These meditations, focusing on the poems of John Donne, were delivered at Carlisle Cathedral during Holy Week 2024.
Maundy Thursday
How good a guest are you? By this I don’t mean do you strip the bed after you stay at a friend’s house or take your shoes off at the door. What I mean is how good are you, are we, at allowing ourselves just to be guests. How willing are we to be looked after, to receive the generosity of others, given not because we have asked for it, or because we deserve it, but this is the gift that host wishes to give to us.
Being a guest can be a strange thing. Perhaps because we live in such a transactional society, we often see the role of the guest as somehow part of a contract. We need to bring something, do something to help, earn our keep, sing for our supper. There is nothing wrong with this. Many a good host is glad of some extra help or a bottle or two to add to the collection. But sometimes the role of the guest is simply to be that. To be the guest. To rest in the generosity of the host without question or query.
If we track back a few centuries we find that there was not this same awkwardness in the relationship between the host and guest. Far from it. Early modern England, for instance, was shot through with the complex etiquette between host and guest. Most of this is lost to us now, but we do still find its imprint in the art and poetry of that time.
For instance, George Herbert’s greatest poem, Love III, is built around the structures and etiquette of the courtly dance which was the relationship between the host and the guest. That poem, if you know it, placing that between the author – as the unworthy guest – and “Love” as the generous host. The resolution coming when the guest accepts that their call is simply to be the guest and receive the gift that Love bestows on them for no other reason than that is what Love does.
Herbert’s biographers have pointed out that he would have learned this etiquette from his mother, the remarkable Magdalen Herbert, known and famed as one of the greatest hosts of the London society of her day. One of her most favoured guests was that other great religious poet of the seventeenth-century, John Donne. Through these coming days we will be using some of Donne’s poetry to punctuate and enrich the journey we will take together as guests of that greatest of hosts.
As we embark on that journey, I thought a good place to start would be with Donne’s own reflection on what it was to be a guest – a thought that he explores in a simple poem he wrote to Magdalen Herbert. It is, itself, not a great poem. One commentator has suggested it is in places “laboured, if a labour of love”.
It is also, on this Maundy Thursday evening, perhaps a strange poem to begin with because its focus – Herbert’s namesake and for Donne her archetype – is Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene who is so crucial to the story of Good Friday and beyond is absent by name from the story that we heard in our Gospel reading this evening. Added to this is the theological calumny of Donne’s poem where he brings together – contrary to modern scholarship and, by his own admission, the wisdom of the Church Fathers – into his “Magdalene” three different women from the Gospels. First Mary Magdalene, who stood waited at the foot of the cross. Then second Mary of Bethany, who played host to Jesus with her sister Martha. And third the unnamed woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears, drying them with her hair.
However, with this poetic and theological licence understood, Donne’s words of praise provide a reflection on the relationship between the host and guest which not only patterned Magdalene Herbert’s remarkable life, but which can inform how we might begin this journey that lies ahead of us.
What Donne stresses again and again through this short poem is the openness of the faith of this amalgamated “Magdalo” to Christ in all things. First as host – reflecting on the story of Jesus staying with Mary and Martha at Bethany – Donne speaks of the need to have the willingness to “harbour Christ Himself, a guest”. For this reason alone Donne feels Magdalene Herbert is a worthy successor to her names sake as host:
Increase their number, Lady, and their fame ;
To their devotion add your innocence ;
Take so much of th' example as of the name,
But here Donne turns the call of the host on its head. The call, the openness, to act as host to Christ himself makes us in turn the guest of that greater host. That the generosity of the host becomes, in itself, an act of devotion which he saw both in these biblical archetypes, but also in Magdalene Herbert’s life.
That they did harbour Christ Himself, a guest,
Harbour these hymns, to His dear Name address'd.
As we begin our journey through these coming days these patterns of courtly etiquette and manners might seem a strange place to begin. However, in their exploration of the relationship of the host and guest they offer a pattern for how we might respond to the invitation of these coming days.
