Hebrews 13:9-17
Default Session Image
LoginPanel
Sign up or Login to WordLive
LoginPanel
For the complete WordLive experience...

                
Blog Panel
Wednesday, 01 September 2010 Testing leaders Once again, leadership is on our agenda (it’s interesting how often it comes up in WordLive – and it’s always there in the news). The Labour Party is having to ask big questions about the nature of go...
10 April 2008
Hebrews 13:9-17 Poem: 'The journey out' Read or listen to this specially written poem by Helen Paynter about how we might identify with Christ’s death this Easter.

The journey out

Will you follow him?
See the blood trail –
            mark the furrow where 
            his feet and cross have dragged in the dust.
It leads outside the city.
Will you follow?

Priests are busy at the altar –
            the altar in the holy place –
                         the holy place in the temple –
                                       the temple in the city.
But the blood trail leads outside the city.
Will you follow?

Will you leave your systems,
            your propriety,
                         your safe traditions,
                                      your walled-in religion?
The furrow leads outside the city.
Will you follow?

Beware, if you leave,
            you are entering Gehenna – 
                         municipal dump –
                                     domain of the leper, the reject, the slain.
The man is limping out of the city.
Will you follow?

There is no place so fit
            for the perfect, sin-polluted sacrifice
                         to gasp and heave and lay down
                                      his purity, status, life.
He offers a cross and a fool’s hope.
Will you follow?

Beware, if you follow –
            you are not called to drag him back.
He does not desire respectability,
            he does not need to return.
His is the way of the outcast.
Will you follow?

He does not need to return.
The broken body is now the altar,
            the out-flung stone is the foundation of the new city,
                         this site of disgrace is the epicentre of the hope-wave.
He does not need to return to the city.
And you? Will you stay?

Helen Paynter
Bookmark and Share
WordLive border
WordLive border
© 2002-2010 Scripture Union.
Website build by Baigent. Website design by Baigent and IE Design Consultancy