Come, Holy Spirit, Breathe
Day of Pentecost; Ezekiel 37:1-14, Acts 2:1-21, John 15:26,27, 16:4b-15
Come, Holy Spirit, breathe, put flesh and life on bones:
on desiccated liturgies and rigid ribs of pews.
We’ve lost the gift of tongues, the surge of fire and wind,
the burning in the heart that leaps to recognize good news.
Like wind that summons change, stir up our spirit gifts:
give energy to risk and dare, to fail and try again.
Breathe life into our dreams, ignite fresh sparks of hope,
that we may rise despite the weight of our remembered pain.
Give us the words to say when challenged by disdain:
we hear the mockers claim that faith is less than fairy tale.
Along with many tongues, let meanings now be heard,
and people choose a greater good than merchandise for sale.
Come, Holy Spirit, muse, work with our arts and crafts:
creating in God’s image, let us challenge and inspire.
Be Advocate and Guide to lead us to all truth,
then we’ll be drawn towards our God by magnets of desire.
Barbara Messner 15/05/2024
Ascension?
Ascension?
Ascension Day; Acts 1:1-11; Matthew 28: 16-20
He vanished from their sight, but did he rise
to lofty palaces above the skies
to sit in gloried state at God’s right hand?
Or did he slip among them where they stand?
The angels laughed: “Why do you seek afar
the one who’s always with you where you are?”
To visions bringing insight, it seems odd
when we in worship set apart our God,
who comes among us as a baby curled
within the welcome womb of every world,
and lives and dies and rises, seen or not,
in all the grime and muddle of our lot;
yet we persist in seeing Christ ascend,
although he said he’s with us to the end.
Barbara Messner 20 May 2020
Dilemmas of Love
Dilemmas of Love
Easter 6; John 15:9-17
So you said to your friends in farewell:
“This is my commandment,
that you love one another
as I have loved you.”
No need of ten commandments:
this one is challenge enough.
No doubt it would change the world,
but how do we live up to it?
How do we love as you loved,
you who are love embodied,
we who are bodies muddling love?
We trail our tattered loving
through the mud of the mundane,
or risk it burnt to ashes
in the wanton fires of passion.
How do we do Christ-like love?
Is there a manual of instruction
in the words of your teaching,
or your living and your dying?
Is humility a sign and lesson of love?
Being like a child, or a servant
shames human pride, and our egos
that grasp at being special and affirmed.
The key to your human existence
was being here with us and for us,
advocate for the marginalized,
host and healer for the down and out.
Even you were not completely impervious
to the stain of ethnic and gender bias,
or the burden of compassion fatigue.
Exhaustion and prejudice
marred your first reaction
to the Syrophoenician woman.
That was a lesson in loving,
not because you were perfect,
but because you struggled
to put aside your intolerant response
until at last you were there for this other,
recognized her desperate mother love,
and you listened, respected and enabled her,
saying she spoke to you a word of wisdom,
and was source of her own daughter’s healing.
In your last teaching, you longed
to open us to love and the Spirit,
knowing your time was coming
to live out your loving by dying,
the ultimate walking of the talk.
How can we aspire to such commitment,
or is aspiring a misconception?
Perhaps love does not come from comparing,
from instruction or even commandment.
Does it flow from awareness of being,
a connection with you and creation?
Can it be that the source of true loving
is response to the God of love incarnate,
transformation by mutual presence,
and in that moment, joy shared and complete?
Barbara Messner 2/05/2024
God is Love
God is love
(Easter 5 John 15:1-8, 1 John 4:7-21)
All people who use language
are second-hand word-mongers:
we mangle words or varnish
by buying into meanings
to suit rival agendas.
We fumble in our juggling,
and truth becomes entangled
with hurts to which we’re subject,
and what one hears, another
would never have imagined.
So “God is love” gets twisted
for some who hear “Our Father”.
They might have had a parent,
unreasonably controlling,
whose harshness warps the nature
of their resistant children.
Then “God” and “love” seem hollow,
and protest shapes a cynic
whose love is sparse and godless.
Yet “God is love” is speaking
of wisdom sourced in wonder
at what we see in Jesus –
a God more than Creator,
a wise and gracious parent:
compassionate and caring
for all that is becoming,
forgiving finite creatures
their limited awareness,
their fear for their survival
that warps their best intentions.
When we abide in Jesus,
it helps refine our loving.
Our “me-first” competition
for limited resources
transforms into the service
we base on his example.
We give from our abundance,
so grateful for receiving,
and sometimes try to offer
self-sacrificial caring
not just to those we value,
but enemies and strangers.
When Jesus speaks of pruning,
it’s not an angry stripping,
but shaping for our fruiting
with stronger upright branches
that show the vine’s true nature.
What falls away enhances
resilience and balance.
Since God is love, and Jesus
embodies what such love is,
when they abide within us
our love will bear their image.
Barbara Messner 27/04/2021
Warning: Sheep Astray
Warning: Sheep Astray
Easter 4; Psalm 23
Good shepherd, there is much we seem to lack,
though having much has blurred the truth of need.
