Sola Scriptura

This collage of tears and laughter,
Wanderings toward promise and much later
What seems the murder of the Promise.
Of Isaac freed and Jephthah’s daughter burnt,
Of Hannah’s prayers and Mary’s questions,
The amens and the selahs, the nails of ark and cross.

In the procession behind the lifted cross,
The Scripture, too, is held aloft.
It shapes us. We hear it, sing it,
Plunge into God’s saving action through it.

It molds space, creates the paraments,
The carvings, the windows filled with story.
Flames and lilies at the altar, these too
From Scripture. Each image a tale, the gospel
A story linking each person in these pews
With every other one who has held
Out her hand for bread, his body.

The book is Word, and Christ the Word made flesh.
The language both complex and simple,
Formed between tongue and lips,
Pronounced, tasted, incarnate.