Abide

 Haiku of love

Make my joy complete

by keeping my commandments;

abide in my love.

You will know my joy

when love is allowed to rule.

Grace, forgiveness, love.

You, too, are to love

as Jesus loves each of us.

Love, costly and true.

No love is greater

than that which offers itself

for the sake of friends.

Servants no longer!

When you do what I command,

you become my friends.

I have no secrets

from you. All God has shown me

I make known to you.

Go and bear much fruit.

Enduring fruit, born of love,

as God’s own children.

© Ken Rookes 2021

Another Vineyard

Haiku of fruitfulness

Another vineyard

story. This time tenants, rent,

paying what is due.

How much is Jesus;

how much from gospel writers

offering hindsight?

One more parable.

Aspects of allegory;

who represents what?

Shades of Isaiah’s

vineyard producing wild grapes.

But the fruit is good!

Heaps of violence

as the greedy and corrupt

execute their plan.

The son, too, is killed.

Our thoughts are led to the end

of Jesus’ story.

Judgement takes its place

at centre-stage. The warning:

produce kingdom fruits.

You who were the first

to receive grace, from you much

will be expected.

If you won’t bear fruit

you’ve moved outside the kingdom.

Others will enter.

Priests and Pharisees

heard the penny drop that day;

these words were for them

© Ken Rookes 2020 

The true vine

Haiku for bearing fruit

I am the true vine.

Rural metaphors abound,

call us to bear fruit.

God the vine-grower,

keen to get a good harvest;

pruning the branches.

Painful metaphor

this pruning stuff. Us branches

were not consulted.

You received my words,

they have made you clean, worthy

to receive my life

Jesus, the true vine;

here is life, discipleship;

the important things.

We would bear good fruit,

creating love, forgiveness;

reshaping the world.

Become one with him,

find true life joined to the vine;

accept the pruning.

Choose to live in me,

he said, together we will ,

bear love’s precious fruit.

© Ken Rookes 2018

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

Came looking

Came looking

God the failed gardener;
sleeves rolled up,
hands roughened and calloused
from clearing the stones
and building them into walls and tower.
Blistered with digging and hoeing,
skin darkened from all the pruning
and all the sun,
came looking;
but the vineyard is unfruitful.

Came looking
among the empty branches;
among the fear and the voting
and the credit cards,
among the accumulators, the manipulators
and the gate-keepers
among the networks and the systems
and the tent-cities,
among the indices and the vaults
and the shock-jocks,
among the editorials and the card-gamers
and the judgement-sitters,
among the candidates and the slogans
and the low denominators,
among the investors and the magnates
and the number-gatherers,
among the light-thieves, the chance-dealers
and the hope-stealers.
Came looking.

God, the failed gardener
came looking
among the sad empty branches
for some generosity, some love
and some mercy;
but the vineyard is unfruitful.

© Ken Rookes 2013