called His kingdom and His priests,
Could not ascend to Sinai’s lofty peak.
And so they stayed and danced among the feasts,
Forsaking covenant, a new god they did seek.
But Moses interceded for their crimes,
And they were spared from death in ancient times.
In latter days in one accord they prayed,
Christ’s faithful servants, gathered at His will.
So waiting for His promised gift, they stayed.
By now they knew His Word He would fulfill.
Though He was gone, His bride was not alone,
He sent God’s mighty breath for comfort kind,
Gave hearts of flesh in place of brittle stone,
Inscribed the Law upon their heart and mind.
With fire the Spirit of the LORD made them
A living sacrifice, and holy unto Him.
Copyright © 2012 by Teresa Roberts Johnson (All rights reserved)
Finished on the Wednesday of Ascensiontide, May 23, 2012
Like this:
May 22, 2012
Ascensiontide
In the days of the eleven,
Huddled hope looks toward tomorrow
From the waiting room of heaven
And the sting of new-felt sorrow.
Never getting back what was,
Not yet knowing what will be,
All their work was placed on pause
For a time of wait and see.
Barely able now to breathe,
Scared they’ll miss the promised One.
Watching, praying fervently
For the Breath of Life to come. . .
Copyright © 2012 by Teresa Roberts Johnson (All rights reserved)
I’ll fill in the discussion later, but the idea for this poem was born during the sermon I heard on the Sunday after Ascension. The ending ellipse looks toward Pentecost.
April 15, 2012
Peter’s Sermon
based on Acts 3:12-36
Heinous crime, to kill life’s Author,
But His life could not stay dead.
Yet His rising did not threaten
Those whose thorns had pierced His head.
With forgiveness freely offered
Messiah’s foes become His friends
As they turn from their rebellion,
Being cleansed from all their sins.
While they wait the restoration
Of the undecaying earth,
Blessings flow from Abraham’s Offspring,
To all nations through new birth.
In the paradox of Heaven,
Life has swallowed up the grave,
And the Son has borne dishonor
For the profit of the slave.
Copyright © 2012 by Teresa Roberts Johnson (All rights reserved)
This poem was based on the first reading in today’s liturgy. I love the way Acts 3 pulls together so many threads from the Scriptures to present the Gospel of Jesus Christ to those who should have been expecting Him and who should have recognized what He had to do. Their cries of “Hosanna!” (Save now!) turned into “Crucify Him!” not because they recognized that He would have to die in order for them to live but because they were done with Him. They wanted success as the world defines it, and He did not have political power or earthly riches to offer them. The greatest ingratitude of all was the rejection of Jesus Christ, who was Immanuel, God with us. Political power is a pale substitute for the presence of God Almighty!
The picture that St. Peter draws of his listeners as the ones who purposely forfeited the life of their Messiah so that the murderer could go free is very powerful. Hearing that and knowing that He has risen from the grave might have caused some to panic. What if He wanted revenge? But Jesus Christ has two ways of dealing with His enemies. Those who repent are no longer His enemies but His friends. But as St. Peter warns, anyone who fails to heed the word of Christ will be cut off from His people (Acts 3:23).
April 7, 2012
Enough
Though God had said the rest would be enough,
Eve saw the tempting tree and ate.
Since then, the banished world has in its wilderness
Craved food that cannot satiate.
We ask, “Can God provide?” while looking past
His never-ending banquet store.
Though nothing good is kept from those He loves,
Our wanton appetites seek more.
So choosing husks instead of manna sweet,
We sift through garbage greedily.
While heaven rains its good and costly gifts,
We barter, yet the feast is free.
Preferring pottage to the perfect Lamb,
We seek the now and miss the great I AM.
Copyright © 2012 by Teresa Roberts Johnson (All rights reserved)
The readings for Maundy Thursday inspired this poem. I’ve written much about the Fall of mankind, and specifically Eve’s part in it, but her act is only the beginning of a long line of ungrateful acts, whereby the fallen heart of man considers all that God has given and pronounces it “Not Enough.” The word rest in the first line deliberately squints. On the one hand, it means that everything else in Eden—all the rest—was freely given to mankind, yet it seemed not to be enough. But the other meaning of the word rest is also at play here. Although Adam and Eve were always intended to work, their initial state would have involved such profitable labor that it would have seemed to be rest when compared with the consequences of rebellion. For both Adam and Eve, God’s rest was traded for difficulty and pain. That is why Jesus offers rest for our souls, rest from sin and rest from sin’s effects.