The question we might ask ourselves is the one I began with: how good a guest are we? Will we bridle in discomfort as we find our host take the role of a slave and wash our feet? Will we overdo it like Peter – and misunderstand the gift and action of our host and want to do more? Or will we receive that gift and, like Mary at Bethany, turn from the role of host to guest and simply sit and rest at the feet of our greater host. Will we – like Mary Magdalene – follow silently where our host leads us on this journey – from the upper room, to the foot of cross, and to a silent garden before dawn.
Will we have courage to put aside our pride, our self-importance, and allow ourselves to be the guest of our gracious host. A guest, as Donne says of Mary Magdalene, who was so open to the call of the host, that she was first to see and know the great truth of this journey we are to take. Mary Magdalene, whose:
active faith so highly did advance,
That she once knew, more than the Church did know,
The Resurrection;
And so as we begin this journey we might want to reflect on this relationship of host and guest. Not only as we gather at this table this night as we hear the call of our loving host and choose whether we, like Donne’s Magdalene, will ask how good a guest we can be.
Good Friday
John Donne is undoubtedly one of the great poets and prose stylists of the English language. In his own lifetime he was fated for his wit and linguistic ingenuity. In death not only were his publications instant best sellers, but there were countless cheap knock-offs by “J.D.” or “Dr Dunn” seeking to profit from his reflected glory.
Despite this undoubted brilliance there remains, for some, questions about the sincerity of his faith. Unlike his more earnest near contemporary George Herbert, Donne did not reject some more earthly themes explored in love poetry. Far from it. Some of his most brilliant and inventive poetry is his love poetry. Those who know his musing of the liberty and life of the humble flea would, I am sure agree. By this line of argument Donne was a brilliant man who fell into the life of the Church – and the prestigious role of Dean of St Pauls – more as an act of expediency rather than pious calling. It was, some have argued, through the Church that Donne – the “charmed” and “strong accomplished flatter” – found the wealth and standing in court and society that he had sought through his life. Ordination at the age of 43 was a last role of the dice after a failed life as an aristocratic secretary, MP, and diplomat.
The problem is with this line of argument is that those who use it clearly haven’t spent time with Donne’s poetry and his poetry focusing on Good Friday in particular. One of his finest and most ingenious poems is Upon the Annunciation and Passion falling on one day. In this Donne uses the calendrical coincidence in 1608 when Good Friday fell on the 25th March which, being nine-months before Christmas, is also the Feast of the Annunciation. Here he uses this temporal coincidence to reflect deeply on the physicality of the incarnation in conception and death.
This Church, by letting these days join, hath shown
Death and conception in mankind is one:
Or ‘twas in him the same humility,
That he would be a man, and leave to be:
Or as creation he had made, as God,
It is though another of his great religious poems, The Cross, which I would like to spend some time with today. In one sense this poem, although a deep and penetrating reflection on the cross, is not a Good Friday poem as such. Whether we think of Donne’s faith as sincere or not, he certainly followed the religious orthodoxy of the day. Living and ministering in the Church of the early seventeenth-century Donne stood with a religious establishment which was increasingly being assailed and attacked by more extreme Puritan elements in the church.
The Cross was written in 1604, a full ten years before his ordination. Its focus is the Puritan attacks on the use of crucifixes in Church and the signing of the cross at Baptism. Two particular practices of the Church of England which the more extreme Puritans saw as rank popery. Against this iconoclasm Donne offers a rich subtle reflection on how the cross binds us to Jesus who revealed his true self in and through the Cross.
Since Christ embraced the cross itself, dare I
His image, th’ image of His cross, deny?
So powerful is the cross, Donne argues, that is echoes through creation. It patterns the shape of our bodies, the pattern of our leisure, the form of the natural world, and even the shape of the heavens.
To stretch mine arms, and mine own cross to be ?
