To the Shadow

Yes, we have touched, have met

In the woods where we passed

There, when the sun grew cold

And blight lay on the grass.

I heard you in the trees,

The wind betrayed your course.

I had no energy

To trace you to your source

There, while the morning burned,

I was a flattened thing

Laid low with so much ease

By the brush of your wing.

I am so very small,

You, a monstrosity,

Mighty to shake my world,

Mighty to fall on me.

Yet I know all that tale

Which you would not have told,

Of your triumphant day

When sun and moon grew cold.

Oh, it was all a lie,

Your famous victory –

It took one empty tomb

To crush you utterly.

You still breathe venomed breath

Where paths grow hard and grim;

Yet you are dead, oh death!

All is restored in Him.

For Good Friday

As the bird shelters nestlings

In the shadow of its wing

Whatever storm may rage,

So you have sheltered me

In the shadow of the cross

And the worst has not come nigh me.

Sometimes I almost sense

The thud of hammer strokes,

Unimaginable tear of flesh,

The scream of worlds unmaking,

And I turn my head away

That the worst may not come nigh me.

Sometimes I almost sense

The blood-lust of the crowd

(It is not so far away)

Where justice bends to evil

And the social contract shreds:

May the worst still not come nigh me!

Sometimes I almost sense

The bright, clean light depart,

Dark where dark should not be

Swallowing friendly stars,

With death’s entirety

And the worst has not come nigh me.

Sometimes I almost sense

The mockery that kills,

The laughter born in hell

That splinters like cruel glass

And stabs with poisoned stroke,

But the worst has not come nigh me.

………………………………………………………….

I climb again that hill

Standing aloof from time

Trying to face those wounds

Which should have all been mine.

I cannot hold them fast,

No longer mine to bear,

All that I see is love,

Love that is everywhere.

All that I see is you,

Welcome upon your face,

Under that crown of thorns

Shines such transcendent grace,

No portioning of blame,

No tallying of sin,

Only your arms stretched wide

To take a whole world in.

The Servants

What does a servant do when the Master is absent? A faithful servant follows the Masters instructions, and waits for his return. And so they waited, and they prayed. The sense of expectation was heavy in the air. It wasn’t at all like the Master’s last absence. That time, brief though it was, had been the nadir of their lives. He died, and it was as if they tasted his death in their own beings – the death of hope, the death of meaning, the death of laughter, the death of love. In their loss of him they had tasted, though they hardly had words to name it, the death of their God.

But the darkness was over and the morning had come, the fairest since that time when the morning stars had sung together. Death itself had been overcome, and though they understood that they would never walk with him and talk with him in the same old way again, they also knew that they would be with him forever. He had only gone on ahead. And he had not left them as orphans, he was sending them Another, the indwelling Spirit, and he would be with them soon. They waited now in joy, not terrified grief.

And so the servants waited. They were not sure what to expect. They had the old stories, to be sure, of what the Spirit had done in the past, but they knew that this was supposed to be different, that it would be something that had never happened before in the history of the world. And so they wondered. They waited, they wondered and they prayed.

And the Spirit came to them on the Day of Pentecost, with a sound like a mighty rushing wind coming down to them from heaven, and it seemed that the whole house was filled with it. And, as they watched each other, amazed, it seemed that there was fire too, which separated into individual tongues of flame, resting on each person. Their hearts were full, their courage was set aflame with love that cast out fear, and their tongues were loosed into new languages, as if Babel had never happened. For when Babel was built among men they had sought to raise themselves up, but now God had come down, and fierce was the joy of that hour. Once, on Sinai, there had been flame and rumblings and smoke, and a thick darkness where God was, and Israel, constituted as a nation in that hour, had been shaken in terror. Now, as the church came into being, the servants were filled with wonder.

And the servants were released to serve in a whole new way. A short few weeks before, they had cowered in immobilising fear, now they came forth, borne by the power of God to speak words of world-shattering truth. Their waiting was over.