You see us here, all level on the plain, and You, Yourself, are standing right with us. You stand no higher than the lowest one, and You look up to none.
Imagination strains, for sure, to see a world that looks like this imagined plain, a world where no one stands upon my toes and claws my shoulders to step on my head.
And yes, You’re right to tell us how this comes about: Abandon hate, do good to those who harm, bless those who offer curses, pray for those who concentrate their power. For certain, any violence we offer them will fail.
Far, far a surer thing to shame them, Jesus, yes. They think, they say, believe they’re in the right to pay so little for a day of labor, make us choose between a tank of gas and visiting a doctor.
They’re wrong, but in their sense of righteousness is this: They have a sense of shame. When we refrain from violence, they pause, at least, and think. “Am I so clearly in the right?”
Yes, Jesus, this could work. Except… It… Almost… Works. Come, Savior. Your people need Your love.
A poem/prayer based on Luke 6:27-38, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel reading for Year C, 7th Sunday after the Epiphany.
I think the groaning nets, the slapping water, the skittering fish, the creaking hull, awoke his dazed awareness of the future, of the streams of time.
No wonder he so quickly knelt and sought to have You go away. To heal a mother-in-law: that’s well and good. A lingering prophet, though, demands a change of course.
Of course he saw it coming, Simon Peter did.
As fish strained hopelessly for their last watery breath, he held his own as hopelessly he waited. You knew, he knew, and Andrew, James, and John: You’d caught the fisherman.
A poem/prayer based on Luke 5:1-11, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel reading for Year C, 5th Sunday after the Epiphany.
No! I wasn’t thinking that! Get out of my head, Jesus!
“Physician, cure yourself”? No: I didn’t think that, at least I didn’t if you judge quite narrowly. I might have thought – just might, you know – that here you are, enlisting me to help redeem the world, and who, I want to know, was left in charge, and left so great a mess!
No! I wasn’t thinking that! Get out of my head, Jesus!
“Do here the things you did in other places”? No, or well, perhaps. OK, I thought it. There. So there. But who would not consider such a question, when the days build on from days, absent miracle, filled with suffering, maladies, and pain. So yes, I’d like to see the wonders others have.
No! I wasn’t thinking that! Get out of my head, Jesus!
I’ll honor you, for sure. My home town is not Nazareth, so you are not the local wonder, raised from penury to power. You are not one I’ve known for years, a face familiar to me as the mirror’s gaze. Except, of course, you are: Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, hamstrung for my comfort’s sake.
Stop reading my mind, Jesus, or I’ll bring you to the edge of my cliff.
A poem/prayer based on Luke 4:21-30, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel reading for Year C, 4th Sunday after the Epiphany.
ordainedgeek 