Song for Epiphany Matthew 2:1-12 (written to fit the Irish traditional tune Columcille, as arranged by John Bell, Iona Community, for his song No wind at the window, Together in Song 287) What star can I follow to kneel in that place? How far will I journey? What doubts dare erase? And if I can find him what vision might glow? What fulfilment? What belonging? To be known and to know? Though traps of the powerful might lure me astray, the star at my heart’s core will show me the way. My arrival is joyful, my homage sincere. Are there gifts for me to offer? I have little, I fear. But giving that little, I find there is more: all learnt from the past now becomes a fresh store. What I thought was failure is now a resource. There is nothing that is wasted when renewed at the source. Returning, I follow a dream-guided way, and see the familiar become a new day. Though far I have travelled, I know he is near, and my gifts and search for wisdom will in him become clear. Barbara Messner 5/01/2022
Treasuring and Pondering
Treasuring and Pondering The Naming and Circumcision of Jesus; Luke 2:15-21 “But Mary treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.” She knew that’s how the Spirit flames from sacred truth. Does the Spirit guide the wary mind assigning scholarly ticks to what might be historical? Isn’t that a form of arrogance, an excuse for many footnotes making display of learning? Does the Spirit demand certainty that every scriptural word reports the literal facts? Isn’t that a form of idolatry, trying to make mystery, poetry and transcendence into material representations? Jesus was born of Mary, and people were drawn to see him, but there’s no birth story in John’s gospel or Mark’s, and Luke’s and Matthew’s differ. Are their nativity stories not true, or are they sacred truth treasured and pondered? Matthew tells of wise men from the East, and then the family’s flight to Egypt. Luke speaks of shepherds from the hills, and shows us Jesus the devout Jew, initiated from birth by rites required by sacred law. Perhaps Matthew pondered in his heart, and the treasure the Spirit showed him was Jesus as universal Wisdom, recognized by foreign astrologers, persecuted by a jealous king, forced into exile in Egypt, like Joseph in Genesis, sold by jealous brothers. Luke also treasured and pondered, saw Jesus as the fulfilment of Hebrew Scripture, born in the city of David, welcomed by shepherds, named by angel messenger, circumcised according to the law, presented in the temple and greeted by prophets. I wonder what dimensions of sacred truth were shown to Mary as she treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart? Barbara Messner 28/12/2022
The Flight to Egypt
The Flight to Egypt Holy Innocents; Matthew 2:13-23 We keep our dreaming shuttered in our sleep, but Joseph was a man who trusted dreams. They fled into the night. Their loss was deep, but not as great as woe from Herod’s schemes. Behind them, parents wept for children dead. In Egypt, they at least still had their son, though home was lost, and work and often bread, and speech and common knowledge were undone. As refugees, no kin would offer aid; no roof, no meal, no job to ease their way.. I wonder in their plight were bargains made with wise men’s gifts, on some dark, hopeless day. Then angel dreams urged Jesus to return, What wisdom from that time did Jesus learn? Barbara Messner 27/12/2022
Christmas Sonnet
Christmas Sonnet To Mary bearing down on love, pain comes through saying: “Here am I.” Bring down to earth the God above? Plain sense and comfort question why. Birth pangs are hers, but also his, pushed out into a world like this, where God with us must learn to cry. Yet that first cry we hear as gift more precious than the gold of kings, and his last cry can bridge the rift more surely than all angels’ wings, for he is us, our pain is his, and joy finds voice in cries like this. “We are new born!” our being sings. Barbara Messner December 2019
God with us
God with us Advent 4; Matthew 1:23 Commercial Christmas has no place for God, yet baby Jesus, Season’s icon, might be found on billboards and the internet. Lip service offered blandly may still serve to claim him space within our consciousness. Co-opted and profaned as pretext, still Christ’s coming stands as challenge to the urge to get and spend in search of Christmas cheer. Nativities on Christmas cards are scarce; the baubles, tinselled trees and doves of peace make secular what once was steeped in awe. Still sacrosanct are Christmas holidays: ironic that that word for our escapes derives from “Holy Days”. What’s holy now - a fair, white baby with a haloed head, re-incarnated as a folk lore tale? When Christ in our own image is disguised, the Virgin Mary a suburban Mum dressed up to look religious in a shawl, are we struck blind with scales upon our eyes, so “God with us” cannot be recognized? Or is this how the incarnation works, with Christ as homeless here as he was there, come to his own but made a refugee? Now are there only wise ones from afar who dare to make a journey with a star? Perhaps angelic messengers prefer to come to herders camping in the hills, where vision is not dimmed by city lights, but open to the vastness of the skies, attuned to animals and ancient land, where birth and death write meaning in the wind. So who is Christ to you this Christmas time – the cute and pristine babe of sentiment, or some poor waif who huddles in the dark, left by the wayside of our privilege, no hope of presents or of Christmas food? The God who cries for justice for the poor would come among us on the margins still, and offer there his body as Christ mass. Barbara Messner Christmas 2017
