LET US WITH THE POET INVOKE SUNDAY THUS

 

V. LET US WITH THE POET INVOKE SUNDAY THUS*

        What has Sunday to say to us, this day on which the appeal

        of Christ strikes home to us with peculiar power?

                Rudolf Bultmann, July 28, 1938, This World and Beyond

Decades before Ellington, too.

And decades before I became conscious,

I was a boy from the country, dry-land farming before oil, winter wheat,

town boy on top of that, before we had to leave.

Ellington, black band leader traveling by night

during the time of Jim Crow, the segregated time

you knew from reading, before you crossed

the Atlantic. You might know it, too--

Come Sunday, from the jazz suite,

Black, Brown and Beige, 1943.

Musical history of Black Americans.

In ‘58 Ellington added text

and the song becomes an American Standard.

God almighty, God of love

Sitting at kitchen table with your sermon.*

You’re working with Matthew 11: 28-30--

Vengan a mi todos ustedes que estan cansados,--

take my yoke—Duke, riding passenger at night

crossing state lines, used to say, Wake me

when we get there. He wrote in the car,

more music than any American composer.

Your sermon from This world and beyond,

offers this petition, If only each day began

with quiet self-recollection in the presence of God.

I transcribe sentences into my notebook,

this book on loan from a university library,

to me of all people, Sunday is the day

for the soul. Here we find those hidden things,

slowing down the struggling empire, His yoke,

not mine. You remind us to give thanks

for this new beginning. This time is how

I know, how I connect Ellington to Bultmann,

all that we never learned when you both

were here. Here’s Duke: He’ll give

peace and comfort, to every troubled mind.

And here’s you. We are truly weary…

Work is not our master. Mi carga es liviana.

The time we live in graces me. So many

carry me in song and sermon. You invoke the poet,

thus: ...all week-day wanderers, burdened.

Come Sunday. Gustav Schuler ends

your sermon, Mahalia ends Duke’s song.

Go in secret. So many listeners.

These are the mountains from another land.

Jim Bodeen

28 January 2025

*24 July 2938, Rudolf Bultmann, The Marburg Sermons

St. Matthew 11: 28-30.

THE PEW

 

THE PEW

    [Weekly Email to Rudolf Bultmann while reading his Marburg Sermons

     rom This World and Beyond, delivered between 1936-1950.]

I sit in the pew.

This is where I worship from.

On Sunday.

On Sundays.

Other than Karen,

the people who sit with me

in the pew

are not in the pew.

My people are not here.

The pew.

It's not easy.

Pastors say,

It’s never easy

stepping

into the pulpit.

How could it not be lonely?

Still, we fill it up each Sunday.

It was crowded this morning.

This pew.

Filled up.

All of us scrunched together.

Shoulder to shoulder,

scrunched in the pew.

Jim Bodeen

27 January 2027

AT THE END OF A TERM

 

III. AT THE END OF A TERM

        “Were it not for this intrusive word, then life might be mastered.”

                Rudolf Bultmann Sermon, Marburg, June 27, 1937

Waiting for generosity in the out-breath

one asks, How long has be been like this?

The one who says he’s so grateful. Walk

away from that one, Soldier Boy.

One can say, imagining this situation,

end of school term, professor

talking, exploring with students,

what they got right, what they didn’t get to,

this term—but not only these few—all,

everybody, the entire faculty present,

what it means to come up short. Also this:

what’s coming. Some of it, even here,

said between the lines, dangerous.

Cristo peligroso. When family members

become casualties of war, of war’s lies,

one becomes existentially different.

Existence is different.

After death, too, it’s different.

This June 27, 1937 Marburg letter,

listening from this far,

where fear has found us

returning to your Christ-Hope

center, surrendering pride, discovering

insecurity of what seemed secure.

We have outdone you

in the belief of ourselves!

Those justified by faith, deportees

and all others othered.

Deportation is trauma.

What made us proud now

makes the oppressor bold.

Christ has truly laid His grip

upon us, falling back, only

on His resurrection.

We could not have done this

on our own. How

can it not be?

This intrusive word.

These tentative steps.

Jim Bodeen

20-25 January 2025

II. RUDOLF BULTMANN'S FIRST SERMON FROM MARBURG--June 7, 1936

 

II. RUDOLF BULTMANN’S FIRST SERMON FROM MARBURG: June 7, 1936

    [from the second book of Marburg sermons: This World and the Beyond]

Acts 17: 22-32

June 7, 1936

    “I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship

            as something unknown, I am going to proclaim to you.”

Acts 17: 23

This is Paul talking to the Men of Athens.

    Paul introduces his God, the creator, “who does not live in temples built by hands…”

                Acts 17: 24

    “In Him we move and have our being.” Paul says more about his God, before returning 

        to the inscription on the altar to the Greek god.