But the actual reading that started the thought process for this poem was Psalm 78:17-25, which is a commentary on the days that the Israelites spent in the wilderness. God had provided everything they needed, including freedom, and He had done so in an amazing way. Yet their response was not gratitude but bad attitude:
And they sinned yet more against him by provoking the most High in the wilderness.And they tempted God in their heart by asking meat for their lust. Yea, they spake against God; they said, “Can God furnish a table in the wilderness? Behold, he smote the rock, that the waters gushed out, and the streams overflowed; can he give bread also?” (Psalm 78:19-20)
Audacity! And yet, if we admit it, that is our response to God’s gifts all too often. God shall supply all our needs, but we doubt His goodness. Like the prodigal son, we leave the father’s fold, where there is always enough, and we waste our days in riotous living. Like Esau, we trade our birthright for a bowl of stew. Because we refuse to be grateful for enough, we are the disturbers of our own peace. Paradoxically, we may seek lesser things forever, but if we seek outside Christ, whatever we find can never be enough.
Can He give us bread enough? He gives us Himself. He is enough. I think I’ve said that before. It’s still true.
I try very hard to focus on the liturgy and sermon during worship, but when my mind is captivated by a word or phrase in the readings, I have to jot down enough of it to return to the thought later and finish it. As a result, my bulletins are sometimes very messy. So a few lines of this poem were written during the Maundy Thursday service, but the poem did not take its full form until about 6 a.m. on Good Friday. A blessed Eastertide to all.
March 21, 2012
The Miracle of the Loaves
The hillside, covered with the hungry host
Who had walked far into the wilderness,
Was glad to lift its eyes and bless
Its Maker as He blessed the barley loaves.
The young old Adam offered all he brought
But found it insufficient for the mass.
Mere loaves and fish are not a meal that lasts.
For man craves food that is not sold and bought.
But taking this small offering from the earth
Our Lord invoked the Spirit’s life and breath.
His Bread invites us to a holy death,
Yet in this death His people find new birth.
Then after every pilgrim had his fill,
They gleaned twelve baskets of the table crumbs:
Now to this feast the hungry world yet comes,
And Gentile folk eat from those baskets still.
Copyright © 2012 by Teresa Roberts Johnson (All rights reserved)
The miracle of the loaves and fishes is vastly underrated now as it was then. In Mark 6, the sequence of events is given as this: Jesus shows His dominion over the material world by feeding the multitudes. He sends His disciples away in a boat while He goes into a mountain to pray. The disciples are tossed about by the material elements of wind and water. Jesus walks out on the water and calms the winds because He has dominion over the material world. The disciples, who have been an integral part of the feeding of the multitud, become agitated because they think the figure walking on the water is a ghost (non-material). Mark 6:52 indicts their fear as follows:
For they considered not the miracle of the loaves: for their heart was hardened.
It is no coincidence that the next event recorded is that of Jesus healing the sick, again showing again that He has dominion over the material world. The prayer that He taught His disciples was being lived out. He was demonstrating how His Kingdom would come on earth as it is in heaven, where His will is perfectly carried out. The invasion of earth by heaven does not negate the material world but rather blesses and restores it.
But so what? And what connection does that concept have with this poem? The Eucharistic liturgy also demonstrates our Lord’s dominion over the material world, represented by the bread and wine, as well as by those who consume them. In a sense, every Eucharist is a creation and an incarnation, and it is most certainly the evidence of unity between God and His people, and by extension, of God’s people with each other. The first line of the poem, which refers to the people as a “host” reflects not only that there were many of them but also that God’s people ARE one bread and one body becauase we partake that one Bread (I Corinthians 10:17). The entire first verse personifies the hillside (to represent all of the created order) as blessing our Lord because He saves not only the souls of mankind but also restores all of creation.
This poem was started in my head during the sermon on Sunday (March 18) and I’ve worked on it every morning since then. The final pieces fell in place today, March 21, which also happens to be the Feast of Archbishop Cranmer. I was told in seminary that Cranmer died for the sake of the words from the eucharistic liturgy which appear in bold italic below:
Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on him in your heart by faith with thanksgiving.
The Eucharist, as with Creation and the Incarnation, is where heaven meets earth, where the breath of life combines with the dust of the earth.
March 5, 2012
Thy Kingdom Come!
Thy kingdom, God, is strange indeed:
By Your Son’s death the slave is freed;
No more a slave, but Your own child,
Adopted from the raging wild.
But once a child, a servant too,
To wait the table set by You.