Swim, and at every stroke thou art thy cross ;
The mast and yard make one, where seas do toss ;
Look down, thou spiest out crosses in small things ;
Look up, thou seest birds raised on crossed wings ;
All the globe’s frame, and spheres, is nothing else
But the meridians crossing parallels.
What is the point, Donne points out to his Puritan adversaries, of removing crosses from our churches or liturgical practice when, if we have eyes, the cross is everywhere. This argument is, though, not simply a dig at some Puritan high-mindedness and do-goodery. These physical real world crosses point us to a deeper truth. That the cross is imprinted on every part of our lives.
Material crosses then, good physic be,
But yet spiritual have chief dignity.
[…]
For when that cross ungrudged unto you sticks,
Then are you to yourself a crucifix.
If we have the courage to look closely enough we find that the cross, the great sign of the shame of this great and terrible day, is imprinted on all of our lives. As we come to recognise the deep and indelible pattern of the cross we begin to open to the presence of the cross in all things, and most deeply in ourselves. As we reflect more and more on the cross we are forced to open ourselves to the shame and cruelty of the cross. This sign of imperial cruelty and vengeance exists in one realm as a sign of the sinfulness and pride which we all carry within ourselves.
pride, issued from humility,
For ‘tis no child, but monster ; therefore cross
Your joy in crosses, else, ‘tis double loss.
Far from hiding from the sign of the cross or removing it from our sight – as Donne believes the Puritans want – we need to be challenged and overshadowed by the cross. Because it is only then that we can truly recognise how we are woven into the fabric of a world where the cross was and remains a real and visceral reality. It is only in the stark reality of the cross that we can accept our place in the plain reality of this day. A reality summed up in the words of Donne’s contemporary, the Silesian Lutheran pastor Johann Heerman.
Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee?
Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee!
‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee;
I crucified thee.
But for Donne it does not stop there. When we open ourselves to the true and abiding of nature the cross a new reality opens itself for us, because in the cross we find not only the shadow of our fallenness but also the reflection of God’s love.
Let crosses, so, take what hid Christ in thee,
And be His image, or not His, but He.
What Donne helps us see is this doubleness in the cross. That in this thing, this symbol which captures all the venality and cruelty of humanity this sign of our weakness and shame, this emblem of all that has brought us to this day is reflected back on us nothing else than the imprint of God’s love. Paradoxically it is only in spending time with the cross, in all its plain and unvarnished reality that we find the way to the truth that lies beyond it. That, to paraphrase St Paul, all our human wisdom draws us away from the cross, where God’s wisdom takes us straight to it.
We live in a world where we flee from those things of the cross around us. We swipe past the hard stories we see on our phones. We turn our heads from the brokenness and cruelty of the world of which we are part. We each, in our own way, are heirs of those well meaning contemporaries of the Donne who would have us put away our crosses, who were themselves heirs of those who fled from that original cross and the place of the skull.
But today we are called to come to the cross. To look upon it and all the cost and pain it speaks of and, as Donne teaches us, put aside our own squeamishness and wisdom and:
Be covetous of crosses; let none fall ;
Cross no man else, but cross thyself in all.
Then doth the cross of Christ work faithfully
Within our hearts, when we love harmlessly
That cross’s pictures much, and with more care
That cross’s children, which our crosses are.
Easter Day
I do not think that I alone in finding it hard to find the words for this greatest of all days. The inhumanity of Good Friday has enough tragic resonances into our own world that we can find words aplenty. Similarly, the love and companionship of Maundy Thursday provides a pattern for our lives and language which one hopes we can communicate. But the sheer strangeness, the bewilderment, the super-mysterious nature of this day means that we cannot be faulted for being, at times, lost for words.
That is why I have often found it helpful to be guided through these days by words of a greater wordsmith. In our case the words and poetry of John Donne who died on this day, the 31st March, 1631. This though is not for the feint hearted. Donne’s language is dense and beguiling. It is as if through his words he is weaving complex tapestries which we are drawn deeper into the longer and more intently we examine them. In his poetry we find this brilliance not only their language but in their form and construction. No where is this more clearly seen than in the sequence of poems entitled La Corona.
