It was Pentecost, and the preacher was presenting the imagined scenario of a flute player on the streets, one whose melodies were so beautiful that you longed to play as he did. It would not be enough, the preacher reflected, simply to learn the instrument. To make music, not just produce a sequence of notes, the spirit of the flute player would have to be indwelling.

Twenty years on, that image stirs me still. Not a prosaic exegesis of the mechanics of the spirit’s coming, but a poetic moment captivating the soul.

Poetry has the capacity to resonate with our very being. Poet Carol Ann Duffy describes it as ‘the music of being human.’ Working therapeutically with poetry I meet those who have found themselves instinctively turning to it amidst the emotional upheavals of love and loss. They might be reading it - ‘Poetry was a way of arranging my feelings ‘- or even writing it - ‘A month after my husband left, I poured out my feelings in a poem. I’d never written one before.’

Poetry offers consolation in discovering a potentially isolating experience, and one that eludes easy expression, being articulated by another. Its language bravely penetrates beneath what is happening to unearth the depths of what is going on. It moves beyond facts to grapple with the truth. Its imagery and fresh perspective can offer transformative insight, and its openness to many facets of interpretation enables each reader to have a unique encounter with its possibilities. It is such qualities that lead Canon Mark Oakley to assert that poetry is ‘the native language of faith’. It is not surprising, therefore, that we find it in our public worship.

Poetry is sung in our hymns and spoken in the liturgy’s rhythms and cadences. We hear it in biblical readings, from the prophets’ allusive language to the poetry of the psalms, where the psalmist pours forth emotional expressions from exultation to despair, thanksgiving to anger, praise to lament, in 150 verbal ventures that make ‘a raid on the inarticulate,’ to borrow T. S. Eliot’s slant on the poetic craft (from ‘East Coker V’ in The Four Quartets, Harcourt Publishers, 1943).

IN THE PULPIT?

So, if poetry infuses the rest of the service, can it also inhabit the pulpit? Clearly it already has in such diverse poet-priests as John Donne, George Herbert, Gerard Manley Hopkins and R. S. Thomas. The American mystic poet Wallace Stevens writes, ‘The poet is the priest of the invisible.’ To extend this into a chiastic utterance, might we add that ‘The priest is the poet of the invisible’?

Presbyterian preacher Dr Gregory E Reynolds suggests that ‘poetry’s place in the Bible should inspire us to give it prominence in the preparation and practice of preaching.’ How might this work in practice?

Paul’s address to the Athenians in Acts 17:22-31 gives us one way, as he quotes esteemed Greek poets whose insights would resonate with his listeners, enabling him to make a creative link to the gospel message.

The judicious inclusion of a whole poem - not necessarily an overtly Christian one - can add a powerful dynamic. Recently I heard George Herbert’s ‘Love bade me enter,’ and Supertramp’s ‘Logical Song’ featured in sermons, the former, to crystallise teaching on grace; the latter, to highlight the commonality of the human cry ‘Please tell me who I am.’

In both cases, the chosen text was narrative and accessible on an initial listening.

A poem that invites deeper reflection could be made available to read after, or even before, a service. Letting the poem take too much of the centre stage needs to be avoided. A preacher who declaimed a whole sonnet was afterwards treated to a congregational member’s wry comment that ‘I was so moved I nearly gave my life to Shakespeare as Saviour.’

POETIC METHOD

Other poets notwithstanding, preachers could learn from the Master in exploring a more poetic approach in their own use of language. Jesus’ teaching abounds in image, simile and metaphor, from the I am sayings to his response to Nicodemus. The parables’ picture language paints facets of the Kingdom of God, where the facts are beyond human mapping.

Poetic language is a language of possibility not of singular definition. Thus, it is suited to prophetic utterance. The prophets’ declarations, so often symbolic and allusive, both reveal the sweep of God’s plans but conceal the literal specifics. In this they invite our engagement; to wrestle with meaning not immediately apparent; to respond obediently where a call to action is discerned; to be patient with what remains obscure. Ultimately faith needs to reside in God as Living Word not in a text as highway code. There is a call to walk alongside the Lord, receptive to a deepening understanding and wonder as God’s mysteries unfold.

Quick to assume a literal explanation rather than looking for truth embedded beneath the lines, even Jesus’ disciples did not always get the drift of his teaching. But it drew them in, eliciting questions that were sometimes rewarded with an interpretation, at others, an invitation to keep listening to discover how the meaning would later be revealed.

When Jesus offered teaching with multiple levels of meaning, he was seemingly content that people would take what he said in different ways - as one would a poem. Preachers are often encouraged to ‘preach for a response,’ and have a very specific objective in mind. But how rigidly does that response need to be pinned down? Poetry is open to multiple levels of encounter. When Jesus offered teaching with multiple levels of meaning, he was seemingly content that people would take what he said in different ways. As preachers can we dare to venture into the language of the intangible, opening up the mystery, wonder, faith and vision that poetic language evokes?

The variety is enormous, but every poem is crafted in its own particular form.

POETIC TEMPLATES

What would it mean to compose a sermon on the more poetic template, seeing it more as a song than a prose essay read aloud?

Poetry calls for an attentiveness to beginnings and endings. A poem’s opening needs to enable us to locate ourselves in it as we start its journey. In many a poetry workshop, simply adjusting the poem’s title can suddenly unlock the door into what was causing confusion. From the sermon’s title, through its brief attention-catching illustrative narrative to the first sentences about the passage in question, the line of travel needs to be clear.

Endings are also challenging. The tendency of the traditional sermon is to summarise what has been said, underlining points made and signposting a particular response. A poem typically ends in a different place from where it started, and can leave some of its most powerful shifts, surprises or reveals for the final lines. It resists the temptation to tie everything up neatly, but rather leaves its audience with something to explore, wonder at or think about. Such endings can be transformative.

As someone inclined towards tidiness, I have sometimes found that simply striking out the last line or two of my own poems has added to their resonance and impact. I have left the door open, handing the poem over to the reader as an invitation to continue the journey for themselves however they choose. I’ve not yet had the courage to do this to the same extent with my sermons!

Divinity Professor Lauren Winner suggests that sermon-writing could involve reworking it as a sonnet as part of the revision process. A sonnet’s form, of course includes the volta, a turn or shift in perspective after its eighth line. At the very least, this might highlight for us the potential for an exegetical point that shifts in focus.

More pertinently, the exercise highlights how a poem’s words need to be carefully chosen, with each having to earn their place. Whether or not we wish to become sonneteers, honing our communication challenges us to choose our words attentively and focus on what we essentially want to say. Editing my own poems by taking out surplus words- in repeating or over-explaining - removes overload and can surprisingly sharpen the expression of what is left.

On the page, poetry’s words are surrounded by white space, helping us to slow down as we absorb what it is telling us between the lines and stanzas. How might our preaching offer space and pause, so that some of the richness of we are speaking of can be allowed to resonate and be reflected upon?

Poets are often urged to read their poems out loud as they compose them. When we do so, the bumps and awkwardnesses are soon obvious. Perhaps we need to do this with our sermons, listening to the phrasing and cadences of our speech, to our patterns of sound - beyond the alliterated three-point headings - so that our sermons have their own music.

I was inspired by the poetic music of the flute-player illustration in that long-ago Pentecost sermon, but I heard that others were not. Beautiful it may be, they said, but what exactly are we supposed to do as a result? So should the preacher have added in some practical application, or were they right to leave the congregation talking about the flute-player and wondering what it all meant?