Tell us Plainly
Easter 4; John 10:22-30
There’s some who want a label, clearly stated,
so they can judge and file this case away.
The evidence of deeds is under rated,
and mystery ignored on every day.
If Jesus said, “For sure, I’m God’s Messiah!”
they’d call it blasphemy and want him dead,
dismiss him as deluded or a liar,
and heap their scorn upon his thorn-bound head.
For Word made flesh, we have selective hearing:
we know him if we recognize his voice,
but how, amidst the doom-sayers we’re fearing,
can people tune their ears to make that choice?
Believing grows with willingness to follow,
for truth is pilgrimage and facts are hollow.
Barbara Messner 4/05/2022
(This is an old one, and I'm not in a sonnet writing phase lately, but I like it's mocking tone, neat form and provocative conclusion.)
The Encounter on the Beach
The Encounter on the Beach
Easter 3; John 21:1-19
When they’d finished the meal,
Jesus asked Peter an awkward question.
“Simon son of John,” he said,
(as though naming Peter’s attempt
to revert to a pre-discipled state),
“Do you love me more than these?”
(Surely this was not a love competition
to choose the forerunner
of centuries of popes?)
Maybe what he meant was:
“Do you love me more than these
creature comforts of your past life –
midnight fishing with mates,
filling a net with 153 fish,
swimming to shore in a dark sea,
eating barbecue on the beach?”
What if he asked us:
“Do you love me more than these
material comforts of modern life –
technological servant/masters
dispensing addictive distractions,
153 food delivery services
and a sea of alcoholic beverages,
supermarket aisles loudly intrusive
with sentimental or agonized
but largely banal
songs about love?
Peter didn’t try to show
“more than” except by repeating:
“You know that I love you”,
and maybe that’s enough
as we face our escapism
and try to retract our denials.
Jesus told him to tend and feed
the lambs and sheep of the Christian flock.
We too are called to tend and feed
though at present lambs are few
and sheep growing old,
reluctant to venture
beyond safe stone walls.
Peter too would grow old,
and would be taken, bound,
where he did not wish to go,
yet we read that his death
would glorify God.
Did Peter atone for 3 denials
with 3 reaffirmations of love?
Jesus accepted him and said
to the man who had failed him:
“Follow me!” and we hear
that this time Peter followed
for the rest of his life,
not entirely blameless,
but facing fear and helplessness
and faithful unto death.
So may we, blundering disciples,
reaffirm our vows of love,
and renew the faith of following.
Barbara Messner 30/04/2025
Doubt and Commitment
Doubt and Commitment
Easter 2; John 20:19-31
When I was ordained deacon
I was secretly glad
that the gospel that day spoke
of Thomas the doubter,
because I had my doubts -
of the institution
rather than of God,
and had been doubted,
by the institutionalized
rather than by God.
Before the doubts, Thomas said:
“Let us also go
that we may die with him.”
He fulfilled that commitment
later as a martyr in India,
but he was not with him
when Jesus was executed
by self-serving authorities.
Was it his failure to live up
to the courage of his commitment,
or was it grief and loss of hope
that plunged him into despairing doubt?
I too have had my times
of failure, grief and loss
leading to self-doubt,
and a flinching away,
not from the risen Christ
but from Christianity co-opted by empires.
Thomas refused the testimony of others
that Christ was risen,
saying he would only believe
what he could touch and see.
Our materialistic society
negates any truth
they say they can’t touch or see,
while keeping their eyes
blinded by screens and hype,
and their hands too busy making money,
or too clenched, hanging on.
If only they might decide,
to join a stranger
on their defeated walk home,
and listen to him on the road,
and invite him in to break bread,
and recognize him at last
with burning hearts.
If only, like Thomas and like me,
they might gather with others
at the right time and place
for prayer and the shared meal
in remembrance of him.
There Christ becomes present,
says: “Peace be with you!”
and offers his wounds
to touch and see.
