Poems for Sunday, September 14th, 2025 (Holy Cross)

Numbers 21:4b-9, 1 Corinthians 1:18-24, and John 3:13-17.

Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash

Healing is Paradox
After Numbers 21:4b-9.

Healing is a paradox—
a wild mercy.
Like truth,
healing isn’t interested
in beauty for beauty’s sake.

Healing is a paradox—
the things that save us
rarely seem to be salvation at first—
a bitter herb,
a stitched, suffering wound,
a bronze serpent lifted high.

Gold would've been more appealing.

True healing startles us.
It leaves us
in breathless wonder,
unsure and yet totally so.

Healing is a paradox—
sometimes it stings.

Grace waits in unexpected places.
And if we dare look,
we might find Jesus
lifted high in the deserts of our despair,
dying for the purpose of living
so that we might too.

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Holy Foolishness
After 1 Corinthians 1:18-24.

I wish the cross made sense.
I wish I could explain it simply.
That would be much easier.

But the longer I look,
the less it makes sense,
and the more joy rises within.

It’s foolish
to try to be wise.

Don’t search for Wisdom
in those marketplaces of ideas—
it won’t appear there.

Christ is the power
and the wisdom of God.

Let that reorder your day
into holy foolishness.

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Turn Everything Over
After John 3:13-17.

Like Nico
I am confused
by that rising Rabbi
turning everything over.

Being born again?
Wind, water, Spirit?
A simple, young Teacher
lifted up
as the snake in the wilderness
of old?

Jesus turns everything over.

This is Love,
not logic.

And Love
always exceeds
all the edges
of understanding.

Which is why
we must trust it
with all and with everything
and turn everything over.