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Those of you from non-liturgical backgrounds might not know that today is Palm Sunday, which (in the Lutheran church, at least,) is also the Sunday of the Passion. I think the Catholics might break that up into two sundays, but I could be wrong.
This means we have two gospels. The first is the Palm Sunday gospel sometimes read in a processional: Jesus' entry into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, with crowds singing Hosanas and lining his path with palm fronds and cloaks. The second Gospel reading is the entire Passion narrative, i.e. everything from the Last Supper through the Crucifixion. In my home congregation, we read it as kind of a dramatic presentation, with verses to the Gospel Hymn interspersed to break it up. This year, the lectionary is taken from the Gospel of Mark, the most concise of the Gospels. And we take out the sermon to make room. Still, it's a long service when you put in the whole Passion narrative. For those of us who go to all the Holy Week services, as I do, it means we hear everything twice: the Last Supper on Maundy Tursday, and the Crucifixion on Good Friday.
Anyway, there's a really cool poem by Robert Cording, called
"The Man Running Naked into the Dark"
Mark 14:51-52. A certain young man was following him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked.
Biblical scholars cannot identify him. He appears
Only to Mark. Then he’s gone, a man running
Alongside his shadow. The clouds slide shut,
Slide open. The moon crawls over the Garden
Of Olives, another shadow on the dark. Christ
Has been praying. He’s tired of being a god,
But he cannot sleep. The disciples cannot keep
From sleeping. Their sleep bewilders them;
Their despair is a comfort. All night they learn
The circumnavigations of self-justification.
When the man appears, Judas has just given away
The one he loves. The soldiers are rounding up
Christ’s followers. The kingdom has come; at last
The disciples feel the terror of choosing life
Or death, no fear like the present. They swallow
Their cries. The man in the linen cloth is stopped.
When he looks at Christ, the man understands
The ambush of the soul in torment, the soul in paradise.
He thought perhaps he could merely be an onlooker.
But now Christ’s eyes are upon him and in them
He knows what it is to be entirely himself.
When Christ speaks, the man hears his own voice
And sees everything he wanted in the other’s face—
A shining peace—but beneath that peace a skull
And beneath the skull, more light. Then the soldiers
Catch hold of his linen cloth, and the man
Is twisting out of their grasp, running naked into
The night. We have only this meagre scrap
Of information, though we know what it is like
To leave and never find our way back, know
That sackcloth of shame, that face of fear and desire,
The hour looming like the moon’s open eye as the man
Turns back just once to see the face of Christ
Disappearing before he passes back into darkness.
It was written in 2004. I'm not that big on most modern poetry, and I don't tend to like free verse, and this poem is both. I heard it during Chapel my senior year at Luther College and fell in love with it.
This means we have two gospels. The first is the Palm Sunday gospel sometimes read in a processional: Jesus' entry into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, with crowds singing Hosanas and lining his path with palm fronds and cloaks. The second Gospel reading is the entire Passion narrative, i.e. everything from the Last Supper through the Crucifixion. In my home congregation, we read it as kind of a dramatic presentation, with verses to the Gospel Hymn interspersed to break it up. This year, the lectionary is taken from the Gospel of Mark, the most concise of the Gospels. And we take out the sermon to make room. Still, it's a long service when you put in the whole Passion narrative. For those of us who go to all the Holy Week services, as I do, it means we hear everything twice: the Last Supper on Maundy Tursday, and the Crucifixion on Good Friday.
Anyway, there's a really cool poem by Robert Cording, called
"The Man Running Naked into the Dark"
Mark 14:51-52. A certain young man was following him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked.
Biblical scholars cannot identify him. He appears
Only to Mark. Then he’s gone, a man running
Alongside his shadow. The clouds slide shut,
Slide open. The moon crawls over the Garden
Of Olives, another shadow on the dark. Christ
Has been praying. He’s tired of being a god,
But he cannot sleep. The disciples cannot keep
From sleeping. Their sleep bewilders them;
Their despair is a comfort. All night they learn
The circumnavigations of self-justification.
When the man appears, Judas has just given away
The one he loves. The soldiers are rounding up
Christ’s followers. The kingdom has come; at last
The disciples feel the terror of choosing life
Or death, no fear like the present. They swallow
Their cries. The man in the linen cloth is stopped.
When he looks at Christ, the man understands
The ambush of the soul in torment, the soul in paradise.
He thought perhaps he could merely be an onlooker.
But now Christ’s eyes are upon him and in them
He knows what it is to be entirely himself.
When Christ speaks, the man hears his own voice
And sees everything he wanted in the other’s face—
A shining peace—but beneath that peace a skull
And beneath the skull, more light. Then the soldiers
Catch hold of his linen cloth, and the man
Is twisting out of their grasp, running naked into
The night. We have only this meagre scrap
Of information, though we know what it is like
To leave and never find our way back, know
That sackcloth of shame, that face of fear and desire,
The hour looming like the moon’s open eye as the man
Turns back just once to see the face of Christ
Disappearing before he passes back into darkness.
It was written in 2004. I'm not that big on most modern poetry, and I don't tend to like free verse, and this poem is both. I heard it during Chapel my senior year at Luther College and fell in love with it.
