After centuries of the King James Version of the Bible and Douay-Rheims
providing the main English editions to choose from, biblical scholars and
interdenominational committees revisited the ancient Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic
texts to provide us with contemporary versions we could more readily
understand.
For quite a while in the 20th and 21st
centuries, Bible publishers regularly released new translations, updated versions,
and reader-targeted editions of God’s Word. But then, with the ebbing of that flood, we now have
fewer Bibles to review.
Most likely, this will change as new archeological finds and knowledge
of biblical languages and cultures increase. Meanwhile, I hope you’ll welcome some
Bible story poems that, I pray, will speak to your spirit.
As a life-long lover of the Bible and an avid reader of most of
the translations I’ve reviewed, I enjoy getting to know God’s people – those present
and those long past. Since my first writing love is poetry, it was inevitable
that some of my Bible favorites would find themselves portrayed in A Gathering of Poems – the 2020 collection of my previously published (and a few new) poems.
Returning People
They’ve
come, you know.
They've
come through
Genesis
singing Psalms
and
Lamentations and landing
at
your kitchen table. Sometimes
they
walked. Sometimes they
danced.
Sometimes they dragged
themselves
through First and
Second
Chronicles into one
war
then another around a world
that
rolls like parchment across
four
walls where you sometimes
think
you’re cornered until
they
remind you that you’re not.
Listen.
They come with slings and
tambourines,
flatbread and wine.
They
come carrying poems,
prayers,
and sometimes swords –
whatever
it takes to get them
through
a chapter and onto the
next
revelation of what it means
to
have a body, know a body
and
be one, upright, with you,
around
the table.
“Returning People” was included in the book What A Body! published by CSS Publishing
...
Choosing Judah
from Genesis 49
No
matter how you brace yourself,
your
father’s death moves toward you
like
a sirocco, steering dust and famine.
What
do you want stirred before he dies?
A
word of love? Respect? Or at last, just
an
acknowledgement that, yes, you lived.
How
quickly time has passed! As you
gather
for your father’s final blessing,
the
Promised Land consists of little real
estate
– little more than a grave or cave
for
burying, little more than an avowal
to
hand down instead of deed and title,
but
with that breath of blessing comes
a
word from God, inherited by faith.
Judah,
of all of Jacob's offspring, you
alone
have shown you know a day will
come
when each of you must stand
on
the indwelling of a word with deed –
as
though the promise is as real as
land
or life or the breath of a dozen
sons
and daughters. Brace yourself
for
the embrace of the wind. Can
you
stand to be the Father’s chosen?
"Choosing Judah” first appeared online on Catholic
Exchange
...
The Object of Conversation
from Genesis 15 and Numbers 12
They’re
talking about you, Miriam. They’re
talking
about how you should have married and
had
a family of your own instead of hovering
over
the one drawn from the water, long ago.
They’re
talking about you as though you’re
absent
– as though no female prophet, past or
present,
could count herself as blessed as any
man
who speaks, face to face, with God.
Outside
the camp of jealousy in the weak site
of
leprosy, can you forgive your brother Moses
for
having to intercede for you and pray when
you
would prefer it to be the other way around?
Neither
forgiveness nor forgetfulness will come
by
your welcoming death, so save your breath!
And
just so you'll know, this talk goes on and
on
in Bible circles where we discuss how rivalry
erupted,
corrupting your pores with your longing
to
speak for God – to stand alone and yet belong
among
the prophetically great leaders of the world.
So
we interpret you as we see fit: appraising right,
assessing
wrong, but even now we sing your song.
Jewish journal, Bridges, first published “Object of Conversation.”
...
Jesus touches the untouchable
prayer-a-phrase from Luke 5
In a town
[yes,
in town where lepers were not allowed]
a man filled with leprosy came
to Jesus
and fell down onto the ground on his face -
[his
pitiful face, which, maybe, had only a little left
of
a nose, a lip, a chin.]
And when he’d fallen face-down
before the LORD,
he implored, “If You will,
You can heal my skin and make
me clean again.”
“I will!” Jesus said. “Be healed!”
and
He reached out His immaculate hand
to
touch the untouchable man.
“Jesus Touches the
Untouchable” initially appeared in Altarworks
...
Four Corners Come
from Mark 4
and
the wind grows
in
its wildness,
and
waves rush
into
the Sea of Galilee,
and
old stories of swine
drowning
in these
waters
rise and surface,
churning
whitecaps
as
Jesus calls:
“Be still. Be
still,” and
the waters
calm,
and you and I
will
settle this in peace.
"Four Corners Come" was first published in the National Catholic Reporter
...
Message to Mary
written between the lines of Matthew 28
and John 20
Her
grief had killed him early,
coming
like liquid into His lungs,
finishing
the asphyxiation begun
on
the Cross. And He felt grateful
for
her not leaving Him. But
how
He hated to see her, pacing,
kneeling,
wailing, as she chased
away
the dogs snapping at His feet.
No
mother should have to see this,
He
told Himself, tucking her tears
into
the folds of His own body.
“It
is Finished,” He cried aloud,
hoping
she would hear.
She’d
shown Him all a child should
know:
how to hang His cloak
on
a peg and roll a mat or fold blankets
so
the bedding could be neatly stacked.
She
would see Him again soon,
but
He wished to end her grief sooner.
Taking
off the shroud that bound Him
to
the dead, He folded the fabric
of
His funeral and left behind His linens
in
the tomb for her to find.
“Message to Mary” originally appeared in The Anglican Theological Review
...
For
You,
I turned water into wine,
purified in the veins
of My own body. I climbed
mountains, healed
crowds of hunger, warmed a
leper’s skin. For
you I chastised leaders, halted
stones, wrote on
the ground each word contained
in Love.
I overturned unfair prices and
low wages, tabled
discussions about who’s first
or last, and enjoyed
the most unlikely company.
Before My execution, I tamed a
donkey, became
your beast of burden, then bled
from every pore.
Once for all, I buried death,
and, when I arose,
some saw Me. Some heard Me as I
broke through
the veil, cloaking time and
eternity, and, yes,
for you, I’d do it all again.
Amen.
“For You,” previously published in Altarworks
...
©2021 Mary Sayler, poet-author, reviewer, pray-er, and lover of the Body of Christ in all its parts
…