The Shepherd On the Hillside

For Easter season, and Good Shepherd Sunday:

The shepherd on the hillside
climbs down into the glens:
A river runs from his side;
the sun shines through his hands.

For oh, his flock has wandered,
his own have gone astray,
the whole driven asunder,
each one to our own way.

The hills stripped bare of grasses
plunge down into the gloom:
a thousand deep crevasses,
a thousand crowded tombs.

And he will plumb each gravesite
to gather up the bones,
restoring what he made them,
their flesh and blood his own.

There shall be none abandoned,
no tombstone left unturned:
Each debtor shall be ransomed,
each prodigal returned.

In silence we await him,
in separate sorrows lie,
for none in death can praise him
'til dawn shall break on high.

Then oh, the light shall touch us
that's streaming from his hands.
See how the Shepherd loves us
and makes us whole again!

Fifth-century Ravenna mosaic illustrating the concept of The Good Shepherd By Meister des Mausoleums der Galla Placidia in Ravenna – The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=155308

Foolishness

O God, you know my words before I whisper;
you know my need, before the waves can break,
for foolishness that's wiser than my wisdom
and weakness that is stronger than my strength.

If I should fall in darkness, you would see me,
for all my shadows are to you as light.
If I should flee, yet you would come and seek me,
my deepest midnights open to your sight.

My farthest reaches are to you a handsbreadth;
if I am lost beyond them, you are there
encircling still my sunrise and my sunset
to meet me when I am I-know-not-where.

For all my wisdom has availed me nothing,
and all my strength has merely made me tired.
I know the road I took was long and muddy:
Let it still be your hand that is so mired.

Come, bring me back, O God, from edge to center,
and at the spinning stillpoint let me rest,
where wisdom bows down low enough to enter,
and strength slacks like an infant on your breast.

By Berthe Morisot – The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=155921

Small

Shall heaven, then, be small?
How shall we get inside
if there's no mighty gate and tall,
but just a needle's eye?

A keyhole for a door,
no wider than a nail:
How shall you draw us through it, Lord,
if mercy should not fail?

O you who came unseen,
encelled in Mary's womb,
who shrank all heaven to a gleam
and locked it in a tomb,

will surely open worlds
within the needle's eye
where even fools have lamps that burn
like torches in the night

and where the wayward flock
finds pasture by your stream,
a river pouring form the rock,
an ocean in its seam.

If I am not so small,
yet, Shepherd, give me rest
where many mansions rise up tall,
where once a spear had pierced.

Doubting Thomas – Google Art Project By Unknown – illuminator – hgFUz6bXaLmUQQ at Google Cultural Institute maximum zoom level, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22185693

O Sower

So he went in to stay with them.
And it happened that, while he was with them at table,
he took bread, said the blessing,
broke it, and gave it to them.
With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him,
but he vanished from their sight.
Then they said to each other,
“Were not our hearts burning within us
while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?”
Luke 24:13-35

O Sower, you became the seed
we buried in the dirt.
O Grower, you became the green
that covers all the earth.

For what we buried was transformed
from seed to stalks of wheat.
We gather you as you have grown
to be the bread we eat.

You bear for us a hundred-fold,
good measure, shaken down,
more treasure than our hands can hold
arising form the ground.

We hardly recognize our Lord
arisen from the dead
until we meet him in the Word
and in the broken bread.

In dying and in rising changed,
our brother glorified,
as near to us as bread we take,
as air that gives us life.

The Maker hides in what we made,
the Word within our words,
transforming us as he is changed,
renewing all the world.

The Sower, June 1888, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo. Inspired by Jean-François Millet Van Gogh made several paintings after The Sower by Millet By Vincent van Gogh – own photo in the Kröller-Müller museum, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3815454

Harvest

They plowed your back in furrows;
they dug into your ground,
that seeds might root and burrow
where mercy most abounds.

Your flesh became a garden,
good earth for fallen seeds;
your body bears a harvest,
riches from wheat and weeds.

The reapers come in season,
set sickle to the grain,
and gather even gleanings,
the gifts of sun and rain:

your goodness and your mercy
that you have poured on us,
the hungry and the thirsty.
We flourish in your dust.

Our gifts are of your growing:
We give them back to you
for milling or for sowing,
what you would have them do.

Then gather us, O Jesus,
who blossom in your soil
as fruit for heaven's feasting,
and let us share your joy.

Wheat Field Behind Saint-Paul Hospital with a Reaper By Vincent van Gogh – Google Art & Culture, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=87105273

His Mercy Yet Endures

Based on Psalm 118:

Let all the earth give thanks to God,
whose mercy yet endures.
Though for our sake it's battle-scarred,
his mercy yet endures.

For we set fire among the thorn,
but see! We were not burned.
And we set every beast aswarm:
Their stampede he has turned.

Through all that we have been and done
his mercy yet endures.
No matter how we turn and run,
he makes our steps secure.

