“God makes music. It is inevitable, therefore, that the men of God whose words we hear in Scripture are singers and poets. They are not poets accidentally, not ‘also’ poets, but poets because they are men of God, the prophets and apostle[s] whose word the church receives and embraces. It is misleading to speak of ‘poetic’ books of the Bible; the books are all poetic, for poetry is not the icing on the cake but cake itself.” — Martin Franzmann, “The Devil Has All the Good Tunes”

I read these words for the first time over a decade ago. While I understood conceptually what he was getting at, it took someone else, a poet and priest named Malcolm Guite, to help me really grasp what Franzmann meant when he said that “poetry is not the icing on the cake but cake itself.” Franzmann’s prose and poetry bears the impress of rhetorical flourish in part because of his voracious reading. He writes well, far better than most if not all theologians in his time and ours, because he read well and widely. But, poetry is not merely rhetorical flourish. Guite likes to use the line from Shakespeare to explain what poetry is: “The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, doth glance from heaven to Earth, from Earth to heaven; and as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name.” Poetry binds together the concrete and the abstract. We’ve all read poems that are so abstract and generalized that, although they may be attempting to express some deep truth, fail to communicate it in any tangible way. We’ve all read poetry that is so concrete and specific there really is no more meaning than the what is there on the surface. Poetry, for Shakespeare, for Guite, and for Franzmann, actually builds something, it gives a local habitation and a name that which is abstract and distant. Poetry is not the icing, it is not the rhetorical flourish. Poetry is cake itself, the creative word that bodies forth in this moment something from another time and space. 

Part of my Advent and Christmas devotional reading came from a collection of poetry put togehter by Guite to guide people through the seasons of the church year. As an Anglican priest, he understands the seasons. As a Poet, he understands the verse. He brings them together in ways for me that resonate, that challenge, and that inspire. The poem Guite chose for Epiphany was written by William Blake. 

The Divine Image by William Blake

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
All pray in their distress;
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is God, our father dear,
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is Man, his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man, of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity Peace.

And all must love the human form,
In heathen, Turk, or Jew;
Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell,
There God is dwelling too. 

In trade mark fashion, Guite walks through what Blake might have been thinking as he penned those words. He also included an earlier poem from Blake which is similarly titled. 

A Divine Image by William Blake

Cruelty has a human heart,
And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
And secrecy the human dress.

The human dress is forged iron,
The human form a fiery forge,
The human face a furnace seal’d
The human heart its hungry gorge.

The difference is striking between the two. Mercy, pity, peace, and love stand in stark contrast to secrecy, terror, jealousy, and cruelty. So too, does the fact that in The Divine Image mercy, pity, peace, and love are attributed to God and in A Divine Image secrecy, terror, jealously, and cruelty are only attributed to human beings. In one sense it does matter what Blake was thinking when he wrote both poems and in another, we don’t need Blake’s context to understand them. That poetry bodies forth in our moment the concepts. It gives cruelty, jealousy, terror, secrecy, mercy, pity, peace, and love a local habitation and a name. 

The news feeds wont stop. I can’t pretend to know what it is to serve in Law enforcement. I cannot begin to understand the weight of that responsibility or what it is to go home after a day of that work and hug your spouse and children, to wake up and look yourself in the mirror. I do know, however, what it is to drop your kids off at school with the underlying assumption that you’ll be there to pick them up. I know what it is to feel the need to advocate for others. None of that, though, puts me in any position to offer comment on the correctness of actions, the state of mind of an individual. What the news feeds remind me of is that all of those adjectives are alive and well in people on every side of the aisle.

That does not mean I’m about to play a bothsiderism card. I want justice to ring out in each circumstance. I want freedom, peace and safety. I want the rule of law to be upheld. The thing about Romans 13 is that it does not just remind Christians that they submit to authorities established by God, it also reminds authorities that their power is not autonomous. If they step out of line, they should be called to account too. That’s the thing governments often forget, they are not the ultimate authority. Those they are called to serve in their authoritative capacity bear the image of the one who sits in authority over all. 

This is the problem, why the news feeds wont stop until the one who shined as light in the darkness, the one born as Israel’s messiah and was gifted honor by the nations, returns and all knees bow and tongues confess. Until his return, he has left his church to carry out the work of mercy, pity, peace, and love in the face of secrecy, terror, jealousy, and cruelty. 

No, I’m not being pollyannish or naive. I recognize that life is often a choice between bad and worse decisions. I may want to be a strict pacifist, but I know that the state does not bear the sword in vain and that sometimes the only way to stop a bully is to stand up to them. Life is lived in the borderline situation, where we are called to meet the moment that is actually in front of us, where we face the flesh and blood image bearing person and have to do what is best in light of what God has called us to do and the neighbor to whom we owe love. 

What I do wish, however, is that we would stop treating mercy, pity, peace, and love as if they were the icing on the cake and not the cake itself. Ends do not justify means. The world may be free to adopt patterns of cruelty, jealousy, secrecy, and terror, but those who confess Christ are afforded no such opportunity. Even when a Christian in his or her office bears the sword, they do not do so in light of those baser instincts but in light of the higher call to love and serve and protect. Meekness and love are the marks of the one who came for the nations. He flipped tables, sure, he spoke firmly and clearly when needed, and he also refused to call down the angelic host when he hung upon the cross. Obedience alone did not keep the nails in his hands, love did, love for the Father and for those who pounded the nails in. 

Mercy, pity, peace, and love are not icing, they are the cake itself. They are the things that actually have creative and transformative power, but only if they are bodied forth in a local habitation and a name.