Issue 5: “Haiku for an Advent Calendar”
"Poetry is a nightingale that sits in the darkness and sings."
-Percy Bysshe Shelley
Our mission at the Matthew 25 Initiative is to equip and sustain Anglicans serving alongside the vulnerable. The work of justice and mercy is often difficult work. Holding beauty and naming pain and hope is what M25i does well. Walter Brueggeman writes, "A poem utters the unutterable and thinks the unthinkable." Join us in this new series, "For the Soul." Out of suffering often, comes the most powerful worship. In places of brokenness, we encounter Jesus.
Brokenness, hurt, characters from the margins, unexpected plot twists, aching, wonder, wrestling, emptiness, hoping, glimpses of glory—this is the story of God in Christ. We would never have come up with that narrative. And so we worship.
Haiku for an Advent Calendar
by Richard Bauckham
Day 1 - Genesis
After paradise
not even Lot's wife looks back.
Memory turns round.
Day 2 - Exodus
The bones of Joseph
in their gilt sarcophagus
travel night and day.
Day 3 - Leviticus
If she is too poor
to afford a sheep, she may
offer two pigeons.
Day 4 - Numbers
Dawn in my distance,
the wise watchers will see him,
star of their searching.
Day 5 - Deuteronomy
Moses from Pisgah
overviews all. It is not
space but time he lacks.
Day 6 - Joshua
Going over Jordan
Joshua above all sees
that the ark goes first.
Day 7 - Judges
Said the trees to the
bramble, 'Come, be our ruler!'
'Wait!' said the mustard.
Day 8 - Samuel
Hannah, drunk as an
apostle at Pentecost,
magnifies the Lord.
Day 9 - Kings
She came with riddles.
His more than answers more than
took her breath away.
Day 10 - Isaiah
In the wilderness
a voice cries for centuries
seeking an echo.
Day 11 - Jeremiah
Rachel refuses
to be comforted - even
when we turn the page.
Day 12 - Ezekiel
In the end it is
all in the name of the city:
The Lord is there.
Day 13 -The Twelve Prophets
Then, as before, will
Bethlehem bear the shepherd
of the scattered sheep.
Day 14 - Psalms
If there were glory
only, praise like the last psalms,
would that be the end?
Day 15 - Proverbs
Too clever by half
are the foolish. The wise know
the folly of God
Day 16 - Job
God answered Job but
not his question. Maybe he
will do that again.
Day 17 - Song of Solomon
Yes, he will haste like
a gazelle. Nothing is more
impatient than love.
Day 18 - Ruth
Tough old Naomi
bounces a child on her knee -
her wild hope come home.
Day 19 - Lamentations
Jerusalem hurls
her desperate hopes against
God's forgetfulness.
Day 20 - Ecclesiastes
Whatever God does
and whoever else may be
who knows? The wise wait.
Day 21 - Esther
Probability
counts for nothing when Esther's
G-d is in the plot.
Day 22 - Daniel
Nebuchadnezzar
dreams of the doom of despots
and the wide world wakes.
Day 23 - Ezra-Nehemiah
After the exile
returnees did not look back
more than could be helped.
Day 24 - Chronicles
Adam, Seth, Enoch,
Noah, Abraham, David,
Zerubbabel ...
