Poems for the Passion

A Set of Seven Poems on themes of Christ’s Passion corresponding to seven chorale preludes for organ by J.S. Bach

Hilf, Gott, dass mir’s gelinge

Help me force these syllables into rhyme to the praise of your glory!

You put on skin, O Holy God,

and faced a vicious world.

Your words were plain

yet piercing to their ears.

They forced you to explain yourself;

to say why kings would say

the last are first.

They forced you through the streets

and up a hill.

They forced a nail through your hand.

Force me to my knees,

so that my joints and sinews

will re-live a portion of your pain.

Force my timid, fear-filled voice

to speak and sing,

in thanks as deep as the pools of your mercy.

© 2005 John Thornburg

[I was immediately struck by the notion of forcing syllables into rhyme in order to give God praise. While I didn’t use rhyme in the poem, I did focus on the notion of Christ being forced to bear pain. ]

Christe, du Lamm Gottes

You who bear the sin of the world, have mercy on us!

In your presence, Lord, I shake.

My knees give way;

My sorrow sits upon my soul

like chains upon the captive’s neck.

The sands of all the world’s dunes

have shifted less than my capricious will.

But when my prostrate body aches the most

and I am swallowed by despair

I feel descending mercy..

the warmth that thaws my frozen shame,

the rain that wets my arid pride,

the hand that lifts me to my feet.

And I can say, “Have mercy, Lord,”

because my upright body

tells me you are mercy through and through.

© 2006 John Thornburg

[Here I was highly influenced by the descending hexachord, and by Riemenschneider’s interpretation of that figure as “the prostrating of the petitioner before his savior”.  I spent some of the summers of my childhood on the shores of Lake Michigan where there are many sand dunes, and I recall the awe and surprise of how quickly they could change shape. I also speak from the center of my own piety when I say that the only way we can ask God to have mercy is if, in some portion of our being, we have unwavering confidence that mercy is God’s essential quality. ]

Christus, der uns selig macht

..falsely accused, jeered, mocked, and spat upon..

He came to give a different view

of how the world was meant to be.

He came to pardon and to bless.

The crowd was not prepared for him.

They knew the sword, the savage fist;

the taunt, the curse, the mortal threat.

The soldiers, barely men themselves,

could not ignore the energy,

the hatred hanging in the air.

They maimed the unarmed Nazarene,

the Carpenter whose only tools

were courage and humility.

They pushed and beat; they scorned and mocked.

The people loosed the kind of screams

that turned their faces red and raw.

“The donkey should have been our clue!

What kind of fool would follow you?”

© 2006 John Thornburg

[The chorale text has the wonderful quality of reminding us of the end of the story; that Christ’s atoning love ‘makes us blessed.’ But the text is also plain about the brutality of the mob.  I tried to follow the same order as the chorale text, speaking first of Christ’s purpose in loving us, and then speaking of the “godless people.” (gottlose Leut)]

O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde gross

He wanted to become the Mediator..

You came to be the In Between,

to bring the seed of heavenly love

and plant it in the soil of earth.

We looked on you, the Word made flesh,

and saw what life was meant to be.

But somehow, this was not enough.

We viewed the path that you had blazed

as costing more than we could pay.

Your outstretched arms were ample proof

that selfless love results in death.

We wanted life on our own terms.

Come once again, Lord Jesus Christ,

and stretch your wounded arms this way.

Massage the hardness of our hearts

that we may offer true lament.

© 2006 John Thornburg

[The word that struck me from the beginning in this text was the German, Mittler, translated ‘mediator.’]

Da Jesus an dem Kreuze stund

..consider in your heart the seven words that He spoke there.

When pain is so intense that nothing else is real,

when moments seem like days,

and every breath could be the last we draw,

where is the book,

the map,

the chart,

from which we learn

the route along this passageway?

It hangs upon the cross, encased in flesh.

So human that he cried aloud the Psalmist’s lamentation,

and asked for drink,

yet so replete with trust he reached beyond the pain,

and tended to the one who gave him birth,

and offered Paradise to thieves,

and pardon to the hateful crowd.

© 2006 John Thornburg

[The Chorale text recommends to the hearer that s/he ponder the seven final utterances of Jesus upon the cross. This was an attempt to encapsulate those ‘words’. But it is also an attempt to say that when people in our own day face excruciating pain, they have someone who has gone before them and given an example of placing trust in God even in the midst of that pain. It is not surprise that we should refer to intense pain as ‘excruciating’, given that the word is formed from the Latin words meaning ‘from the cross.’]

O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig

You have borne all sin, for otherwise we would have to despair.

What do I carry, Lord?

What is the weight I bear?

The shirt I bought

The mail that came

The bag I packed

The dream I had

The meal I missed

The job I lost

What did you carry, Lord,

as you hung upon the cross?

What was the weight your shoulders bore?

The curse we yelled

The doubt we hid

The plot we sewed

The coins we got

The love we missed

The door we shut

But burdened as you were,

you spoke a word that those with ears could hear.

“Forgive.”

We slaughtered you.

You gave us life.

© 2006 John Thornburg

[This is nothing more or less than an attempt to juxtapose what Christ bore upon the cross with some of the things we bear, trivial by comparison.] 

Wir danken dir, Herr Jesu Christ, dass du für uns gestorben bist

..[you] have made us, through your precious blood just and good in the sight of God.

We tried to do it on our own.

We bought the book, we took the course.

But soon we stumbled on the truth:

We are not saved by being smart.

We wanted to be pure in thought

unstained by culture’s evil turn.

But our deceit was all too plain:

We are not saved by being right.

We set our goals and worked the plan.

We did not waste a single breath.

But still we had an ache inside:

We are not saved by what we do.

In you alone, Lord Jesus Christ,

is our salvation to be found.

By faith in your unfailing grace,

we give our thanks, we live and die.

© 2006 John Thornburg

[Because the energy and joy of this chorale prelude foreshadows the joy of resurrection more than any of the others, I felt a little more playfulness poetically, hence the more colloquial approach. Since the theological centerpiece of the chorale text is that Christ makes us just and good through his act of redemption, I wanted to offset the work of Christ with our failed attempt to save ourselves.]