If only they could be graced
by personal encounter
and say in profound affirmation:
“My Lord and my God!”
Now as a retired priest,
having struggled with failure
and wrestled with commitment,
I feel in my aching bones
that the wounds
of the Risen Christ,
and the pain and love
of doubting Thomas,
saint and martyr,
are calling to our world,
our wounded Earth,
and our sceptical society.
I long to hear that cry
of transformation:
“My Lord and my God”
but I don’t know how to evoke it.
Perhaps with fumbling words
which seem in some sense given,
I still hope to help some touch and see,
because I know that it is possible
for personal experience
and reawakened wonder
to replace doubt, bring joy from grief,
affirm new life and inspire change.
Barbara Messner 24/04/2025
Holiness and a Good Death
Holiness and a Good Death
Holy Week and Easter 2025
We call this week holy
and the day of his death good.
How did he live that holiness
knowing trauma and death
were closing in on him?
Though a victim of inhuman cruelty,
how did he die revealing
the goodness and love of God
and the potential of humanity?
Now in my seventies,
I look to him in this Holy Week,
hoping to learn how to live
my last days or decades
with some approach to holiness,
some sense of fulfilled purpose,
some hope of a good death.
Is holiness late in life
about connecting courageously
with the meaning and expression
of our lives and God’s love?
Is it also about connecting
with the whole creation
suffused with Spirit,
with stones that cry out
in celebration and grief,
with bread and wine consecrated
to be shared communion
in nurturing and suffering?
Reflecting on how he lived his last week,
I see affirmation accepted
in ironic humility,
lament for a blind society
failing to recognize
either God’s visitation
or the things that make for peace.
I see courageous protest
in enacted cleansing
of rigid acquisitive religion,
challenge in debate:
corruption denounced,
warning given
and justice demanded.
I see a devoted Jew
observing Passover,
drawing his friends together
and deepening traditional meaning
into further symbolism
of self sacrifice and liberation.
I see him underlining
with determined fervour
and hopeful compassion
his years of teaching
about generous love and service.
I see a vulnerable human being
in a garden on a mountain
bent to the supportive ground
in desperate prayer,
trying to accept the necessity
of his suffering and dying.
I see him betrayed,
denied, abandoned
by friends, but still loving,
and forgiving even those
who bring about his death,
not knowing what they are doing.
At the end, I see him speaking
last words of trusting faith:
“Father into your hands
I commend my Spirit.”
I honour his commitment
to revealing God’s presence
in love and forgiveness
even as a victim of human atrocity.
Let Holy Week and Good Friday
inspire my attempts
to live well whatever my life span.
When death comes to me,
may I find grace to repeat
his loving transition
to whatever is beyond,
to commend my spirit
to a continuity of love,
so that my death is good
both for me and those with me.
Barbara Messner 16/04/2025
Song for Holy Week
Song for Holy Week (to be sung to Kingsfold, the tune of “I heard the voice of Jesus say” Together in Song 585)
1. Their cheering had a hollow sound
that only he could hear.
Their expectation of a king
fell grating on his ear.
They thought that God’s Anointed One
would claim the throne to save.
The woman who anointed him
prepared him for the grave.
2. His challenge to all mis-used power
was not with sword but word.
The Spirit of the living God
ensures that word is heard
beyond one place and one brief time
now to all lands and years.
The faithful souls of every race
still mourn his death in tears.
3. Then at the dawn of Easter Day
we see his life arise
and breathe his Spirit into those
who wait for Love’s surprise.
So every year this Holy Week
has insights to explore.
Christ risen from the dead still shows
his death’s an open door.
Barbara Messner 11/04/2025
The House was Filled with the Fragrance
The House was Filled with the Fragrance
Lent 5; John 12:1-11
Whether or not he robs the common purse,
his carping words steal beauty from her choice,
and try to rob her of her hard won place
at Jesus’ feet, although her act gives voice
to gratitude for brother’s life restored
and grief prophetic of their teacher’s death.
