Barabbas

Son of man
Son of the Father--
who can
tell one from the other?
Son of man
must taste of death.
Father's son
I would rather
be the one
to return
to Father's side
than to remain
to mourn
man's son's pain.
So he died
while my breath
burned in the rain.

Son of man
dead for me,
crucified,
to set me free.
Son of the Father,
I must be
because my brother
toppled death
upon a tree.

The cross's death
becomes life's door.
Son of man
offers more
abundant life
than those whose scorn
had thought to kill
the coming morn.

Son of man
my life will turn
as to our Father
I return.

(Note: "Barabbas" literally means "son of the father" in Hebrew.)

--Madeleine L'Engle (1918-2007), American novelist and poet, from A Cry Like a Bell

Scripture reference: Matthew 27:15-26 (Liturgy of the Word, Palm Sunday A)

Lazarus

Now that he's gone
Now the world has moved on 
Since he called my name nothing's the same
As my sister cried He said, "Lazarus rise."
To love and anoint
Or just prove a point

I'm the one that he saved
I'm the one that he raised
From a dark quiet sleep from peace of the grave
I'm the one who owns much but that no one will touch
Mothers see me and cry
Dogs bare teeth as I walk by

I don't see a veil between heaven and hell
The truth is there's nothing but a warm light and singing
But here in-between a voice haunts my dreams
Martha does what she can but won't look at my hands

I'm the one that he saved
I'm the one that he raised
From a dark quiet sleep from peace of the grave
I'm the one who owns much but that no one will touch
Mothers see me and cry
Dogs bare teeth as I walk by

I love the cool mornings
I love a hot meal
The pulse of the street night jasmine and clean sheets 
I can't sleep of rest I feel lost and hard pressed 
I wander these rooms still looking for you 
Now I ought to be grateful to drink from the grail
But I don't be belong on either side of this veil
I look down at my hands that are clasped in my lap
When he left this world I thought he'd take me back...

-- Carrie Newcomer, American singer-songwriter, from the album The Geography of Light

Scripture reference: John 11:1-45, 5th Sunday in Lent 

Meditation XVII (No man in an island)

Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness. There was a contention as far as a suit (in which both piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled), which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest. If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.

Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.

--John Donne (1572-1633), English priest, poet, and essayist, from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, 1624, written as he lay ill for 24 days with a recurring fever.

Sonnet III

Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another;
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For where is she so fair whose uneared womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
Of his self-love, to stop posterity?
Thou art thy mother's glass and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime;
So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.
     But if thou live, remembered not to be,
     Die single and thine image dies with thee.

-- William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Pre-eminent English playwright, poet, and actor

To see commentary on this sonnet, click here.

To hear Sir Patrick Stewart read this poem, click here.

Sonnet II

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery so gazed on now,
Will be a totter'd weed of small worth held:
Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;
To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserv'd thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
     This were to be new made when thou art old,
     And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

-- William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Pre-eminent English playwright, poet, and actor

To see commentary on this poem, click here.

To hear Patrick Stewart read this sonnet, click here.

Sonnet I

From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory: 
But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding:
     Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
     To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

--William Shakespeare (1564-1616), pre-eminent English playwright, poet, and actor

For excellent commentary on this sonnet, click here.


To hear and see Sir Patrick Stewart read this sonnet aloud while isolating during the COVID-19 pandemic, click here.

In the Kitchen

('In the sixth month the angel Gabriel...' -Luke 1:26) 

Bellini has it wrong, 
I was not kneeling 
on my satin cushion, 
in a beam of light,
head slightly bent.

Painters always 
skew the scene, 
as though my life 
were wrapped in silks, 
in temple smells.

Actually, I had just 
come back from the well, 
placing the pitcher on the table 
I bumped against the edge, 
spilling water on the floor.

As I bent to wipe 
it up, there was a light 
against the kitchen wall, 
as though someone had opened 
the door to the sun.

Rag in hand, 
hair across my face, 
I turned to see 
who was entering, 
unannounced, unasked.

All I saw 
was light 
white against the timbers. 
A voice I've never 
heard greeted me,

said I was elected, would 
bear a son who'd reign 
forever. The spirit would 
overshadow me.
I stood afraid. 

Someone closed the door
and I dropped the rag.

-- Fr. Kilian McDonnell, OSB (1921- ), American monk, poet, and theologian at St. John's Abbey

Relevant Scripture: Luke 1:26-38

Meditation on "Give us this day our daily bread:

Praying for our daily bread is asking to be reacquainted with our vulnerability, to learn how to approach not only God but each other, with our hands open. So to pray this prayer with integrity, we need to be thinking about the various ways in which we defend ourselves against the need to open our hands. We cannot fully and freely pray for our daily bread when we are wedded inseparably to our own rightness or righteousness, any more than we can when we are wedded to our own security or prosperity. And perhaps this explains why the Lord’s Prayer at once goes on to pray for forgiveness – or rather for the gift of being forgiven as we have learned to forgive. 

