Get Behind Me Satan
Pentecost 17; Mark 8:27-38
“Get behind me Satan!”
he said to one he valued
as rock to build a church on:
worth noting just how quickly
key insights get distorted
by our survival instinct
and lustful need for power
to do away with suffering
and concentrate on winning.
“Oh! Get behind me Satan!”
he said to something in him:
a desperate human longing
to say pain must not happen,
to ask that God forbid it.
He fears that he might stumble
upon the block of safety:
be tempted to act godlike
instead of truly godly,
escape the mortal price tag
of death outside the city.
Cry: “Get behind me Satan!”
Alone upon the mountains
and in the midnight garden
he prayed for dispensation:
“Please let this cup pass from me!
Let’s do without communion
with blood and broken body.
Impervious and immortal,
I’ll lead a better empire
without the need for dying.”
“No, get behind me Satan!”
To be secure and powerful
are common human failings,
a self-defeating cycle
with endless streams of victims.
It’s human to be praying:
“Dear God, don’t let this happen
to us or those we treasure.
We can’t succumb to covid,
or mental loss in ageing,
or be displaced and homeless,
and as for facing dying,
we hope we barely notice
between a sleep and waking.”
But get behind me Satan,
for loving and creating
are forged through death and rising,
and God would rather suffer,
and share in being mortal,
than be untouched and distant,
unmoved, beyond our crying.
Take up your cross and follow
from tomb to resurrection.
Accepting loss means finding
what seems to be a failure
can bring God’s kingdom nearer.
Barbara Messner 27 August 2020 (busy week - old poem)
Cast Out Demons of Dishonour
Cast Out Demons of Dishonour
Pentecost 16; James 2:1-10, 14-17; Mark 7:24-37
You shall love your neighbour
as yourself,
yet we project unrecognized shadows
onto others,
or make distinctions that favour the rich,
dishonour the poor.
Historic grievances are ruins that drop
harm like bombs.
Demonizing difference spreads disease
through generations,
absorbed like pollution from the environment
and now from social media.
Even Jesus, vulnerable human, gone to Tyre
to escape notice,
defensively mouthed his culture’s prejudice,
speaking rudely
to the Syrophoenician woman, seeking
healing for daughter’s torment.
Yet Jesus showed the way of self-searching
that faces the shame
of rash judgement, acknowledges true words
heard and respected.
Brave challenge cast out demons of dishonour,
healing healer and child.
Barbara Messner 5/09/2024
My Song of Songs
My Song of Songs
Pentecost 15, Song of Songs 2:8-13
What if
God who loves is also lover
and I and every living thing
and even rocks and suns
are the Beloved
and longing and belonging is our song.
And what if
Eros and “I AM” are one
and I-Thou runs deep in every atom
and relationship is all there is
and the sacred craving to come into relationship
is the stuff of body and soul
of gravity and magnetism
of one dark woman with one shepherd-king
of I myself with (my god!) My God.
And what if
a community struggling for unity
and a mystic embracing emptiness
and a lover desiring consummation
and an ascetic straining for chastity
and a people wrestling with covenant
and a carpenter facing crucifixion
are truly all united in the one metaphor
show forth their meanings in the one parable:
the Kingdom of Heaven is like this:
the knowing that embraces all
the singing of a song of love
the Song of Songs.
Temples Come Temples Go
Temples Come, Temples Go
Pentecost 14, 1 Kings 8:1,6,10-11,22-30,41-43; John 6:56-69
King David imagined a house for the Lord:
it would have been visible gift and reward.
The prophet came back with God’s word of delay:
“Let Solomon take up this dream in his day!”
Stone walls lined with cedar encrusted with gold
would stand as four centuries’ stories unfold.
The beauty created for that time and place
was broken by Babylon, leaving no trace.
When Jesus predicted their temple would fall,
those leaders decided to silence his call,
but forty years later, a litter of stones
was all that remained, like some dinosaur’s bones.
So let us imagine, and when time is right
it may be a dream will take flesh in our sight,
but can we let go of the forms of the past
when God calls us on to a new age at last?
Wise Solomon knew that the house they had made
with all of its beauty and meaning displayed
could never contain and define the divine –
God’s Spirit might take flesh in bread and in wine,
or come to fruition in one precious life
laid down as a gift when oppression was rife,
to rise like a temple rebuilt in three days,
the one who gives form to all meaning and praise.
Barbara Messner 18/08/2021
Flesh to Eat
Flesh to Eat
Pentecost 13; John 6:51-58
How can this man give us his flesh to eat?
Not cannibals, communicants are we!
To give his flesh as bread subverts defeat,
forgiving our betrayals yet to be.
So often he disturbs our literal sense,
upsets convention, challenges what’s right,
and then must bear the brunt of our offence,
flesh broken, blood poured out, the looming night.