If you could lead us weary creatures back,
green pastures and still pools might soothe and feed.
Our souls are parched, our bodies over fed;
right pathways now have given way to roads.
We seek refreshment, yet will not be led;
your rod and staff seem long discarded goads.
Death’s shadow is a warning we ignore;
fear unacknowledged spurs some frantic craze.
You spread a table: we go out the door;
our cups intoxicate, our senses glaze.
Your loving-kindness still invites us home,
but we think freedom means the right to roam.
Barbara Messner 17/04/2024
A Greeting of Peace
A Greeting of Peace
Easter 3; Luke 24:36b-48; Acts 3:12-20; Psalm 4
He stood among them, offered them his peace.
Amazed and doubting, they were terrified:
they thought they saw the ghost of one who’d died.
How did he help their fear and doubt to cease?
He chose to let them see his damaged flesh;
he showed the wounds in hands and feet and side.
He ate some food with them, and opened wide
their minds to understand his Word afresh.
How can we find the peace he offers here?
Our wounds reach out to his, feel he’s alive.
Communion shares the food that helps faith thrive,
and opening to Scripture calms our fear.
Communing with our hearts brings us release;
times of refreshment come; we sleep in peace.
Barbara Messner 12/04/2024
Thomas and Us
Thomas and Us
Easter 2; John 20:19-31
The label “doubting” dogged him down the years –
it’s more than any saint should have to bear.
Did “doubting” Thomas add that shame to tears,
so grief and anger barred his need to share?
The risen Christ has no respect for locks,
nor will defensive doubt turn him away.
He lets his wounds be seen,to shift what blocks
our eyes from recognizing his new day.
Like Thomas, we find grace; and so we kneel,
and cry “My Lord and God!”; and breathe in peace.
Then his embrace will heal the pain we feel;
we breathe his Spirit, let our doubts release.
His wounds have touched our own and set us free;
we know new life, become what we can be.
Barbara Messner 3/04/2024
Palm Sunday Paradox
Palm Sunday Paradox
Palm Sunday; Mark 11:1-11
They wanted a victor to take power and reign –
his crown would be thorns on a victim in pain.
The man on a donkey, foretold as a king,
rode humbly despite the hosannas they sing.
They’d gathered some converts to bolster their cause;
his teaching forgotten in shouts and applause.
Yet how many times had he said, “First is last;
my kingship is service, not power of the past.”
Their shouts turned to anger: “He thinks he’s God’s fool!
He overturns tables and not Roman rule!
He gathers no army of angels to fight!
What use is he dying in such desperate plight?”
So how do we claim him, as fool or as king?
Does he choose a donkey while we praise and sing?
As we seek more converts to prop up our dreams,
he bleeds on our carpet and upturns our schemes.
Not many accept that God’s vulnerable here:
when power is surrendered, the kingdom draws near,
and those who have had to let go see the king.
Their silence and wonder transform what they sing.
Barbara Messner March 2018
Jesus lifted Up Draws Us to Himself
Jesus Lifted Up Draws Us to Himself
Lent 5; John 12:20-33
The crowd had thought his glory would be power.
He chose to ride a donkey as foretold,
but though they shouted: "Blessings on the King!"
he knew their expectations soon would sour.
But when some Greeks were drawn to seek him out,
he saw it as a sign his hour had come,
and though he spoke of glory, he described
how buried seed would have to die to sprout.
Through Spirit-led disciples, word would flow
beyond the bounds of culture and of race,
but still his soul was troubled. Could he pray
to God to save him? He decided: "No!"
He must be lifted up so we are drawn
through death to life and new creation's dawn.
So as we face this Easter, do we fear
the many threats of death that plague our world,
while expectations of the ones who lead
are dashed, and tawdry glories disappear?
Where all are subject to pandemic's blight,
and all must own the threat of climate change,
we might regard all living things as kin,
and so lift up fresh wisdom into sight.
Believing that through death new life can rise,
we might accept the troubling of our souls
and face the harsh necessities of loss,
encouraged by the hope of some surprise
that bursts beyond the bounds of what we know,
as seeds long lost in dust with floods can grow.
Barbara Messner 2021 (no new poem due to covid)
God So Loves the World
God So Loves the World
Lent 4; John 3:14-21; Numbers 21:4-9
Though God so loves the world
the worldly make self god.
They do not prize the gift
the Son is meant to be.
What serves their purposes
is all that they can see.
What value put on love
that's offered to all free?
Though God so loves the world
the greedy make wealth god.
Where's profit in the gift
of one who comes to serve?
Their riches are not shared;
they keep them in reserve.
Accumulating more -
is that what they deserve?
Though God so loves the world
the leaders make power god.
They cause another's pain
to show that they are boss.
They elevate God's Son
upon a mocking cross
to prove that they are strong,
and wash their hands of loss.
But God who sent the Son
does not condemn the world.
Instead of striking us
Christ lives our death and pain.
The poisoned fangs we fear
are spread as we complain.
Look up and see the cross!
The world can live again!
Barbara Messner 7/03/2024
Barb, poet priest 