The person who asks forgiveness has renounced the privilege of being right or safe; she has acknowledged that she is hungry for healing, for the bread of acceptance and restoration to relationship. But equally the person who forgives has renounced the safety of being locked into the position of the offended victim; she has decided to take the risk of creating afresh a relationship known to be capable of involving hurt. Both the giver and the receiver of forgiveness have moved out of the safety zone; they have begun to ask how to receive their humanity as a gift.

Forgiveness is one of the most radical ways in which we are able to nourish one another’s humanity. When offence is given and hurt is done, the customary human response is withdrawal, the reinforcing of the walls of the private self, with all that this implies about asserting one’s own humanity as a possession rather than receiving it as gift. The unforgiven and the unforgiving cannot see the other as people who are part of God’s work of bestowing humanity on them. To forgive and to be forgiven is to allow yourself to be humanized by those whom you may least want to receive as signs of God’s gift; and this process is deeply connected with the prayer for daily bread. 

-- Rowan Williams (1950- ). Being Disciples: Essentials of the Christian Life, chapter 3.

Raising Lazarus

Adapted from the original notebook fragment written by Rainer Maria Rilke in Spain in 1913.

Evidently, this was needed. Because people need 
to be screamed at with proof. 
But he knew his friends. Before they were 
he knew them. And they knew
that he would never leave them 
there, desolate. So he let his exhausted eyes close 
at first glimpse of the village fringed with tall fig 
trees —  
immediately he found himself in their midst: 
here was Martha, sister of the dead 
boy. He knew 
she would not stray, 
as he knew which would; 
he knew that he would always find her 
at his right hand, 
and beside her 
her sister Mary, the one 
a whole world of whores 
still stood in a vast circle pointing at. Yes, 
all were gathered around him. And once again 
he began to explain 
to bewildered upturned faces 
where it was he had to go, and why. 
He called them “my friends.” The Logos, God’s 
creating word, — the same voice that said 
Let there be light. 
Yet 
when he opened his eyes, 
he found himself standing apart. 
Even the two 
slowly backing away, as though 
from concern for their good name. 
Then he began to hear voices; 
whispering 
quite distinctly, 
or thinking: 
Lord, 
if you had been here 
our friend might not have died. 
(At that, he slowly reached out 
as though to touch a face, 
and soundlessly started to cry.) 
He asked them the way to the grave.
And he followed behind them, 
preparing 
to do what is not done 
to that green silent place 
where life and death are one. 
By then other Brueghelian grotesques 
had gathered, toothlessly sneering 
across at each other and stalled 
at some porpoise or pig stage 
of ontogenetical horrorshow, keeping 
their own furtive shadowy distances 
and struggling to keep up 
like packs of limping dogs; 
merely to walk down this road 
in broad daylight 
had begun to feel illegal, 
unreal, rehearsal, 
test — but for what! 
And the filth of desecration
sifting down over him, as a feverish outrage 
rose up, contempt 
at the glib ease 
with which words like “living” 
and “being dead” 
rolled off their tongues; 
and loathing flooded his body 
when he hoarsely cried, 
“Move the stone!” 
“By now the body must stink,” 
some helpfully suggested. But it was true 
that the body had lain in its grave four days. 
He heard the voice as if from far away, 
beginning to fill with that gesture 
which rose through him: no hand that heavy
had ever reached this height, shining 
an instant in air. Then 
all at once clenching 
and cramped — the fingers 
shrunk crookedly 
into themselves, 
and irreparably fixed there, 
like a hand with scars of ghastly 
slashing lacerations 
and the usual deep sawing 
across the wrist’s fret, 
through all major nerves, 
the frail hair-like nerves —  
so his hand 
at the thought 
all the dead might return 
from that tomb 
where the enormous cocoon 
of the corpse was beginning to stir. 
Yet nobody stood there —  
only the one young man, 
pale as though bled, 
stooping at the entrance 
and squinting at the light, 
picking at his face, loose 
strips of rotting shroud. 
All that he could think of 
was a dark place to lie down, 
and hide that wasted body. 
And tears rolled up his cheek 
and back into his eyes, 
and then his eyes began 
rolling back into his head ...     
Peter looked across at Jesus 
with an expression that seemed to say 
You did it, or What have you done? 
And everyone saw how their vague and inaccurate 
life made room for his once more.

-- Franz Wright (1953-2015), American poet and translator, son of poet James Wright

Relevant scripture: John 11:1-45

The Raising of Lazarus: Art for Lent 5A

Hanna Varghese, Jesus Wept

Mosaic, Lazarus Comes Forth from the Tomb

Icon, unknown

Sadao Watanabe, The Raising of Lazarus

Giotto di Bondon, The Raising of Lazarus 1304 

unknown icon, the Raising of Lazarus

Vincent Van Gogh, The Raising of Lazarus (after Rembrandt), 1890

Vincent Van Gogh, Notes and sketch on Lazarus

For Caregivers and Others in Support of the Sick

Compassionate God,

support and strengthen all those

who reach out in love, concern, and prayer 

for the sick and distressed. 