The ones who come to see him chanting “Lord!”
are risking precious lives with every breath.
Now surely those he trusts must understand
the powers that be will fear this growing crowd!
Her love must give him all she has at hand;
she does not care what men think is allowed.
Her fragrance spreads and women in our day
are strengthened by what they hear Jesus say.
Barbara Messner 2/04/2025
The Prodigal Daughter
The Prodigal Daughter
Lent 4; Luke 15:11-32
A young woman went off to a faraway land
at a risk-taking age, with the gifts she had claimed.
There she more or less squandered the hopes she had dreamed,
for a love that her church-going lessons had blamed.
How she hungered, and lived for the scraps that he threw,
with her singer’s throat blocked by the tears she had shed,
and her letters back home didn’t mention the blight
of her unwise devotion to one who was wed.
Surely those who were waiting would meet her with blame
and the church of her childhood would set her apart.
When at last she returned and dared speak of her pain,
she was welcomed, forgiven and healed in her heart.
Sometime later she tested the call that she heard
and kept telling this story, determined to learn
whether those who would judge might accept her with grace,
knowing God pours out love on the lost who return.
Barbara Messner 26/03/2025
Unless You Repent
Unless You Repent
Lent 3; Luke 13:1-9
The victims of chance or a tyrant’s decree
did not die condemned for some personal sin,
but Jesus spoke harshly to let people see
society poised on the brink could fall in.
The axe that is laid at the roots of our tree
is nuclear war that no nation could win,
abuse of Earth’s climate and ecology,
seas swimming in plastic, disordered within.
We long for reprieve, like the tree in the tale,
with gardeners ready to tend and restore.
Has hope for the future been put up for sale
by power hungry leaders still grasping for more?
The prophets cry out: “Why is urgent work left?
Repent or leave Earth and our children bereft!”
Barbara Messner 21/03/2025
Lament for our Cities
Lament for Our Cities
Lent 2; Luke 13; 31-35
Weep for industrialized cities
where the sky is dirty
and the earth cemented,
where the waters are polluted
and the churches abandoned.
How often has the Child of the Creator
sought to restore the Earth,
and guide the people to healing
in the clean flow of the Spirit,
but we were not willing.
Wail for commercialized cities,
where the owners live for profits
and scoff at living prophets,
where the poor are left homeless,
or crowded into tenements.
How often has the Human One
longed to convince the privileged
to restore to the disadvantaged
a fair share in life’s necessities,
but we were not willing.
Grieve for materialistic cities
where Babel towers block the sun,
competing for symbolic heights
of commercial aggrandizement
and blighting humble enterprise.
How often has the Crucified Christ
been entombed in those basements,
waiting for the ones with the keys
to unlock hope and opportunity,
but we were not willing.
Lament for self-harming cities,
where depression is a pandemic
and rubbish and graffiti accumulate,
where crowds in tense weariness
cannot notice any for the many.
How often has the Risen Christ
desired to gather your children
together as a hen gathers
her brood under her wings
but we were not willing.
Barbara Messner 9/03/2025
Temptations in the Wilderness
Temptations in the Wilderness
Lent 1; Luke 4:1-15
I have walked that wilderness,
breathed its gritty, brazen air.
Seems our culture lodges there!
Voices work on our distress,
tempting us to be secure –
“Wealth can happiness ensure!”
Spirit dreams evaporate!
Bread is conjured out of stones,
our reward as worker drones.
“You can master petty fate!
Power will help you keep your nerve!
Just don’t question who you serve!”
“Then if you aspire to fame,
risky stunts you can’t refuse.
Time them well to make the news!
Soon you’ll be a household name,
guest star on a TV show.
It’s not what but who you know.”
He who blocked that tempting voice
with God’s word would dare the cross.
While we hide from pain of loss,
his is the transforming choice.
Let us in that wasteland find
Word of God for minds half-blind.
Barbara Messner 1/03/2022
Barb, poet priest 