“The Agony”

Minister’s Letter – 

Friends, some people would call me aesthetically challenged. I’m more a low-brow sort of guy, crime fiction rather than the English classics. So I confess I don’t know too much about art and music and poetry and literature. But I know what I like.  

And God our Creator has set us in a world of beauty, where people – at their best – can paint and sing and write great depths of meaning and magnificence. But sometimes their works require a little effort to penetrate and appreciate those depths.

Take this poem I share with you for Good Friday! I needed to consult the dictionary (hence my hints in brackets) and re-read it. But wait till you read the last two lines…

THE AGONY, by George Herbert (1593-1633)

Portrait by Robert White, 1674

(National Portrait Gallery, London)

         Philosophers have measured mountains,

Fathom’d the depths of seas, of states, and kings,

Walk’d with a staff to heaven, and traced fountains

         But there are two vast, spacious things,

The which to measure it doth more *behove: [*to be fitting]

Yet few there are that sound them; Sin and Love.

         Who would know Sin, let him *repair  [= *go]      

Unto Mount Olivet; there shall he see

A man, so wrung with pains, that all his hair,

         His skin, his garments, bloody be.

Sin is that Press and Vice, which forceth pain

To hunt his cruel food through every vein.

         Who knows not Love, let him *assay,                [= *try, attempt]

And taste that juice, which on the cross a *pike        [= *sharp point, e.g. of a spear]

Did set again *abroach; then let him say                  [= *tap/unplug, e.g. a cask]

         If ever he did taste the like.

Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,

Which my God feels as blood; but I, as wine.

This Good Friday, I pray you can rejoice in the 'sweet liquor' of Jesus, who loved us and gave himself for us. Though it was won at the cost of his blood, taste it as wine!

In Christ,
Sandy Grant, Dean of Sydney