Bible people, Bible-based poems

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 20^th and 21^st 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

…