Nothing else; only love.

 

Haiku of the essence

The new commandment:

as ancient as time itself,

as new as the dawn.

In love, self-giving,

in sacrifice and in death

God’s glory is found.

My children, shortly

I will be gone. You will search,

but you won’t find me.

Where I am going

you are not able to come.

I give you one rule.

Love one another,

in the same way that I love

you, you are to love.

One thing, nothing else;

by your love you will be known

as my disciples.

Being ruled by love

will be proof that you are mine.

Nothing else, just love.

© Ken Rookes 2022

Impressed

Haiku for those who are close

The scribe was impressed;

this itinerant teacher

is clearly no fool.

An honest question:

Which, of all the commandments,

is the first of all?

One: Hear, Israel,

the Lord God, is one. Love God

with all your being.

Wait, there’s a second!

Your love for God becomes real

in loving others.

As you love yourself,

so you must love your neighbour.

It’s all about love.

Great answer, Jesus.

To love completely, this is

the way to true life.

No burnt offering

or sacrifice can compare

with the work of love.

The scribe understands!

Jesus speaks: You are not far,

from the realm of God.

© Ken Rookes 2021

 

The lawyer's question

Haiku for heroes

The lawyer’s question;

a test of orthodoxy,

unconcerned for truth.

What does the law say?

Love God and love your neighbour.

Now that’s a big ask!

The lawyer wants rules

to define loving’s limits.

Which ones must I love?

A Samaritan,

much despised, is made hero

in Jesus’ story.

Maligned foreigners,

and other ratbags, become

heroes through their love.

The Samaritan

is Muslim, refugee, and

other suspect folk

Unlikely heroes

confront our own shortcomings.

Best discard this tale.

The lawyer concedes

Yes, love is the way to life,

true and eternal.

Here alone is life!

Like Jesus told the Lawyer:

Go and do the same!

© Ken Rookes 2019

Abide in my love

Basic commandments for disciples.

The Father loves me,

and so, my friends, I love you;

abide in my love.

Keep my commandments.

By doing so you will dwell

in my gen’rous love.

The upshot of love

is joy, wond’rous and complete.

This joy shall be yours.

As I have loved you

so you must love each other.

This I command you.

To lay down one’s life

for the sake of one’s comrades:

love at its greatest.

You are all my friends,

nothing is withheld from you;

ev’rything is yours.

I have chosen you;

go and create fruits of love,

bear the fruits that last

Love one another.

Get this commandment sorted,

the rest will follow.

© Ken Rookes 2018

The first

Top commandment,

number one.

Call it the golden rule,

if you like.

Love your neighbour

as you love yourself.

Treat others with respect

and dignity.

Try to feel their pain,

Jesus says.

Your enemies, too;

love them.

Nothing else, really;

the other rules pale,

insignificant by comparison.

Love God,

love your neighbour.

Heart, soul, mind and strength.

No, not easy;

costly, sometimes.

Often. But no,

there is nothing else.

Determined, defiant, deliberate,

love.

© Ken Rookes 2015

Do this thing

At the centre of the story

is love. Nothing else.

A commandment,

said to be new.
Do this thing.
Right there at its core;
always has been, will be.
There, from its beginning,
and when it comes to its brutal end.
Which, at this point in the story, is not far off;
but perhaps it’s not really the end.
This love finds its greatest expression,
we are told, in sacrifice;
in spending oneself for others,
for those embraced as friends.


Love the same way the master does;
a rule for disciples
and all who come after.
Be courageous; do this thing,
and turn it into the fruit that endures.

© Ken Rookes 2015

The greatest commandment

Any religion;

whichever myths have inspired it,

no matter how it connects its members

with divine spirit,

whatever its claims,

however it patterns its ritual

or intones its worship;

is an empty shell

if it fails to draw from its adherents

lives of creative generosity.

In the writings of a breakaway group

named for its reluctant founder;

the plethora of commandments

in the Hebrew scriptures

surrender their ground

to a pair.

The carpenter from Nazareth

spoke often of divine agape,

the source of all that is good and true.

His listeners were invited

to make their own fruitful responses,

to share the love.

He calls this costly agape stuff

the greatest of fruits,

and enacts it at every opportunity.

Love, along with her precious siblings;

generosity, forgiveness, peace, tears and hope,

provide the means, he assures us,

by which the planet,

along with its diverse and wonderful creatures,

will find life.

