I’m making a conscious effort in 2019 to develop my skill at writing poetry. I’m trying to learn and understand the rules, with marginal success, though you may notice an increase in the amount of poetry that appears on the blog as I experiment. You are nothing more than guinea pigs to me.
Anyway, I was reading a poem that referenced the story in Mark 2, where Jesus heals the paralytic man who is lowered through the roof by his friends, and it gave me a crazy idea – how about writing a different poem for every story in Mark’s gospel? It’s an ambitious project that I have no intention of actually starting any time soon, but it’ll sit there on the back burner of my mind for the coming years. Never say never.
The thing about setting the gospel stories to poetry is that it encourages you to come at them from an uncommon angle. It’s not too different to that way I like to construct a sermon in that regard. For example, take the story in Mark 2. It’s familiar to many of us, with familiar points and familiar conclusions, but I was thinking about it from a different perspective this morning.
I imagined myself sitting there, in my small, enclosed room, with Jesus, listening to him teaching and speaking. That’s where I want to be. I’m perfectly happy there. But there’s a world of hurt outside; a world that I’m actually supposed to be engaging with and bringing healing to. Sometimes I forget that world’s there, and I lose myself in blissful isolation that has warped from something important into something selfish. As much as it annoys me to be covered in plaster, I sometimes need the hurting world to intrude and forcefully interrupt my naval-gazing. It reminds me that there are people outside, and by making a great hole in the roof they are letting fresh air into my world and giving me a glimpse of the sky.
If I ever get round to writing a poem on Mark 2, that’s what it will be about.
