Whose every breath

One day,
it is admittedly unlikely,
a clever archaeologist
may dig up Jesus’ bones.
This will cause much consternation,
the reports of an empty tomb being the one detail
about which the four gospel writers
are in complete agreement.
Still, the inability to locate a corpse
will never be adequate proof
of resurrection.

So, what is;
what might convince a sharp
and enquiring mind
that Jesus is truly alive?
Surely it is his disciples,
those in whom his spirit dwells;,
people who have taken deep inside themselves
his living words of generosity and forgiveness,
whose activities thoughts, attitudes, politics
and whose every breath testifies
to his undying love.

© Ken Rookes 2013

Souvenirs

They opened a souvenir stand
at the scene of the execution.
An enterprising soldier, having
embraced the government's
gambling-led economic policies,
declares: "Everyone's a winner!"
as he cuts the king's robe
into five-centimetre squares,
mounts them on pieces of parchment,
and, numbering each one,
offers them for sale to the public.

Business is slow, however,
and the soldier is forced
to offer them as a job lot
to some passing merchants.
"They'll be worth a fortune one day,"
he assures them.
The merchants raise their eyes,
but see no king;
only three criminals dying in the sun.
Unconvinced, they pass up
the opportunity.

©Ken Rookes

Why do you strike me?

He spoke his truth in places
where all could hear,
without any concern for caution.
Recklessly trusting in the God he called Father,
his courage could not be questioned,
bringing its own accusation
to those who had compromised. The voice of integrity
receives an uncertain welcome.
Truth is an expendable annoyance,
a disturbing inconvenience
for those who worship at the altars
of power, wealth and fear;
it will be dealt with.
Speaking openly and passionately
of love’s primacy, the man is unbending,
apparently unconcerned about the consequences
of his unauthorised utterances.
When finally Jesus is brought to account
he answers with the same disregard
for the opinions of his accusers.
A local walloper in the service
of the chief priests and Pharisees
feels compelled to strike him on the face
for his presumed disrespect.
Why do you strike me
when I have said nothing wrong?
he asks on his own behalf,
and perhaps for the sake of the millions of innocent
speakers of truth
in the centuries before and since.
Hold firm, Jesus,
there is worse to come.

© Ken Rookes 2013

a poem for Good Friday

To the God of the Godless

When I had tired of the wars around me

Longing for forgetfulness, the softness of arms and breasts,

I could not close my ears to the thunder of the living.

But tonight history has ceased to cry out within me.

My white flag of truce is hoisted, my arms are thrown to the ground,

My back is turned to the cannon and here I surrender.

The hunger of generations is nothing now? Nothing.

The brotherhood of heroes? The knowledge of vast constellations?

I have rejected my vision and renounced prophecy.

Love is the final quality, love and not courage.

Not the love of the Gentiles, the crucified love of disciples,

But the love of my love; it has silenced a thousand poems.

I have sought peace in war, serenity in struggle, pity in hatred.

I shall search no longer, the lights are turned down.

Only faintly, faintly, I still hear the marching step of the unborn,

Feet, feet, moving, moving.

‑ DAVID MARTIN

God gives a candle

From The Fleeing Atalanta

God gives a candle

To his children afraid of the dark

How can you die, it says

When this between you lives forever

The candle is hard to maintain

Superfluous in the light

Nearly all prefer to blow it out

But they find with night's onset

It is not so easily rekindled

Jeer if you like at my obsession with love

When dying swine, you will all reach up

Desperate trotters for the same pearl

DAVID FOSTER ‑

sitting in the Pain

The readings of Good Friday are about pain, not just Jesus’ pain. If the cross is about anything it is about the whole experience of creation’s suffering and about God entering into that suffering.

It is to me also about the silence of God, about, the death of God. If we fully enter into the experience of the disciples and followers of Jesus at this time we will find bewilderment, confusion and grief. Psalm 22 is a psalm about a person has been utterly cut off from God and the human community, yet who in the end, achieves some sense of peace. It has echoes to Jesus’ cry from the cross and in gethsemane. He is feeling so bad that he no longer defines himself as human but rather as a worm. After having complained to God that God is not be found, the thought of the psalmist turns to the history of god’s people and the promises of God and in them he finds some hope and future, despite what he feels in the present.

          Psalm 22 gives expression to the unutterable despair felt by one whom circumstances have cast completely adrift from all the reference points in life and from all other persons who lend joy and hope. There is no glimmer of divine grace, except for that which memory can borrow from the past. God is gone, and God’s only presence is a distant flame.