In their acts of compassion, 

may they know that they are your instruments. 

In their concerns and fears 

may they know your peace. 

In their prayer 

may they know your steadfast love. 

May they not grow weary or faint-hearted, 

for your mercy’s sake. Amen.

-- From "Ministry to the Sick," from Church Publishing

A Blind Woman

She had turned her face up into
a rain of light, and came on smiling.

The light trickled down her forehead
and into her eyes. It ran down 

into the neck of her sweatshirt
and wet the white tops of her breasts.

Her brown shoes splashed on
into the light. The moment was like

a circus wagon rolling before her
through puddles of light, a cage on wheels,

and she walked fast behind it,
exuberant, curious, pushing her cane

through the bars, poking and prodding,
while the world cowered back in a corner.

--Ted Kooser (1939- ), from Weather Central, 1994.

Relevant scripture: John 9:1-41

Prayer- In the Morning

This is another day, O Lord.

I know not what it will bring forth,

but make me ready, Lord, 

for whatever it may be. 

If I am to stand up,

help me to stand bravely. 

If I am to sit still, 

help me to sit quietly. 

If I am to lie low, 

help me to do it patiently.

And if I am to do nothing, 

let me do it gallantly. 

Make these words more than words, 

and give me the Spirit of Jesus. Amen.

-- The Book of Common Prayer, "Ministration to the Sick," p. 461, from Church Pension Group of The Episcopal Church

The Man No Longer Blind: Art for Lent 4A

by Ann Lukesh

Ethiopian icon

Greek icon

Modern icon

artist unknown

Russian icon

Modern icon, artist unknown

Mosaic

By Sadao Watanabe, modern Japanese printmaker

Relevant scripture: John 9:1-41

Rune Before Prayer (Ortha nan Gaidheal)

I am bending my knee
In the eye of the Father who created me,
In the eye of the Son who purchased me,
In the eye of the Spirit who cleansed me,
     In friendship and affection.

Through Thine own Anointed One, O God, 
Bestow upon us fullness in our need, 
     Love towards God, 
     The affection of God, 
     The smile of God, 
     The wisdom of God. 
     The grace of God, 
     The fear of God,
     And the will of God 
To do on the world of the Three,
As angels and saints
Do in heaven;
     Each shade and light,
     Each day and night,
     Each time in kindness,
     Give Thou us Thy Spirit.

--from the Carmina Gadelica, collected by Alexander Carmichael (1832-1912) from the Outer Hebrides in Scotland

David

Your altar smelled of the slaughterhouse.
The innocent eyes of tender beasts
lost in confusion of laws and vows
were the high price paid to you for feasts.
They had to be men of iron, your priests.

And so did I, born but to sing,
to attend the lambs and not to kill.
Why, my Lord, did you have to bring
me down from the safety of my hill
into the danger of your will?

I learned to fight, I learned to sin,
I battled heathen, fought with lust;
when you were on my side I'd win.
My appetite I could not trust.
I only knew your wrath was just.

What I desired I went and stole.
I had to fight against my son.
You bound my wounds and made me whole
despite the wrong that I had done.
I turned from you and tried to run.

You took me, also, by the hair
and brought me back before your altar.
You terrified me with your care.
Against your rage I could but falter.
You changed me, but refused to alter.

So I grew old, but there remained
within me still the singing boy.
I stripped and sang. My wife complained. 
Yet all my ill did I destroy
dancing before you in our joy.

My God, my God, is it not meet
that I should sing and shout and roar,
leap to your ark with loving feet?
I praise thee, hallow, and adore,
and play before thee evermore.

-- Madeleine L'Engle (1918-2007), Episcopal laywoman, author, and poet, from A Cry Like a Bell

Relevant scripture: 1 Samuel 16: 1-13

For the Anniversary of My Death

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what

-- W. S. Merwin (1927- 2019), American poet, naturalist, and writer, US poet laureate (1999-2000 and 2010-2011), two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, who passed away one year ago today.

Prayer for People Critically Ill or Facing Great Uncertainty

God of the present moment,
God who in Jesus stills the storm
and soothes the frantic heart,
bring hope and courage to all
who wait or work in uncertainty.
Bring hope that you will make them the equal
of whatever lies ahead.
Bring them courage to endure what cannot be avoided,
for your will is health and wholeness;
you are God, and we need you.

-- New Zealand Prayer Book, p. 765

The Samaritan Woman at the Well: Art for Lent 3A

Scripture Reference: John 4:5-42, Gospel for Lent 3A

Modern Latin American

late 19th century Orthodox icon

Modern Icon

Joseph Kleitsch (1885-1931), Woman at the Well

Japanese Print

Odilon Redon, Christ and Samaritan Woman at Well