The Preacher, the Pastor and the Poet

I have been thinking a lot recently about the role of poetry in the work of a pastor. If this combination—poetry and pastoral work—strikes you as odd, that is partly why I’ve been thinking about it so much.

It ought not to be odd.

After all, whatever else it involves, the work of the pastor involves handling the written Word of God well, so that it might lead people to, and mould them after the likeness of, the Living Word (our Lord Jesus Christ). I believe very strongly that a pastor who wants to do this work well ought to be at least as comfortable with poetry as he or she is comfortable with church leadership paradigms (let’s say), models for discipleship ministries, pastoral counseling practices, or theological reflection.

I’m not alone in this conviction.

In The Contemplative Pastor, Eugene Peterson makes an off-hand observation about the intuitive connection between pastoral work and poetry. “Is it not significant,” he asks rhetorically, “that the biblical prophets and psalmists were all poets? It is a continuing curiosity that so many pastors, whose work integrates the prophetic and psalmic (preaching and praying), are indifferent to poetry. In reading poets, I find congenial allies in the world of words. In writing poems, I find myself practicing my pastoral craft in a biblical way.”

I have also noticed this “indifference to poetry” among many contemporary pastors, too. One time at a work dinner with a number of my fellow pastors, I asked out of the blue (and out of genuine interest) what everyone’s favorite Shakespeare play was (mine is King Lear, followed closely by Midsummer Night’s Dream). The blank stares that met me gave me a hunch that Peterson is on to something here.

In Subversive Spirituality, Peterson returns to this thought. He points out that St. John of Patmos, who was the first Christian ever to bear the title theologian—was also, and by default, a poet. Contrary to the suppositions of the Left-Behinders, the Book of Revelation is not an Apocalypse Survival Manual. It is a poem. The “one great poem which the first Christian age produced”; and, Peterson warns us, “The inability (or refusal) to deal with St. John the poet is responsible for most of the misreading, misinterpretation, and misuse of the book.”

Why is was the last book of the Bible written to us in the form of an extended poem? Peterson suggests that it’s because “a poet uses words primarily not to explain something but to make something. Poet (poetes) means ‘maker.’ Poetry is not the language of objective explanation but the language of imagination. It makes an image of reality in such a way as to invite our participation in it.” This is true not just of the Book of Revelation, but also of the 23rd Psalm, the glorious visions of New Creation in Isaiah, the exultant Magnificat of Mary, and the hundreds of other poetic texts we find in the pages of the Good Book.

To handle the Bible well, then, I believe, pastors need to know poetry.

Let me be clear that I am not speaking of exegesis here, per se—dissecting and analysing the poetry of the Bible. Like Dr. J. Evans Prichard, PhD—the fictional author of that terrible essay called “Understanding Poetry” from the movie Dead Poets Society—we can be fully fluent in the rhyme, metre and figures of speech that poetry employs without ever coming to know it in a way that allows it to do what Peterson is describing above, to “make” to invite our participation in a new reality.

For this we need to spend leisurely time with poetry. Soaking in it. Savoring it. Trying it out in public when opportunity arises. Even, dare I say, trying our hand at it.

The more I think about it, in fact, the more convinced I am that every pastor whose work involves the Word of God (i.e. every pastor) could do far worse than to write a poem or two every now and then. They need not be good poems. They need never be published. But to understand how a carefully-honed turn of phrase can distill an experience down to its essence and then release it like evocative incense into the imagination of others—that is a lesson best learned by trying.

I am writing from a strong bias here, I will admit. I write poems every once in a while. If you count song lyrics, I would say I write poetry a lot; but even if you only include the unsung variety, I’d have to admit that I’ve been known to write a poem upon occasion. Of course, all of my verse is largely unsung—I’ll never be the next Gerard Manley Hopkins—but even so, I have always found great delight in writing poetry. I hope, too, that it has made me deeper, wiser, and more sensitive as a “workman who studies to present himself approved, rightly dividing the Word of Truth.”

This is all by way of explanation. For the next few weeks at this blog, I’m planning to post some of my best attempts at waxing poetical. My goal is to write a poem a week till the start of Lent. Well see how it goes. But as we do, my hope is that it might inspire you, whether you are a pastor or not, to reflect a bit on the role that poetry has, or might have, in your own life as a follower of Jesus, the One who was himself the Word made flesh.