          This is where I believe Good Friday calls us to sit. In the absence of God. It is where the disciples were. all that they believed and held dear was shattered. We usually undertake Good Friday with a real sense of the closeness of Easter and of hope and resurrection. In other words we don’t really give credibility to the crucifixion and to our pain. 

The Last Supper

The Last Supper by Rainer Maria Rilke
On seeing Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper", Milan 1904.
Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

They are assembled, astonished and disturbed
round him, who like a sage resolved his fate,
and now leaves those to whom he most belonged,
leaving and passing by them like a stranger.
The loneliness of old comes over him
which helped mature him for his deepest acts;
now will he once again walk through the olive grove,
and those who love him still will flee before his sight.

To this last supper he has summoned them,
and (like a shot that scatters birds from trees)
their hands draw back from reaching for the loaves
upon his word: they fly across to him;
they flutter, frightened, round the supper table
searching for an escape. But he is present
everywhere like an all-pervading twilight-hour.

 

The meaning of the cross

"What if we see on this cross not a transaction with an offended mountain god, but a revelation at a moment of time of the love which is eternally in the heart of God, lived out in the long trek of Jesus? What if we smile at our failed and compromised images of paid penalties, sacrificial blood, ransoms, and punishments, all of which reflected some truth but also distorted it, and see in this historical moment a climax of lived love and lived hate, of the gods of religion and the God of compassion, of the political suppression of change and the unwillingness to recant on care? Then he died for us, against us, within us, before us - in a moment frozen in time for all time. And perhaps, then, we begin to know. "

William Loader
http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/mountain.htm

In paradise

I could never get much excited by the notion
of Paradise / heaven / the hereafter.
It sometimes seems to be a construct of the church,
attached to the teachings of Jesus
and distracting us from his command
to get on with the work of love.
At best, it is a bit-player, thrust
on to the centre-stage, to claim the spotlight.
There it assumes the role
of an all-controlling Master of Ceremonies
through whom ecclesiastical authorities,
popes, priests and everybody in-between,
direct the thinking and the behaviour
of the masses. If you want to get there,
as opposed to the other place,
remember; we hold the keys!
It suited, too the civil authorities
with its message of divinely ordered patience.
No need for revolution, in Paradise
you will receive your reward / recompense
for all the indignities, pains and brutalities
suffered during your earthly sojourn!
In Luke’s story of the passion
the word is placed upon the lips
of the cross-suspended Jesus,
as he responds to the justice and compassion
of a fellow criminal. Truly I tell you,
today you will be with me in Paradise.
To die with Jesus; perhaps this
is the proper meaning of Paradise.

C Ken Rookes.

Giving God a laugh

This is a post from our Uniting church's national President's blog at
http://andrewfdutney.wordpress.com/2013/03/19/giving-god-a-laugh/
personally i think God might be having a good laugh at us at the moment.

GIVING GOD A LAUGH

March 19, 2013

The taxi that took me from Sydney Airport to Kensington was driven by a Russian Jew. I was on my way to a meeting of the Assembly Standing Committee. The driver enjoyed having a practicing Christian in his car. He wanted to know what “Uniting Church” is. Was it like “Protestant”? Was it the same as “Catholic”? We talked about circumcision, baptism, Israel and genetic testing. As we got nearer to the conference centre he decided to give me a gift – an old saying a Rabbi had given him once – “If you want to give God a really good laugh,” he said, “tell Him your plans!”

So I collected my bags, still laughing at his true joke, and found my way into the building for three days of making plans with church leaders from all over the country. Three days of giving God a laugh.

I’ve got some plans to tell you about in the next few days. Exciting plans. At least the ASC seemed to think so. But I still thought it might be good to share that bit of Jewish wisdom first: If you want to give God a really good laugh, tell Him your plans!

i don't know who

I don't know who - or what - put the question, I don't know when it was put. I don't even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone - or Something - and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.

From that moment I have known what it means "not to look back," and "to take no thought for the morrow."

Led by the Ariadne's thread of my answer through the labyrinth of life, I came to a time and place where I realized that the Way leads to a triumph which is a catastrophe, and to a catastrophe which is a triumph, that the price for committing one's life would be reproach, and that the only elevation possible to man lies in the depths of humilation. After that, the word “courage” lost its meaning, since nothing could be taken from me.

As I continued along the Way, I learned, step by step, word by word, that behind every saying in the gospels, stands one man and one man's experience. Also behind the prayer that the cup might pass from him and his promise to drink it. Also behind each of the words from the cross.

-Dag Hammarskjold