Holy Week Poems
Here are several poems I have written for Holy Week (Passion Week), grouped by the day. I’m working toward a larger project that I hope to share in the future, but in the meantime I hope this page serves as a resource for you, your small group, or your church during Holy Week.
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Maundy Thursday
Judas in the Upper Room
“He sends rain on the just and the unjust.” — Matthew 5:45
Incessantly, the water poured and poured
over my calloused feet. The dappled silence
stretched long and dead like trees across a gorge,
the fallout of some rot or hidden violence.
Then Jesus took my feet and our eyes met.
He stared at me, I feared, as if to say
he knew the paths my feet had walked, the debt
I owed—but no: he smiled. I looked away
and felt: the working of a servant’s rag—
his promised revolution’s timid thorns—
the thirty silver daggers in my bag—
the man that could have been—my patience worn
until the task was done. He set me free
and welcomed me to join him at his feast.
Eucharist
Each word in this poem is contained in the word “Eucharist.”
Their Christ recast,
their hearts astir,
heirs trace his art,
etch this richest rite.
(Read more about this poem here.)
Gethsemane
Each word in this poem is contained in the word “Gethsemane.”
Tense.
The stage set.
Sent as man's easement,
he sang an ashen amen.
(Read more about this poem here.)
Gethsemane’s Amen
Your flesh was weak like ours, tempted and pressed
“If you are willing, take this cup from me,”
you pleaded in that garden, so distressed
your body bled from mental agony.
But, willing to be crushed, you passed the test
that all of us have failed beneath that tree:
you trusted God, obedient to death,
left good and evil to God’s sovereignty.
You let him press our sins into your story—
the priests and Judas, Pilate and the crowd—
all grasping for our fleeting crowns of glory,
but God anointed you above the clouds.
We praise ambition, but the world was won
with this: “Yet not my will, but yours be done.”
(Read more about this poem here.)
Failure
In two faithless feet beginning to sink, or eleven pairs huddled in fright? In three loud denials exposed by the fire, or the ones hid away in the night?
Good Friday
The Via Dolorosa
Like Peter and like Satan we correct you
and let you know that there’s a better way:
a crown without the cross where they reject you,
an Easter with no Holy Saturday.
But you insist, so we, puffed up with pride,
all pledge to journey with you to the end,
in jail or death to suffer by your side.
And for a little while we pretend
until the rooster crows and we awake
to find that we’ve rejected you as well,
your Way of Suffering too much to take—
and so you walk alone. Three times you fell
beneath the ceaseless burden of our pride,
daring the death we said you shouldn’t have died.
(Read more about this poem here.)
The Cross and the Lynching Tree
We shudder at the inhumanity,
the crafted cruelness of that sickening show:
the stripped humiliation, blasphemy
of beaten flesh, death’s agonies stretched slow
by fellow men created in God’s image,
turned terrorists, enslaved to sin’s strange fruit.
How could they mock the marred and lifeless visage
of God’s own child? His axe is at the root!
We tremble more: If we were in that crowd,
would we have spoken up? or wept? or cared?
Would we have stood against those winds or bowed?
Or did we lead the mocking? “Were you there…?”
the Negro spiritual demands—and, trying,
we answer “no,” but know that we are lying.
Crucifixion
Each word in this poem is contained in the word “Crucifixion.”
[INRI]
Ironic
icon: crux of our
ruin,
crux
of
our
fix
(Read more about this poem here.)
Holy Saturday
Saturday
Each word in this poem is contained in the word “Saturday.”
Daystar
as dust,
rays
rust.
(Read more about this poem here.)
Easter Sunday
Resurrection
Each word in this poem is contained in the word “Resurrection.”
Cinereous stone
unset—our sun
is risen!
Sin in ruins,
terror's tenure
torn,
one rescuer
incurs, inters
our curse,
returns to us
our cure, our rest,
our course.
(Read more about this poem here.)
Keyhole
But then in that impenetrable door
which darkens full the end of history's hall
was carved a keyhole cast of dust and lore
that casts the stroke of dawn upon the wall.
Now staring at the sight, we see a man
set bright against death's dark finality;
and peering through the light we spy his plan:
our world set right for all eternity.
His body shows the life that we can know
beyond that door, mysteriously new;
his words are truth who told us long ago:
he is the only way to enter through.
He lights our path whom darkness cannot hold:
Christ is the keyhole—glimpse and gate twofold.
A Mystery
For all the metaphors you give in Scripture
and all the vast theologies we’ve penned,
our highest thoughts are never more than pictures
of mysteries we cannot comprehend.
“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations?”
you questioned Job. You call us higher still:
to marvel at the ground of new creation
you laid upon that God-forsaken hill.
We do not grasp the heights of what you’ve done
or what it will be like to see your face
and to explore, in ages yet to come,
the bright and boundless vistas of your grace.
For now, we know in part, our joys still dim
compared to further up and further in.
His Hand
after a painting by Emily Knowles Then, hovering above the formless deep, he plunged his hand in, shattering the seas with brushstrokes of volcanic flame, the leap of islands, dolphins, ages, symphonies and heartbeats rising, prismed out from light unbreakable—his creativity unbound, and bound, our story set to write. But we ignored him—hoarded all he gave. He offered us his hand—we chose the grave. And so the one who birthed the universe conceived to paint himself, unformed, within one woman’s womb—to crown and cry and nurse, his fingers gripping tight her tender skin— and grow until the day his wood-worn hands would rebuild lives destroyed by sickness, sin, despair, and death—helping the lowly stand. But we betrayed him—killed him like a slave. We pierced the hands of Love for all they gave. I wonder sometimes what his hands were like when Thomas touched those wounds, somehow untouched by even resurrection’s healing light— and how those hands that hued the world and clutched his mother’s breast will always bear the scars of love poured out, ignored, rejected, crushed, that we might hold the hand that holds the stars.
You can find graphics for almost all of these poems on my Instagram.
Thank you to the following publications for originally publishing these poems:
Clayjar Review: Gethsemane’s Amen
Cultivating: Failure
Ekstasis Magazine: A Mystery, Judas in the Upper Room, Keyhole
The Lent Project: The Via Dolorosa
PAX: His Hand
Sojourners: The Cross and the Lynching Tree
Solum Journal: Eucharist, Gethsemane, Crucifixion, Saturday, Resurrection