No Condemnation

Haiku responding to Rom 8:1-11

No condemnation

now for those who are in Christ;

freed through the Spirit.

The Spirit of life

in Christ Jesus sets you free

from the law of death.

God has done what Law,

made weak through damaged flesh, was

unable to do.

God sent his own Son

in the guise of sinful flesh

to straighten out sin.

Law has been sorted

for us. We walk not as flesh,

we live through Spirit.

Those who live by flesh

are focused on flesh; the flesh

is the way of death.

Live by the Spirit!

Think upon the Spirit; this

leads to life and peace.

The mind set on flesh

is hostile to God; such as

these cannot please God.

You are not of flesh.

Since God's Spirit dwells in you

you're in the Spirit.

Without the Spirit

we do not belong to Christ.

But Christ is in you

The body is dead

because of sin; the Spirit

gives life, makes righteous.

God who raised Jesus

from death, gives your bodies life,

gives you his Spirit.

© Ken Rookes 2026

Who will rescue me?

 Haiku responding to Romans 7: 15 - 25

I don't understand

myself, struggle to do good;

I do things I hate.

I struggle under

law, no longer in control.

The sin in me rules.

In my fleshly self

there is no good. I want good

but I can't do it.

I don't do the good;

don't want to do the evil

I end up doing.

I cannot escape

the sin that dwells within me;

as if it's a law.

In my inmost self

I delight in God's law, but

my mind keeps losing.

I am a captive

of the law of sin that dwells

and rules my members.

I feel so wretched!

This body of death grips tight;

who will rescue me?

Yes! It is Jesus

Christ our Lord who rescues me!

I give thanks to God!

© Ken Rookes 2026

God's free gift

Haiku responding to Rom 6:12-23

So don't let sin rule

your bodies. Sinful desires

are to be refused.

Bring yourselves to God

as people who have been brought

from death's realm to life.

Sin has no power

o'er you; you're not under law,

you live under grace.

What then, should we sin

because being under grace,

we're not under law?

You were slaves to sin,

now, through the gospel, you are

slaves to righteousness.

Present your members

as slaves to righteousness, and

become sanctified.

When you were sin's slaves

you produced no useful fruits;

death became your end.

You've been freed from sin;

slaves of God, holy, destined

for eternal life.

Sin's wages are death.

God's free gift is life that's true,

through Jesus, our Lord.

© Ken Rookes 2026

Alive in Christ

Haiku responding to Romans 6: 1-11

What then shall we say?

Shall we continue to sin

so that grace may grow?

That would be stupid!

How can we who died to sin

keep living in it?

Don't you grasp the fact:

being baptised into Christ,

we share in his death?

We're buried with Christ

through baptism; just as he

was raised, we are too.

We share his new life.

Joined into his death, we'll join

in his risen life.

Our old selves are dead,

including our sinfulness;

we're set free from sin.

If we died with Christ

we will also live with him;

death has lost its hold!

Consider yourselves

dead to sin, and made alive

to God through Jesus.

© Ken Rookes 2026

All of us

 

Haiku responding to Rom 5:12-19

Because all have sinned.

Not just Adam, all of us

are destined for death.

Sin was before law,

but is not counted as sin

before there was law.

Death was always here.

Even righteous people died;

from Adam onward.

God's free gift is life.

Grace came to us through Jesus,

one man, for many.

God's grace through Jesus

brings forgiveness, righteousness;

death no longer reigns.

From one man's tresspass

death reigned; through one's righteousness,

life for everyone!

One man disobeyed:

we share in his sin; one man

obeyed, we're made right!

(Original sin?

There is no need for Adam;

we do it ourselves.)

Don't remain angry

 

Don’t remain angry

Haiku of realisation and repentance

You’re elusive, God,

time you made your presence felt,

made the mountains quake!

Make a big display,

cause the nations to tremble;

make them take notice.

No God except you

has ever been seen or heard

throughout the ages.