His body swallowed whole by death and tomb
is by his rising free for all to share:
to eat this bread will make in us the room
for flesh to mate with Spirit, if we dare.
Then we will bear the Christ. Our hands and feet
will do his work, creation made complete.
Barbara Messner 11/08/2021
Grieving over Lost Sons and Daughters
Grieving Over Lost Sons and Daughters
Pentecost 11; 2 Samuel 18:5-9, 14, 31-33; Luke 13:34,35
David wept:
“O my son Absalom,
my son, my son Absalom!
Would I had died instead of you,
O Absalom, my son, my son!”
How many weep
for sons and daughters
caught by the head
between heaven and earth,
caught by the trap of mind
dislocated from body and soul!
How many weep
for the pierced hearts
of rebellious youth
and of the parents,
set apart and waiting,
who cannot save them!
Jesus weeps
on the outskirts of our cities,
and wants to gather the children
as a hen gathers her brood
under her wings,
but they are not willing.
See, our house is left to us
until we can truly say:
“Blessed is the one who comes
in the name of the Lord.”
Barbara Messner 7/08/2024
Day after the Miracle
Day after the Miracle
Pentecost 11; John 6:24-35
When they found him next day Jesus said:
“You have eaten your fill of the loaves,
but you fail to see feeding as sign.”
They were asking what works he would do
to be proof that was worth their belief,
though they’d seen a child’s lunch feed them all.
Seems our eyesight’s as blinkered as theirs,
for though miracles happen around,
we think matter is all that exists.
Do we seek him for what we might get?
Can we recognize hunger of soul?
If we saw signs of God would we know?
Food that perishes? We are replete,
and we throw away more than we eat,
but our inner ache won’t be appeased.
We are lame though we walk on two feet,
We’re not well though our bodies are strong.
It is meaning we crave but can’t see.
“Bread of life” is what Christ claims to be.
We’re dismissive of truth’s metaphor,
and unseeing to portents and signs.
Yet undaunted he teaches and heals,
and our hunger and thirst lead us on
to recognize he’s what we need.
Barbara Messner 1/08/2024
Feeding, Healing, Sailing
Feeding, Healing, Sailing
Pentecost 10; John 6:1-21
Fish and loaves multiplied
cannot feed jaded lives.
Bellies full, vacant souls
ransacked by affluence,
will not seek Jesus out
on a hill, by a lake,
will not reach praying hands:
“Teacher, feed! Wise One, heal!”
When the storms overwhelm,
and this Earth, like a boat,
balance lost, starts to sink,
darkened eyes, fixed on fear,
will not see Jesus walk.
Only say, “Come, Lord! Come!”
Calm will flow, minds will clear,
and safe shores might appear.
Barbara Messner 19/07/2024
Our Need of Healing
Our Need of Healing
Pentecost 9, Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
What might we learn if we gathered to share
all we have taught and done?
Jesus would listen and help us discern
what we have lost and won.
Bodies can eat here, but souls are half-starved.
We come and go distressed.
He says, “Let’s go to a peaceful place,”
calming our breath to rest.
Ours not the worry of large hungry crowds:
sheep here admit no need.
Few now respond to the shepherd’s voice,
straying too far to heed.
Can we cross over to that other shore
where we might recognize
sickness of soul has infected the Earth?
Scales need to fall from eyes.
Heedless, prostrate in the marketplace,
stricken by what we buy,
where is the will to reach out to him?
Would we prefer to die?
Who can admit that we need to heal
country and air and seas?
We are consumed by consumer needs,
deaf to the word that frees.
Can his compassion encompass us,
teach us to turn and live?
He gave his life to enliven us
so we in turn might give.
Barbara Messner 14/07/2021
Sacred Dance
Sacred Dance
Pentecost 7, 2 Samuel 6, 1-5, 12-20, Mark 6:14-29
I have witnessed sacred dancing
that has stirred my very being:
wordless meaning that’s enhancing
prayer inspired by what I’m seeing –
spirit stirring, feelings freeing.
Yet our mainstream church disdains it,
though the censure is unspoken:
formal liturgy restrains it
into gestures that are token,
careful that no power is woken.
With exuberance, King David
danced before the Lord uncovered,
clad in nothing but an ephod.
Scornful wife at window hovered,
voiced past angers rediscovered.
When Herodias and daughter
used seductive dance, entrancing
king to order Baptist’s slaughter,
sex and politics were prancing,
poles apart from sacred dancing.
Yet religious fears have banished
all that dance might offer to us.
Shame in bodies has not vanished.
We’re unsure if what flows through us
might seduce us or renew us.
All the arts aspire to power
that can shake us or remake us.
Spirit gifts, abused, will sour;
linked to God, they stir and wake us.
Who can know where that might take us?
Barbara Messner 7/07/2021
Barb, poet priest 