The Great Banquet

*** Revised Common Lectionary *** Lectionary Reading: Luke 14:1, 7-14 CLASSIC POEM: The Banquet George Herbert Welcome sweet and sacred cheer, Welcome deare; With me, in me, live and dwell: For thy neatnesse passeth sight, Thy delight Passeth tongue to taste or tell. O what sweetnesse from the bowl Fills my soul, Such as is, and makes divine! Is some starre (fled from the sphere) Melted there, As we sugar melt in wine ? Or hath sweetnesse in the bread Made a head To subdue the smell of sinne; Flowers, and gummes, and powders giving All their living, Lest the Enemy should winne ? Doubtlese, neither starre nor flower Hath the power Such a sweetnesse to impart: Onely God, who gives perfumes, Flesh assumes, And with it perfumes my heart. But as Pomanders and wood Still are good, Yet being bruis’d are better sented: God, to show how farre his love Could improve, Here, as broken, is presented. When I had forgot my birth, And on earth In delights of earth was drown’d; God took bloud, and needs would be Spilt with me, And so found me on the ground. Having rais’d me to look up, In a cup Sweetly he doth meet my taste. But I still being low and short, Farre from court, Wine becomes a wing at last. For with it alone I flie To the skie: Where I wipe mine eyes, and see What I seek, for what I sue; Him I view, Who hath done so much for me Let the wonder of his pitie Be my dittie, And take up my lines and life: Hearken under pain of death, Hands and breath; Strive in this, and love the strife. *** This poem is in the public domain, and may be read in a live-streamed worship service. CONTEMPORARY POEM: Luke 14, A Commentary Kathleen Norris SNIPPET: He is there like Clouseau at the odd moment, just right: when he climbs out of the fish pond … [ READ THE FULL POEM ]