And You the Host and You the Bread,
And You the Firstfruit from the dead.
But not just child or servant, we
Are soldiers marching joyfully,
Enduring hardship in the fray
For God and kingdom, and the day
When pain and tears shall be no more
And we, with You, reign evermore.
Copyright © 2012 by Teresa Roberts Johnson (All rights reserved)
No wonder the Kingdom of God is a stumblingblock for those who are not a part of it! From an earthly standpoint, these things don’t make sense. Those who are not children of God believe that they are the ones who are free, while all the time they are slaves to sin. And we who have been freed are invited to take up our cross and to take on the yoke of Christ and to do battle, using the sword of the Spirit.
But the thought that kept running through my head this week was that as soldiers of the cross, we are promised a share in the kingdom for which we fight. Our battles are not endured for the sake of a despot but for our own heritage in the glorious kingdom of God, at whose right hand there are pleasures forevermore.
If that doesn’t raise your courage level, I’m not sure what will.
February 28, 2012
The Thicket and the Ram
When Father Abraham was called to kill his son,
He walked on faith up to Moriah’s lonely height.
With Isaac at his side, their three-day journey done,
They had tools of death, without a sacrifice in sight.
His back bowed down with wood, the faithful son inquired
About his father’s failure to provide a ram.
The answer was that God would give what He required,
For Abraham’s hope was resting in the great I AM.
He raised the knife to his own soul, his promised child,
But then the Angel of the Lord called out to stay his hand.
That Angel was the ram, who would for sinners be reviled
And thus increase the house of Abraham as grains of sand.
Oh, Father God, whose loving providence ordained
Your Son to climb the lonely hill and be nailed down.
He is the Lamb of God for Abraham’s children slain.
Your ram, caught in the thicket of the thorny crown.
Copyright © 2012 by Teresa Roberts Johnson (All rights reserved)
This poem is primarily taken from the account in Genesis 22. As the poem presents a narrative of sorts, it reaches deeper to find the details that we sometimes miss in reading the Scripture, if we read it hurriedly. It is important that Abraham and Isaac walked three days, for that period of time is connected with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In Hebrews 11:17-19, we read:
By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, Of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure.
Abraham’s hope lay in the God who had called him and had always been faithful. And God did not disappoint. On that day, He provided both the thicket and the ram, as evidence that He would in the fullness of time provide a Substitute to take away the sins of the world. Although the term I AM was given to Moses and not to Abraham, I have used it here because the I AM has always been the I AM. The benefit of our vantage point is that we see a fuller picture than either of those fathers of the faith.
There are echoes of Jesus from the very beginning of the poem, but the first line of the third verse begins a conscious shift from Isaac the potential sacrifice to Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. No doubt those who have read the book of Luke will see the parallel that is drawn between Abraham and the Virgin Mary, whose own soul was pierced by the sacrifice of her beloved Son.
One of the most significant details in the account of Abraham was that it was the Angel of the Lord, the Old Testament manifestation of the Second Person of the Trinity, who stopped Abraham’s hand with His Word. The One who would suffer for our sakes is the One who prevented Isaac’s death, and who invites us to partake of His life.
This was written today. I have been meditating on the image of the ram in the thicket for a few days now, but until I returned to Genesis 22, I had not made all of the connections that are (I hope) evident in the poem.
Like this:
February 21, 2012
Since 1979
Unwashed, unshriven, and unbent,
We eat and drink, and then are sent
Out into the world to go in peace.
Unsatisfied, we leave the feast
With no true sense of our own sin
Or of the Christ who died for men.
Teach us, O Christ, that Thou art Lord.
Be to us Body, Blood, and Word.
Then send us out prepared for war,
With sin and self to daily spar.
That dying, we may live anew
To rise, then fall, in worship true.
Copyright © 2012 by Teresa Roberts Johnson (All rights reserved)
I was talking with a friend last night about the subtle and the glaring differences between the REC BCP and the 1979 BCP of the Episcopal Church. Needless to say, I prefer the REC book. There is no point in belaboring the problems with the 1979 book; others have done an extensive job of that and much better than I could. I will only say that I could never trust a book that purports to give me the traditional collects, while having “cleansed” them of any trace of gender-specific language.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the word “men” was chosen on purpose and is placed almost exactly in the middle of the poem. It is my small way of thumbing my nose at the “gender-inclusive” language that pervades both the 1979 BCP and the 1982 Hymnal. One egregious example is found in my favorite Christmas hymn is “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.”