                Acts 17: 28

“...as even some of your poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’

Acts 17: 28

“For we are indeed his offspring…”

Paul is quoting Aratus of Soli, here, Acts 17: 28, and see also Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus.. Aratus was a poet and astronomer from Cilicia, Paul’s own province. Aratus’ poem is called “Phenomena.”

Having marked his territory, and his boundaries now, Bultmann sets out, moving deeper into his sermon, quoting the young Nietzsche: “Thou, unknown God, thee will I know…”

This is from the first of twenty-one sermons in Bultmann’s This World and the Beyond, collected in the book, The Marburg Sermons. In this first sermon, Bultmann names the following poets:

Aratus, Cleanthes, Epimenides, Holderlin, Virgil, Karl Immermann, Dwinger, Goethe, Nietzsche, R.A. Schroeder, Wilhelm Busch, Paul Gerhardt, Mathias Claudius—AKA ASMUS, Schubert, Jesus, Eichendorff, Homer, Wilhelm Raabe, Klopstock, C. F. Meyer, Hebbel, Thomas Carlyle, Adalbert Stifter, Schuler, J. Chr. Gunther, Franz Werfel, Novalis, Rilke, A.V. Arnem, Pindar, Paul Fleming, Tibillus, Hoffmannshal.

My list here contains 34 poets. I may have missed some. My apologies to Rudolf Bultmann. I do not count poets included in the Bible, except for Jesus. I do not count David, the psalmists, the author/s of Lamentations, or others. Naming the poets Bultmann cites is one of my points in this documents.

In addition to introducing the first poet like this: “As some of your own poets have said,…” Bultmann introduces the poets like this:

“This the poets also know…”

“The poet says…”

“For the poet wishes…”

My point? Try doing this work without the poets. Many have tried it. Many haven’t given it a second thought. Ask yourself, those of you with ears to hear, what is missing? Or who? Among your listeners maybe. Among your listeners, What doesn’t get heard?

Poets are present in 20 of the 21 sermons in This World and the Beyond.

This first sermon with Paul in the Aereopagus,is also a sermon full of repetition. In Him we move and have our being… said 5 times? More? In this sermon? I’m not counting here, but the movement, the transport, my God! It’s immense—the territory covered. I’d love to see the notes from those in attendance. Wouldn’t it be something, to see the notes of the students? Of Bultmann’s colleagues in attendance! And this, too, Did even some of these notes reach me, in some even fragmented form—somewhere in my own pilgrimage? Know, too. I didn’t have the qualifications to have sat in that auditorium, chapel, sanctuary, listening.

After listening, walking,

my son calls from his mountain

where he’s walking himself,

it is a day of calls. My grand-daughter

calls from the university, telling

of her mornings with meditation

and writing. She studies psychology,

and asks questions of my reading.

Her questions mirror her own listening,

and I feel like the grandfather

vulnerable, aka the fool, too ready

to believe his stubbornness understands.

Bultmann’s talking about fear

and security. My wife returns

from quilting with her friends

and hands me a poem, The Way

It Is, by Bill Stafford: There’s a thread

you follow. It goes among things that change.

We talk about the poem at dinner.

We talk about the thread

over coffee. We have been doing

this for a long time. Bultmann writes,

How seldom now are we terrified

at ourselves, refers to Dwinger

who wrote about a man in Siberia

constructing a piano of wooden keys

so he could play music in a bad time,

a man holding onto his thread.

Poets want to believe history

is avenged, but the gospel

does not suggest this. Witness

to Christ takes many forms.

Thread that vexes the world.

16-17 January 2025

MONDAY MORNING

 

MONDAY MORNING

         

             --With B. W.

Coffee poured in that elegant cup

5-berry muffin on white saucer

in that back room at the bakery

B of course already paid

ice from the windshield

of the tiny Honda

hiding my late arrival

our beginning point

near some unknown border

asking again,

What can be said?

How does one begin from here?

Jim

6 January 2025

THE SERMONS THAT MATTER

 

THE SERMONS THAT MATTER

I. In all this, have we been speaking of a remote past, which may be

of interest to us but which fundamentally no longer concerns us?

                    Rudulf Bultmann, June 7, 1936

Driving down Fruitvale to have

my tires checked by Russ at Tires U-Save,

in the Honda Fit, three days,

three sermons into Bultmann’s

Marburg Sermons, This World

And the Beyond, 1936-1950,

twenty-one sermons, available

to me by way of Inter-library Loan

from the local public library,

I pull off to the shoulder of the road

after failing to steer safely

writing in my notebook,

Mostly, I just breathe,

holding this book, relieved,

(still in dis-belief) at what

I hold, I’m holding these sermons!

They’re in my hands.

This confirmation. These 50 years.

Afraid that I’ll lose it

before getting to the air machine

and the life of my tires.

There. Now I can drive again,

turn into traffic, arriving.

