Tonight I am reading some of my own poetry in the Robeson Center at Rutgers-Newark, along with a bunch of other people as well. I finalized my poems last night, ones I had previously written but needed some more tedious editing (I am a big editor, not as much as Lowell or Bishop, but I rewrite five or more times before I am kind-of-happy).
Poetry is great to read individually, like any good book, essay, article, or sermon. But poetry is at its finest when it is read aloud communally, so that everyone can take in the words and chew over them a bit, caught up in the beauty of language.
I think liturgy does that. Liturgy is spoken out loud in responsive reading, sermon, and song. In the wonder of a good sermon or hymn the beauty of Christ, the Word in flesh, strikes at our souls.
The psalms and the prophets are the most poetic of the Biblical authors. At least we think they are. Contemporary biblical scholarship is finding that more and more of Paul’s writing is not didactic but poetic: Philippians 2 for example.
Most all major translations of the Bible publish the text of Philippians 2:5-11 like this:
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (ESV)
But when rendered in hymn form, the text changes from being doctrinal to being liturgical and poetic, a celebration of God’s wondrous work instead of an explanation of it:
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not count equality with God
a thing to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the form of a servant,
being born in the likeness of men.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself by becoming obedient
to the point of death,
even death on a cross.
Therefore God has highly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
The voice of Paul changes dramatically when placed into a poetic form consisting of stanzas. Paul is thought of in most Christian circles as a Pharisee of Pharisees (which he was), meaning for us that he was a stickler for the rules. Pharisees may have been sticklers for rules, but they also reflected on the poetic nature of the Old Testament, as many other Christian scholars have, like Augustine or Origin.
Poetry brings a force to language that didactic prose does not have, an overwhelming symphony of meaning attached to every word and phrase, singing and dancing together like the cosmic vision at the end of Lewis’s Perelandra. And in the poetry of Scripture one finds Christ, the Word incarnate, bathing every word with death, resurrection, and new creation.