Those who wait for God

find themselves in God’s presence;

they do what is right.

We made you angry

when we sinned. We were unclean;

and you hid yourself.

Our righteous deeds, they

are nothing, they cling to us

like a filthy cloth.

We fade, like a leaf.

Cut off from you, the wind blows

us away. We die.

You are our Father,

the potter who shapes our lives;

your hand has made us.

Don’t remain angry,

Lord, or remember our sins;

we are your people.

© Ken Rookes 2023

Even in the church

Haiku of restoration.

Words on Jesus’ lips:

how the church should respond to

sinful behaviour.

We all make mistakes

do the wrong thing, hurt others;

needing forgiveness.

Even in the church

we fall short. How to react,

that is the challenge.

Save embarrassment

with a quiet word, hoping

to be reconciled.

Everybody

doesn’t want to sort things out.

Do the best you can.

If you get nowhere

don’t sweat on it. Let them go,

but don’t stop hoping.

He is surely here

in the grace and forgiveness,

as the gathering.

© Ken Rookes 2020

the odor of sanctity

"There is almost nothing worse in the world than religious people who think they are holier or better or less sinful than other people. I love the limerick which says, “The power of hell is strongest when the odor of sanctity creates the smell.” Yes, the odor of sanctity does stink.

Martin Luther said a similar thing when he wrote:  “O Lord, deliver me from Christian churches with nothing but Christian saints in them. I want to remain in and be part of a church which is a little flock of faint-hearted people, weak people, who know and feel their sin, their poverty, their misery, and they believe in the forgiveness of God.” 

 That is what Luther wanted. Nothing about colorful programs. Nothing about great music. Nothing about great preaching. What Martin Luther wanted to be part of community which had faint hearted and weak people who know and feel their basic humanity. Luther wanted to be part of a real family, a Christian family, a small family that cared for each other.

I like the following definition of a church. “The church is somewhat like Noah’s ark. If it were not for the storm outside, you couldn’t stand the smell inside.” That is true. There is that smell to the church. The church stinks. This is what Jesus was talking about in our reading from Matthew today. Who are the ones who are invited to this wonderful party God is throwing? It is a bunch of ratbags from the streets. It is us.

The church is a family of imperfect people who help each other mature in love."

 http://www.sermonsfromseattle.com/series_a_the_church.htm

It's about community

"As much as I may not like what feels like an inherent legalism in this pericope -- and, truth be told, in much of Matthew -- when I get over this bias and read the passage carefully I realize that Matthew's deep concern in this passage and in so many other places is community -- honest-to-goodness, authentic Christian community. And the two things I've discovered time and again about community is 1) we all say we want it and 2) we usually have no idea how difficult it is to come by.

Community, after all, is one of those feel-good words that draw us into idealisms -- we imagine a place where you're accepted for who you are, where you're never lonely, and where, of course, everyone knows your name. But the really difficult thing about community is that it's made up of people! And people -- not you and me, of course, but most people -- can be difficult, challenging, selfish, and unreliable. Which means that usually when we're daydreaming about community we're often prompted to do so because we don't particularly like the people -- i.e., the community! -- we're currently a part of.....

To get even more succinct, I'd put it this way: Authentic community is hard to come by. It's work. But it's worth it. Because when you find it, it's like discovering a little bit of heaven on earth; that is, it's like experiencing the reality of God's communal fellowship and existence in your midst. And, as Jesus promises, when you gather in this way -- with honesty and integrity, even when it's hard -- amazing things can happen because Jesus is with you, right there, in your very midst, forming and being formed by your communal sharing."

http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=1601

Weeds

© Ken Rookes 2014 

Weeds

It is too neat; this allegory-parable

of judgement, burning weeds and

the furnaces of hell.

It purports to be the words

of the itinerant teacher called Jesus.

Perhaps it is;

doesn’t make it right, though.

Does that shock you?