The stone we cast out at the start
has given us its strength;
he is the keystone of our arch
and bears for us our weight.

Though we have fallen in the test,
this mercy still he gives:
The Shepherd lifts us to his breast.
We shall not die, but live.

And death itself is driv'n away—
Oh, raise the joyful shout!
This is the day the Lord has made,
who will not cast us out.

Battle of Klushino 1610 By Szymon Boguszowicz – http://www.kluszyn1610.pl, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10420915

Broken

Now a week later his disciples were again inside
and Thomas was with them.
Jesus came, although the doors were locked,
and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.”
Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands,
and bring your hand and put it into my side,
and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”
Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
John 20:19-31

We know you in the broken bread,
the wounds in hands and feet,
as one who comes here from the dead:
This is the Christ we meet.

You come to us transformed by pain:
God's only Son is marked
and bearing now the sign of Cain,
revealing God's own heart.

From timelessness you entered time;
you took our blood and breath
to bring us into life divine—
but, oh, that road is death.

We know you by the way you took;
your body is the map.
Now through the sundered veil we look
across the mortal gap.

For you have bid us peer inside 
the wounds in hands and feet.
New mercies open to our eyes,
deep calling out to deep.

And Cain, whose offering was refused,
is comforted at last,
the wheat he gave is finally used
to break the ancient fast.

For Abel has forgiven all,
whose blood spoke from the ground.
Through it we hear the Shepherd call
and know that we are found.

“The incredulity of Thomas” from an English manuscript, c.1504 By Unknown author – This image is available from the National Library of WalesYou can view this image in its original context on the NLW Catalogue, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44920993

Here and Now

A Eucharistic hymn, to the tune TALLIS’ CANON:

As once you walked in Nazareth
or on the shores of Galilee,
so you have come in bone and breath,
O living Christ, to walk with me.

They saw you in Jerusalem
and turned away or followed you.
They worshipped you in Bethlehem;
I cannot see, but worship, too.

For you, from all eternity
the Word of God, yet here and now,
have come again as God-with-me:
I am your temple in this hour.

You hide within these fragile crumbs;
invincible, you crumble here.
And in the shadows of the cup,
invisible, you still draw near.

The earth is as a grain of sand
you hold in being, Christ my Lord,
yet here I hold you in my hand
as Mary held you long before.

As someday we'll see face to face,
I seem to see you with my heart
and beg you give me now the grace
to love you here, my Lord and God!

Host displayed in a monstrance, flanked by candles while the Eucharist is adored by a kneeling altar server By Melchior2008 – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6091181Jesus im Brotsakrament, über Ihm, der Überlieferung nach, ein Stück seines Kreuzes im Reliquiar.

Into the Garden

Come, O Lord, into the garden
where we tasted good and ill;
come restore the heart we hardened,
wash away the blood we spilled.
When you've sunk beneath our burdens,
drunk the cup that mercy filled,
take us through the tearing curtain
to a place that's holier still.

Lead us onward from our Eden—
our beginning, not our end—
out beyond the bounds of healing,
through the wounds we seek to mend.
Past repairing to redeeming,
more than we can comprehend,
where the angels host are singing
songs we'll finally understand.

From the hell that you have harrowed,
from the weeping-watered tomb,
on the roadway straight and narrow,
through the desert now in bloom,
lead us onward through all sorrows,
past the joy we thought we knew,
to the day beyond tomorrows—
Make us there with all things new.

Expulsion from Paradise, painting by James Tissot (c. 1896–1902) By James Jacques Joseph Tissot (1836 – 1902) (French)Google Art Projectでのアーティストの詳細 – igGZ-wF6_0XnlQ at Google Cultural Institute maximum zoom level, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22493007

Emmaus

And he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are!
How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke!
Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things
and enter into his glory?”
Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets,
he interpreted to them what referred to him
in all the Scriptures.
As they approached the village to which they were going,
he gave the impression that he was going on farther.
But they urged him, “Stay with us,
for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.”
So he went in to stay with them.
And it happened that, while he was with them at table,
he took bread, said the blessing,
broke it, and gave it to them.
With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him,
but he vanished from their sight.
Luke 24:13-35

When I am in the dark
and cannot see the morn,
let there be one who comes, O God,
and wakes me to the dawn.

When I have lost all heart
and taken my way home,
let there be one who can impart
new mercies and new hope.

I know I am a fool
and slow to understand;
let there be one whose word is true
to come and take my hand.

And when the road is long
and weary as the day,
let thre be one when night comes on
who says that he will stay.

Who opens my sad eyes
to joy beyond this dread.
Let there be one I recognize
in breaking of the bread.

And when I take a part,
oh, let my blind heart see.
Let there be one who lifts the dark:
Let there be Christ for me!

Supper at Emmaus, Caravaggio, 1606, Milan – Web Gallery of Art: Image Info about artwork, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=509489