The original version makes the bold assertion that our Lord Jesus Christ was “born that man no more may die, born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth.” That is an important truth, and it echoes Biblical language. The estate of being mankind has nothing to do with gender inclusiveness or lack thereof, and the very clear statement that MAN, the creature who was made in the image of God and then fell, is now reconciled with God is, in sophisticated theological terms, a really big deal. The change that was made in this beautiful hymn from specific words to the plural pronouns “we” and “us” has taken the very heart of the Gospel and watered it down with lukewarm water that is worth nothing else but to be spat out.
If it is offensive to sing the following, then let me be found offending every day of my life:
Well might the sun in darkness hide
And shut his glories in,
When Christ, the mighty Maker, died
For MAN the creature’s sin.
Hallelujah, what a Savior!
May your Lent be filled with the joy of Christ as you are emptied of sin and self.
Written on January 5, 2008, during the breaks in Liturgics class. I re-wrote two lines tonight to strengthen the concept of spiritual warfare.
February 17, 2012
Psalm 63 Revisited
O god, you are my god and my Maker;
You have set your Mark upon me.
Because my soul thirsts and my flesh aches
For you, Samuel’s strength and Adam’s shield,
Early Times and often do I seek you.
What care I if water can’t be found?
For Daniel’s Comfort in the den
Is spirit of consuming Fire, Water of life.
Each time I drink of your glorious power
My mouth shall praise you with joyful lips.
O god—for you are my god—
Beam down on me the glow of your Light;
Smother me in the shadow of your wings.
Copyright © 2012 by Teresa Roberts Johnson (All rights reserved)
Anyone who has ever battled addiction or who has had a family member in this situation is painfully aware that the addict has chosen a god other than his Creator. To allow ourselves to be controlled by anything other than the Holy Spirit of God is a violation of the first commandment.
I Am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me. (Exodus 20:2-3)
Those who have been redeemed have been brought out of bondage to the evil one, the one who only seeks to destroy us. Even Satan’s plot against us is not about us. It is part of his larger strategy of opposing whatever God desires. We are only his pawns, his slaves. Why on earth would we willingly leave the safety of the arms of Jesus, who frees us to be what we were created to be and who desires only what is best for us, in time and eternity? Why would we willingly return to be controlled by one whose only desire is to make us a slave?
And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed. (John 8:35-37)
Please understand that this poem is not a tirade against alcohol itself, but against allowing it or anything else on this earth to take the place of God in our lives. There is no future in being Satan’s slave. The only ones with a future are the faithful children of God. By God’s grace, be free.
February 12, 2012
Weaker Vessel
Call me thus if it reminds you
God did not intend for me to bear
All weight of world or church or marriage,
Full heat of battle, toil, and care.
But say it not if in so doing
You scorn my gifts and mock my mind.
For I who’ve labored long beside you
Should not be slighted or maligned.
Where weaker is, there must be stronger.
So gird yourself with Christ to meet the fight,
And in this battle with the world, beside me
Keep vigil, and defend me with His might.
Copyright © 2012 by Teresa Roberts Johnson (All rights reserved)
I offer this poem as a counter-cultural challenge as we approach St. Valentine’s Day, a time at which the word love is plastered everywhere. But never was any word used so often with so little understanding. One reason the Church is ineffective in the spread of the Gospel is that the very basic teachings of I Corinthians 13 and Ephesians 5 and 6 are ignored in our lives. Too often, homes which should be inhabited by godly families are instead occupied by independent contractors who see family life as a zero-sum game and therefore compete with each other for attention, wealth, and authority. No one wants to do the hard work of dying to self in order to do the will of God, or the necessary work of treasuring others more than self.
To paraphrase Mark 8:36, what does it profit you to gain the whole world and lose your family? Love—true love, godly love—understands the nature of the battle and is willing to do what it takes to obey God, who is Love. When we are obedient to Him, we lose only that which should be lost.
Life is destined to be a battle. The wise man or woman recognizes that if we spend all our time fighting each other or failing to show each other proper honor, we will lose the important battle: the life-and-death struggle against the world, the flesh, and the devil. How much energy we waste on frivolous things, all the while losing sight of eternity! May God help us. More important, may God help all children who must grow up in such a battlefield.
The original version of this poem was written on 4 June 2002. This revision, completed 7 July 2007, removed reference to a concept to which I no longer subscribe. The choice of words, a turn of phrase, may be so close to the truth that it seems acceptable, yet carry the seeds of destruction. Sometimes the worst lies are couched in noble-sounding words. That is why we must be ever vigilant.
