Good Friday Sketches

Every year, our church commemorates Good Friday with a candle-lit vigil, complete with music, drama, worship, contemplation, and poetry. A few years back, I wrote a series of poems for that event. The next year, my composer friend Robert Bearden, who I collaborated with on A Reflection of Aching Joy, wrote some wonderful background music. Finally this year, my photographer friend Anne Nunn filmed them. They are intended to be watched together, as they tell the story of the worst day the world has ever known. And yes, I know, the story has a wonderful ending, but as Christians, I believe we need to savor Good Friday. Pain in the night comes before morning’s joy.

So I’m presenting these here, along with the words to each poem. I pray they help you see Jesus in a new way.

Part 1: Gethsemane

Click Here to Read the Poem

Gethsemane

Did you see Him?
The Favored Son
of the Celestial Citadel
The hero of ten thousand
Hope-filled Hosannas,
Heralded by Pilgrims and zealots And boys with souvenir slings and five smooth stones?

Did you see Him?
The triumphant Song
Of tongues just freed,
The defender of lawbreakers
Brandishing whips and words
Separating foreigners from thieves
And adulterers from executioners?

Did you see Him? Good.
So see Him now.

The inexhaustible Creator
Of a million galaxies
Himself, exhausted.
Heaven’s Mightiest Victor
Weeping in a garden
And longing for a friend.
Just one friend,
Who will stay awake and pray with Him.

See him shedding tears and sweating blood
For Prodigals gone missing. With thirty silvers in their hand.

Their milk-carton faces
Searing his eyelids
These Captives of Confusion
Slouching further out of reach
From their willing Father.
Who waits and weeps.
On his porch swing
For their return.

“Take this cup from my hands,” he pleads.
For he knows the hill where redemption leads.
But still He prays, not my will.
“Not my will but yours.”

And in that prayer
His brow will stiffen
In that prayer
his Passion burns
In that prayer
His face returns
to flint.

See Him stand then and march
Toward the torturer’s hate
To take on his shoulder’s
Rebellion’s weight,
To open at last the runaway’s gate
To His father’s grieving mansion.

Gethsemane (A Poem by Jason Hague)
This is the first video in a 4-part series entitled, “Good Friday Sketches," featuring the work of Jason Hague, Writer, Robert Bearden Music, Anne Nunn Photographers, and 19th century painter James Tissot. These poems follow Jesus from Gethsemane to the cross. We'll be releasing a new video each week leading up to Easter.
Posted by Leaving Greytown Artists' Collective on Friday, March 9, 2018

Part 2: Thorns

Thorns (Part 2 of Good Friday Sketches)
Here's part 2 of a brand new series of Good Friday videos I've created with my friends Anne Nunn Photographers and Robert Bearden Music. This one tells the story of Jesus before Herod and Pilate. It's always fascinated me how a crowd can go from "Hosanna" to "Crucify Him" so quickly... Anyway, keep an eye out for our future projects at Leaving Greytown Artists' Collective.
Posted by Jason Hague, Writer on Friday, March 16, 2018

Click Here to Read the Poem

Crown of Thorns

Watch Him now.
See the Mighty Prince of Heaven
Tossed to and fro
Between a petty puppet ruler
And a priest in whitewashed robes.

See them shrug in stupefaction
As the crowds foam at the mouth
Making clear their joint retraction
Of the welcome they’d announced.
Just days before
With palm branches galore
And visions of gory revolution

“He was supposed to be our king!”
They breath.
“The one who would change change everything!”
They seethe.
And there he lies,
Before their bitter, hopeless eyes.
Soaked in red humiliation
and now, at last, despised,

Watch Him now…
The Innocent of ages,
Refusing to match
The violence that rages
From the lash that falls
and tears
The weary skin back from his bones
And bears the blood
That’s even now
beginning to atone
For the sins of pale centurions
And the disillusioned drones
Who all cry “Crucify Him!”

They toss over his shoulders
A fine royal robe
Fit for monarchs and messiahs
And pretenders on their thrones
Then, for one more kingly token
They shape thorns for a crown.
And slam it into his tortured scalp.
“All hail the heir of David,” they shout.
“Hail King of the Jews!”

But passing through their vitriol
One irony escapes them all:
The crown fits him.
It fits him.

Part 3: What Mary Saw

Click Here to Read the Poem

What Mary Saw

We see the Son of Man in tatters
Flanked by sneering, cruel commanders
Pinned beneath
The intended instrument
Of his own execution.
And his mother sees him, too.
There she stands in Golgotha’s path
Watching in horror the aftermath
Of a kangaroo court,
And a mob drenched in wrath
And rinse water
from a coward’s hands

Her eyes fold down
And her mind returns
To that late morning tea with an angel.
The quest was unthinkable
The weight was unliftable
To bring forth a child in a world
Unredeemable
And to care for him until the day
he would redeem it anyway.
But she had said yes.

The convict he stumbles, He falls to the ground
His mother remembers that boy that sound
Of tiny footfalls dancing around
Her skirts in the marketplace.

And then the laughter—
Oh the laughter—
That swung through the windows
Of Nazareth town
From the children who pined just to hang around
The boy who would say at every sundown,
“It is very good.”
Mary crumbles on the hill
Watching them brace his forearms still
And she knows that pain, that fright, that chill,
Of losing him.
She’d lost him before
Among temple professors
In a different world
At twelve years old He wasn’t afraid
He isn’t afraid now.
There, they pound into his wrists,
The hands she’d known, the hands she’d kissed
The baby’s fingers, soft and blessed
Now drained of Blood and sunrises,
Gone. Gone. Gone.

Gone because of the nails.
All of his life he’d worked with nails.
All of his life he’d worked for this.
If only she’d known
Would she still have said yes?

What Mary Saw
Presenting part 3 of our Good Friday Sketches: "What Mary Saw," featuring the work of Jason Hague, Writer, Anne Nunn Photographers, and Robert Bearden Music. There is also some fine editing work on a Tissot image by Joe the Intern.
Posted by Leaving Greytown Artists' Collective on Thursday, March 22, 2018

Part 4: The Hope That We Met

The Hope That We Met (A Poem by Jason Hague)
Here's the final video from our Good Friday Sketches, wth Jason Hague, Writer, Robert Bearden Music, and Anne Nunn Photographers. This one is entitled, "The Hope That We Met."
Posted by Leaving Greytown Artists' Collective on Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Click Here to Read the Poem

THE HOPE THAT WE MET

When the Father turns his face away,
The skies go black and the earth shakes.
Such is the power of his gaze.
The world goes dark where the God-man hangs
And below him lies a pool
Of homeless blood and water.

That’s where I sit.
Staring and shaking,
In this God-forsaken world
Where that puddle proves
I cannot even blame my master’s death
On iron nails or spearheads
Or the professional torturers who wield them
For it was his own grief that stopped his heart,
And it was I who made Him grieve.

Oh, that I could turn back the sun
A thousand times
To see my petty rebellions undone,
To rewind my curses
And un-desire
The adulteries and murders
That grew inside my heart.
And made him bleed.
Oh, to lighten the weight I saw on his shoulders.

What’s left to do but beg for the father’s gaze to return?
To un-forsake this world lest we burn
In our listless regrets
And mindless rages
And forget what’s etched
Forever in the pages
Of laws and of prophets
And foretelling kings
About the the Hope that we met
And then murdered.

Good Friday Sketches

Part 1: Gethsemane

Part 2: Thorns

Part 3: What Mary Saw

Part 4: The Hope That We Met

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