© Ken Rookes 2014

Commandment

 

A new telling

from the lips of one

who is himself a new telling.
A word, a message unexpected,
a love-letter declaration of commitment
and embrace from above.
A new telling by which the man calls his friends
to generosity and joyous sacrifice.
“You’ve heard it said,” he sometimes taught,
“But now I’m telling you. . .
Now I’m telling you
that if you’re going to stay my friends
then you will have to look a bit ridiculous,
you have to love,
you have to give.”
A new telling,
to up-end creation
re-fashion human relationships
and make the powers shudder.
A new telling; unexpected and difficult,
but then, he’s not asking you to do anything
that he wouldn’t do himself.
To make the point even more inescapable,
the teller stretches out his arms,
writes the word on the parchment of his skin,
and underlines it with his blood.
 

© Ken Rookes

Mandate

Mandates are much claimed by politicians,

who will make the most obscure policy

into a democratically driven demand;
when it suits them.
Jesus left only one mandate,
the new instruction,
a rule to live by;
it is no command of convenience.
Four letters. The word staggers
and stumbles, limping
through the centuries
having been often laid aside,
and subject to multiple levels of abuse
by the self assured and righteous.
Still it persists, emerging defiantly
to confront and confound
whenever the servant-man’s story is told
A mandate for disciples,
a call to love
coming from one who lays down his life.
One hardly needs to be reminded
of its uncomfortable implications.
“By this the world will know that you follow me,”
he says, having completed his servant task
with towel and basin of water.
By this! By his impractical command
all who come after him are expected to be known.
They stroke their chins in bewilderment,
while we, centuries on, echo their puzzlement:
couldn’t we just have a badge
or a tee-shirt or something?
 
 
©Ken Rookes

Your neighbour as yourself

We all heard the reports and the rumours.

It seems he was from Nazareth,

“Centre of intellectual enquiry

and religious education,”

we had joked among ourselves.

We went down together,

to the temple precinct, to see for ourselves.

We weren’t the only ones.

Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians,

and fellow scribes

keen to bring him down a notch or two.

My colleagues entered the fray

with great enthusiasm, but I stood back.

I watched, I listened.

I was impressed.

Amid the grunts and snorts of all the scoffers

he spoke confidently, with passion,

and seemed concerned for the truth.

After the others had finished,

and retreated, muttering,

to devise new riddles,

I stepped forward, and respectfully asked

him to name the greatest commandment.

He quoted two laws about love;

of our duty to God and to neighbour.

I heard the candour in his voice;

saw the joy in his eyes.

I smiled. We talked,

nodding our heads in agreement;

and he told me I was close

to God’s kingdom. I smiled again,

and let him have the last word.

I wasn’t looking for,

didn’t need his seal of approval,

but I took it.

© Ken Rookes 2012

Only one thing

Too much smug,

ticket-to-heaven thinking,

(I nearly called it theology),

in the fundamentalist roots

that many of us share. But,

says gospel-writer John

and those who appropriated his name

in later letters, there is only one thing

by which we are made friends

of Jesus.

If the proof is in the eating,

then the fruits are surely

in the doing, the listening,

and the obeying of the commandment.

The agápē word was spoken often

and enacted on more than one occasion

by the man who embodies

self-giving, generosity and compassion.

This utterance at the centre

of his living,

and translated into our language,

has become so tired

that I am reluctant to employ it.

Made a cliché,

the word spills effortlessly

from undiscerning lips,

and only occasionally finds expression

through committed hands

and outraged hearts.

But, it seems to me,

this one thing alone causes God,

(however she is conceived),

to smile;

only one thing.

© Ken Rookes 2012

Those who love me will keep my word

Before everything else he was a teacher,
bearing a word that came
from somewhere unexpected;
where the divine light is piercing and bright
and causes good people to blink
and to avert their eyes.
The word sparked disturbingly,
wildly illuminating the polite mores
of an increasingly rude world,
whose own most treasured words
had grown ugly and self-centred.
In the hands of the Teacher the word
glowed true and confident, and his friends,
in time, did learn to look upon it.
But now that the Teacher has left them
their only thought is to find for it
a worthy and acceptable repository.
They manage to procure a suitable plinth,
where they install securely the wondrous word
and draw curtains of safety around it.
Then, plating him with silver,
they proceed to burnish the teacher’s memory,
pledging their undying devotion,
and honouring him as their Lord;
making sure, as they do so,
that the safety curtains remain reliably in place.