Trinitie Sunday
Lord, who hast formed me out of mud,
And hast redeem'd me through thy bloud,
And sanctifi'd me to do good;
Purge all my sinnes done heretofore:
For I confess my heavie score,
And I will strive to sinne no more.
Enrich my heart, mouth, hands in me,
With faith, with hope, with charitie;
That I may runne, rise, rest with thee.
In most traditions Lent begins with the sign of the cross on the forehead, "Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return." The image describing the creation of the human Adam from the dust, can be lifted from the arid climate of the Middle East, and transposed into the Scottish climate by adding some rain! Dust or mud, it's the same thing; Herbert addresses his Lord as one who knows his humble, earthly beginnings.
The rhyming 'bloud' contradicts Herbert's sense of worthlessness based on his earth-bound humanity. He is redeemed neither by riches nor gold but by the precious blood of Christ. (I Peter,1.19) And the goal of God's redemptive intervention is to sanctify humanity to do good.
The second Stanza is an interlocking theology of forgiveness and reconciliation. Already the King James version of Psalm 51.7 would be readily familiar from the liturgy: "Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean, wash me and I shall be whiter than snow"
The central and pivotal line of the nine line poem captures the decisive moment of human appropriation of the cleansing forgiveness of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit. "If we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (I John 1.9) The grace that forgives, the heart that confesses, and the will determined to sin no more and to do good, is a threefold dynamic of the struggle of the redeemed human heart towards holiness.
The third stanza is a triumph of trinitarian clues. Heart, mouth and hands in line 1 are the body's answering responses in believing faith, uttered hope and active love of line 2. "Run, rise and rest" are all solar motions of the sun, (Son); get it? Herbert has reversed the first two in order to create a linear view of human salvation. So with our whole body enriched with faith, hope and love, we run the race set before us throughout life, we rise with Christ in resurrection, and finally enter eternal rest, "with thee."
In three verses of three lines the whole story of salvation is told in the simplest of words. The first verse refers to Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier while the last verse is a catena of Trinitarian clusters. The lines are an orchestra of biblical allusions and liturgical echoes.
Try using this prayer three times a day for a week, when you rise, when you run and when you rest. Oh, wait a minute, that would be another way of tracing vestiges of the Trinity in daily life. Was that also what that last line was nudging us towards, a Trinitarian lifestyle?
The image above is a tapestry I designed some years ago when I taught the Honours module Trinity and Community.
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