Sharing John’s Grief and Doubt
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Sharing John’s Grief and Doubt Advent 3; Matthew 11:2-11 I grieve when I read of John imprisoned and in doubt. John as Baptist prepared the way for one more powerful than himself, one who would take an axe to the fruitless, thresh the grain and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire. Who is John, now unsure of his Messiah? “Are you the one?” he asks, robbed of his own fire and purpose. The death he foresees seems pointless and unseemly. Would the evidence of healings and good news to the poor, or Jesus’ offering of muted praise have consoled John’s last days? No prisoner am I but having just turned 70 I feel a closing in of walls, and the confronting absurdity of death in the wings. I am subject to minor fates: on Sunday my car broke down in a country town, on the way to a church service, leaving a gathered people without a priest, and me as priest without an altar. I had looked forward to speaking of peace, sharing at table, watching a dark child lighting the Advent candles. It’s not that I doubt the healings and good news, or that Jesus is the one to come. My doubts are about being retired, turning 70, car and my peace breaking down, losing the purposeful journey. I want to be consoled by the gospel, but what I feel is grief. Barbara Messner 7/12/2022
Answering the Doubt of John the Baptist
Answering the Doubt of John the Baptist Advent 3; Matthew 11:2-11 Imprisoned, John sends Jesus word of doubt. “Are you in truth the one who is to come?” Must he with death in sight be left without both call and vision that are his life’s sum? Says Jesus: “Tell John what you see and hear: the blind receive their sight, the lame can walk, the dead are raised, and lepers’ skin made clear. Good news is here. Take no offense, nor baulk, for you are blessed, a prophet and much more, God’s messenger who has prepared the way. No-one on earth is greater, that is sure; yet greater still are those among the least who gather in God’s kingdom for the feast. Barbara Messner 13/11/2022
Who Can Hear
Who Can Hear Advent 2; Matthew 3:1-12 Hear John the Baptist’s words shout from the page: abuse of privilege stirs sacred rage. Our wilderness of concrete is as bare as desert dunes in desiccated air. Brave voices still cry out: “Prepare the way!” I see no crowds admitting that they stray and plunging deep in their desire to change. Our prophets now are mocked, their words too strange. Perhaps pandemic was a winnowing fork, but kernels scatter under fruitless talk. We need John’s vision now to recognize one greater far than us, in humble guise. “Repent!” he cries. “God’s kingdom has come near!” Amidst the noise of commerce, who can hear? Barbara Messner 12/11/2022
That Unexpected Hour
That Unexpected Hour Advent 1; Matthew 24:36-44 Eating, drinking, knowing nothing, they were swept away by flood. Noah’s ark they must have laughed at; he saw futures beyond mud. There are warnings! Are we listening? Do we hear what prophets say? “Keep awake!” is still the challenge, lest time’s thief takes all away. Who’ll be left and who’ll be taken at that unexpected hour? In this Advent, are we ready for Christ’s resurrecting power? Barbara Messner 22/09/2022
The King Whose Crown is Thorns
The King Whose Crown is Thorns Christ the King; Luke 23:33-43 “If you are a king, then save yourself!” Self-centredness spits out its cruel taunts. Demeaning victims flaunts the soldiers’ power and helps disguise the wrong they dare not see. Yet Jesus prayed for them, “Forgive them, Lord! They do not know what deed it is they do!” The criminal beside him shouts in rage: “God’s chosen one would save himself and us!” The other in his agony finds sight: “Fear God, for our misdeeds have brought us here, but I believe this man has done no wrong. Your kingdom comes, Jesus! Remember me!” The king whose crown is thorns replied, “In truth, today you’ll be with me in Paradise!” The king whose crown is thorns unsettles kings. He says, “The first is last, the last is first.” He eats with tax collectors, prostitutes: a woman of the streets anoints his feet with precious oil and dries them with her hair. He dares to touch and heal those deemed unclean, confronts the hypocrites’ abuse of power, and in the temple turns the dealers out. “The kings of nations lord it over them. Not so with you,” he says. “I’m one who serves. The greatest must be humble as the least. The kingdom welcomes those most like a child.” His crown is thorns, his throne a cross, his death a gift for saving others, not himself. Barbara Messner 16/11/2022
Barb, poet priest 