Sitting in the waiting room,

cold, two doors opening,

closing, in and out of the shop

workers, seated in the plastic

and aluminum chair, notebook

and sermons bound and not

remaindered, Bultmann writes,

This is the critical advent question.

He is with his students and colleagues,

with them, in their language, ahead

of them yes, but in hearing distance.

1936. It is January 11, 2025.

Here, there has been an election.

Bultmann cites the poet, The story of our days,

he has been reading forgotten poems

of Karl Immermann, gazing into evening,

and lo, beyond our time to guide

our children’s course, the story

of our days, our age’s stain,

must be effaced. Only in the waiting

then, we see ourselves with a chance

come from elsewhere. Forgotten

in the stacks, maybe stored in the library

basement, retrieved, delivered,

temporarily mine, 42 more days!

Fragile binding eternal, even

conscious fingers and hands

breaking under use, under-used

before evangelical clamor.

Jim Bodeen

11-17 January 2025

AROUSING TOTAL OPPOSITION

 

AROUSING TOTAL OPPOSITION

Down from the mountain, legs worn,

stretched and dry from leather boots,

Chafed muscles cry for lotion. Waking in bed,

the lost pencil for margin notes

in the library-loan book of Bultmann

sermons* on living room floor

under footstool. I get up to pee,

applying lotion while retrieving

the pencil. The old man must die,

Bonhoeffer says. Bultmann turning

the parable every possible way.

Workers in the vineyard,

can they not see God’s generosity?

Even when crops fail? Remembering

an old man talking about his pastor-

father, You were able to work, no!

Bultmann, too, like

a Navajo Blessingway Singer

from another world. Hozho.

And Tillich arrives in the mail.

Nothing can be hidden—It is always

reflected in the mirror in which nothing

can be concealed. My old pastor

brought you to me. Dear Paulus,

You learned men of crises

at my door, me, the worst of sinners

as Bonhoeffer says to seminarians,

common, a Dakota prairie dog.

How else to have hope?

The parable insists the vineyard owner speak.

Do you begrudge my generosity?

So many helping to understand.

Poverty written on my face. Bultmann ending

his sermon at the beginning,

August, 1942, with lines from the poet,

another Paul, Gerhardt, (the poets

at every trailhead with Bultmann),

We are guests at a strange hearth.

Too many houses have been built

in the forests. The cities are on fire.

Holderlin, C. F. Meyer, Rilke,

signs themselves, declarations

of suffering leading to grace.

Unarmed in a simple message.

Salve from poets rubbed

into an old man’s legs.

To be nothing here.

*Rudolf Bultmann, This World and the Beyond: Marburg Sermons, 1936-1950.

Jim Bodeen

15 January 2025

LET YOURSELF BE SURROUNDED BY KAREN

 

LET YOURSELF BE SURROUNDED BY KAREN

The walls in this house

are Karen’s walls.

This house on her 80^th birthday

is a celebration of beauty

she brings to us.

Thank you for coming.

Wander the rooms.

Sit before the color

of her threads, the material

before your eyes, created

by this uncommon woman.

Jim

1 January 2025

ON THIS FIRST DAY

 

ON THIS FIRST DAY

               Up,

and in the butterscotch chair

while coffee brews. I begin

reading A Year with Bonhoeffer,--

the daily meditations by turning

back to January 1–2025:

God becomes human, a real human being,

on this first day. I began this journey

October 12, when Steve gave us

both the book. We had been driving

to Ellensburg each week, studying DB’s

Discipleship—his work on the Beatitudes

re-opening the hunger that can’t be taught,

blessed are those,--what had broke me open

in the story, broke me again in the words.

Sweet with the practice of early rising,

the dark listen through other ears. Music

available to all at no cost. It’s a new time

again. One with destructive empathy,

de-constructing one’s own feelings.

God wants me to be human too. On this

first day, bird feeders full of thistles

for the finches, God leads us

into absurdity. What am I doing

with this rich kid, newly arrived

from the beaches of Barcelona?

How is it that God sounds so much

like my mother's cry. Her song carries,

crossing the shallow seas of North Dakota.

Jim Bodeen

1-3 January 2025

THE AMERICAN GOLDFINCH

 

THE AMERICAN GOLDFINCH

            --for D. P. at 17

is the songbird you fill the feeder

full of thistles for, Dee. This morning

you’re 17, and finches sing

Tsii, tsi, tsi, tsit, for you. Maybe

you’re making pizzas today,

working your shift at Mod Pizza,--

maybe right now, you’re getting ready

for work, maybe checking messages

on your phone from friends singing

for you. When they call, sing back.

Tell them you like thistles, dandelions,

small twigs. Tell them you like flowers,

lots of flowers, purple ones.

Purple ones with yellow centers.

You’re 17. Give this day to yourself.

Hey, this day to find out again, what it’s like!

Love you. Gpa

27 December 2024