La Corona was probably written in 1607 and is thought by many to be the poems which Donne sent to Magdalene Herbert prefacing them with his poem in praise of her which we reflected on on Maundy Thursday. The subject of these seven sonnets is the birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. Together they form a cycle following the renaissance form of a “Crown” or Corona of sonnets where the sonnets are linked by repeating the final line of one sonnet as its first line of the next. The circle is then completed with the final line of the last sonnet matching the first line of the first sonnet. So Donne’s Corona begins and ends:
Deign at my hands this crown of prayer and praise.
There is, in Donne’s use of this ingenious form, all the brilliance we come to expect from him. But beyond that we can use these repeated lines to link and unlock the deep resonance and meaning of these days, particularly as we examine this pivot between the fifth and sixth sonnets – Crucifying and Resurrection – which turn on the line:
Moist with one drop of thy blood, my dry soul
As that line reflects back into the Good Friday sonnet it takes the form of a plea on behalf of the author. Returning to the themes found in Donne’s poem The Cross we find again that sense of deep personal culpability in the unvarnished truth and horror of the cross. In this place we discover that we were the ones who rejected Jesus, who retreated from him, who left him alone to carry his cross alone.
Lo ! where condemned He
Bears His own cross, with pain, yet by and by
When it bears him, He must bear more and die.
As the true cost and terror of the cross is made manifest on Good Friday all the author can do, all we can do, is plead for one drop of God’s love to remain with us in our dejection and failure.
Now Thou art lifted up, draw me to Thee,
And at Thy death giving such liberal dole,
Moist with one drop of Thy blood my dry soul.
It is with that baleful plea that Donne turns us from the desolation of Good Friday to the wonder and joy of today. Drawing from an image found in a hymn of Thomas Aquinas, Donne presents us with the transforming truth that in one drop of Christ’s blood is enough grace to wipe away the sinfulness and brokenness of the whole world. So his Resurrection sonnet begins:
Moist with one drop of Thy blood, my dry soul
Shall—though she now be in extreme degree
Too stony hard, and yet too fleshly—be
Freed by that drop, from being starved, hard or foul,
And life by this death abled shall control
Death, whom Thy death slew
This focus on this one small thing – one drop of blood – speaks again of the effervescence and brilliance of Donne’s own life and faith. Katherine Rundell, whose wonderful biography of Donne Super-Infinite I would recommend to anyone, captures this theme when she says:
[Donne] loved to coin formulations with the super- prefix: super-edifications, super-exaltations, super-dying, super-universal, super-miraculous. It was part of his bid to invent a language that would reach beyond language, because infinite wasn’t enough; both in heaven, but also here on earth, Donne wanted to know something larger than infinity.
With that in mind it is striking that as Donne reflects on the deep strangeness of the resurrection he does not, on this occasion, reach for these formulations. It is as if even that language is not enough. Rather in the simplicity of that “one drop” we are, paradoxically by Donne, being pointed to something “super-infinite”. That in that “one drop” there is something beyond our words and understanding can capture about the super-abundance of God’s love and grace for humanity.
That “one drop” carrying in it all the grace and forgiveness and love and transformation of the resurrection that our words could never and can never fully contain. It is as if Donne, in that “one drop” is pointing us to that beguiling conclusion to the Gospel of John where we are reminded of, in Donne’s terms, the super-infinity, of the things that Jesus did:
that if every one of them were written down
the Evangelists tells us,
I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.
Or, as Donne said himself in the sermon he preached at the funeral of Magdalene Herbert – with whom we started this journey – that in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, where death is dead and love has conquered, the doors of heaven are flung open and each one of us is welcomed to follow and discover the promise of God’s love:
in these new heavens and new earth, for ever and ever and ever, and infinite and super infinite forevers.
Amen.
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