The Windows
Lord, how can man preach thy eternal word?
He is a brittle crazy glass;
Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford
This glorious and transcendent place,
To be a window, through thy grace.
But when thou dost anneal in glass thy story,
Making thy life to shine within
The holy preachers, then the light and glory
More reverend grows, and more doth win;
Which else shows waterish, bleak, and thin.
.......................
There is a third stanza. That will be for tomorrow.
.......................
Is it over obvious to say Herbert could only write a poem like this if he was a preacher, and one both troubled by his own limitations, but persuaded of the new possibilities of grace?
Herbert is not soliloquising, he is praying, and his opening question, "Lord how can man preach thy eternal word?" is rhetorical. He goes on to give the answer.
He has known the experience of strength made perfect in weakness, and is reduced to wonder that the foolishness of preaching evidences the wisdom of God. And what is more, this "brittle crazie glasse" becomes a filter glowing with the life of Christ from within.
A stained glass window without the passing through of light remains dull. But when glass has colour burned into it, and the light shines through, plain becomes beautiful, and chemical process figures a transmutation from dolorous dullness to spiritual attractiveness. It isn't that the cracks are erased; they are transfigured.
The contrast between grey, dull, colourless glass and glass annealed with biblical story, looks back to Herbert's experience of being a window 'through thy grace'. In Herbert's day, stained glass windows illustrated and kept in memory biblical stories and personalities. Such windows were a familiar the use of glass, which recorded and replayed key moments of God's story in coloured pictures and emblems.
God's story throughout scripture oscillates between love often unrequited, and tragic sacrifice willingly offered, of promises made and kept by God and promises made and broken by those who knew better. Until that final sacrifice which forever defines this God of light and glory, of love and grace, of word made flesh. Even when the cross is not mentioned, it is often present, unsaid, assumed, the place where the story's resolution has lain from all eternity.
The preacher's calling is to allow that story to be annealed not only into the heart of the preacher, but into the life of the Christian community. So that preacher and communitybecome that "crazie glasse", that "through thy grace", "thy eternal word" "more doth win".
You want to say to Herbert in our dumbed down cliche, "It's a big ask". To which the country parson replies, to preacher and listeners alike, "through [His] grace."
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