Feel free to pray for my soul

if it makes you feel better.

Too neat;

feeding the smug self-righteousness

of those who know themselves to be on the inside.

We are all weeds; we are all wheat.

There is no inside,

there is no outside.

We are the causes of sin,

we are the evildoers,

and yet it is not always so,

need not always be so.

May the righteous indeed shine like the sun;

let us all be reborn into truth.

And let the children of the kingdom

shine with love, with humility,

with justice and with grace.

When did sin become so important to Christians???

When did sin become so important to Christians? When did we think that all that mattered to God was whether we were pure according to certain moral standards? When did we get the impression that God only loved us when we were obedient to certain sets of laws?

From the beginning of the Hebrew Scripture, we are presented with the conflicting understandings of God. One understanding is of a distant, fearsome God who we must obey or suffer the consequent punishment. The other is an ever-present God of grace who wants the best for each person and encourages love and life.

Towards the end of his life, Paul told the Corinthians that they were dead to sin. We died to sin when we were baptised. And just as Christ was raised after his death, we too, have been raised to walk in new life. Our resurrection life is like that of Christ. We are no longer slaves to sin. We are free from sin. We have been freed from sin to live with Christ. The death Jesus died, he died to sin, once and for all. So we must consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus Christ. [Romans 6:5-11] But do we or are we trapped into thinking of ourselves primarily as sinners and that this is all that matters to God?

We are already saved from sin. We are not wretched sinners as the writer of the hymn “Amazing Grace” would have us believe. We are no longer slaves to the Law. We are free to live and move and have our being in God in relationship with God of love, justice and grace. We are free to consider for ourselves how our decisions will impact others and whether therefore we should behave one way or another. We have a more mature relationship with God who has faith in us to do what is good for everyone concerned. In doing so, we become less judgemental of others and ourselves.

Rev Julianne Parker 

(full sermon in sermon section)

losing ourselves in the dance

"Essentially, Matthew is saying, the law was always meant to be about the heart. But, it’s easier to make it about the rules. It’s easier to get it into the head, to check the rules off on a list, and to keep it all clean and simple. It’s easy to make the law about technicalities. But, Jesus, is calling for people to allow the law to become what it was meant to be – a song to sing and improvise around, a rhythm to dance to, and see where it leads, an indication of the notes that lead us into the magic of the music. This is what it means for Jesus to fulfil the law (Matthew 5:17). He moves it beyond technicalities, beyond the head alone, beyond checklists and turns it into a doorway to life, an invitation to encounter God, and a completely alternative way of being that liberates and celebrates and welcomes. The law, for Jesus, is not so much about punishing wrong as it is about strengthening our innate capacity to bring life – to do what is right. It’s about going beyond the steps and losing ourselves in the dance.
http://sacredise.com/blog/?p=980

For I do not do the good I want.

The confessional apostle

presents us with a candid view

of his struggles; of his continuing battle

with what he calls the flesh.

Aware of his failures

to the point of despair, but not quite;

he turns his pain into a celebration

of the grace revealed in his Lord.

The apostle does what so many have done

in the two millennia that have elapsed

since he wrote his letters;

he exaggerates his depravity

in order to make larger the grace,

forgetting that his Lord’s generosity

already has no limits.

I remember, in my youth, hearing stories

of people whose alcohol-plagued

and morally-degraded lives

were miraculously turned around

in testimony to the gospel;

and momentarily wishing that I, too,

could speak of such a gutter-to-glory

transformation. But grace

is proven in many ways; our humanness

is always a number of notches less than perfect,

and each one of us depends

upon the generosity of others,

including our strange God.

It is unnecessary to imagine

that we are worse than we are,

and it is foolishness to pretend

that, of ourselves, we can do nothing right.

Grace still abounds, and we should celebrate

kind and loving acts wherever we find them,

whether or not they are done consciously

in the service of God.

© 2011 Ken Rookes