We just sang one of my favorite Lenten hymns: “Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun”—the text is by the seventeenth century poet, and dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, John Donne. Donne is not an easy poet to understand, his images are complex, often confusing, and he often uses words that were already archaic in his day, and incomprehensible. He also often invented words. 

Donne was from a Roman Catholic family—his brother died in prison, after having been apprehended for harboring a Jesuit priest. Donne himself converted to the Church of England, probably in part to secure his career. And his call to holy orders came only when other, more lucrative career opportunities were closed off to him. He eventually became the Dean of St. Paul’s and became one of the most famous preachers of his day, a status that is largely inexplicable to contemporary readers of his sermons.

He wrote a great deal of poetry, though little of it was published in his lifetime, and his secular, love poetry is as highly prized as is his religious works like the words we just sang. His most famous poem is probably “Death be not proud” but he is probably even more famous for the words he wrote as he lay in a sickbed and heard the funeral bell tolling: “No man is an island, entire of itself …” A recent biography, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell is a beautiful and insightful introduction to his life and work.

In the hymn we just sang, Donne is exploring the various types of sins he has committed, and asking God whether God’s forgiveness extends to those and to him. He begins with original sin, “that sin where I begun;” then mentions his habitual sins, those he commits, though he knows he should not. He asks about the sins he led others into, and sins he was able to abstain from for a year or two, though he relapsed. And finally, he asks about the sin of fear, or despair, that when he dies, his sins will not be forgiven; but then he asks that God swears by Godself, that Christ will be there, shining, as Christ’s presence shines now, and forgives him. 

It’s a probing self-examination that may make us feel a bit uncomfortable, even in this penitential season of Lent. Though he speaks to our own experiences, we moderns tend not to want to examine ourselves too closely. We are quick to condemn the sins of others, to decry the systemic sins that surround us and in which we are enmeshed, but when we come to our own sins and shortcomings, we may feel a bit uncomfortable being too honest with ourselves or with others.

Perhaps my explication of the text unsettled you in some way. I know that we often don’t pay close attention to the words of the hymns we sing, we may catch a phrase or an idea, but often the words seem less important than the music as a whole, which can move us and bring us into communion with each other and with God.

There was a time, probably before I was ordained, that I often turned to Donne in Lent. He’s one of those authors who speaks to the human condition, our brokenness and sin, but also, as in this hymn, beautifully expresses the power and extent of God’s mercy and grace. When we are turned off by language of sin and repentance, we may forget that such language opens us to the riches of God’s grace and the ways that, through grace, and our repentance, God is working to remake us in God’s image.

Donne is one of those authors I often return to during Lent. There was a time, back before I was ordained, I think, when I spent considerable time with his poetry and other writings during this season. The beauty and power of his language, the clear-eyed way in which he examines himself, encouraged me to deepen my relationship with God, to lay bare my soul before God, and open myself, more widely and deeply to God’s loving grace.

There are other images and texts to which I turn in this season, and one of the most powerful is today’s reading from I Corinthians. My history with this text goes back much further than my relationship with Donne, back to my undergraduate years and the first course I took on Paul. 

Like Donne’s seventeenth-century English and his focus on sin, Paul can be off-putting to twenty-first century sensibilities. His letters bear witness to his difficult personality and the many conflicts in which he was embroiled. Many decry him for his lack of interest in Jesus’ teachings—which are what attract many twenty-first century people. He’s often difficult to read, opaque in his argumentation, and at his worst, or at the worst of his editors and transcribers, a virulent misogynist.

All that aside, Paul offers a compelling vision of God in Christ, and it is here, in these verses, that we see that vision at its clearest and most compelling. He is writing in defense of his ministry and preaching, and he appeals to the cross as testimony and proof of the truth of his teaching:

 For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

Paul here is alluding to a central paradox of the Christian faith, the paradox of the cross. In this horrific death by torture, a vivid demonstration of Roman power and ruthlessness, we see Jesus crushed and killed. There could be no starker display of his human weakness. Yet for Paul, on the cross we see the power and wisdom of God. 

Elsewhere, in II Corinthians when Paul is talking about his own personal physical weakness and infirmity, he says that in response to his prayer, Christ said to him, “power is made perfect in weakness.” In other words, the cross is a demonstration of Christ’s power, of God’s power. Yet, that power, an allusion to the vindication of Christ through the resurrection, that power never erases the fact of the cross. The cross still stands, Jesus’ suffering remains. 

It’s a message that’s often overlooked and ignored by Christian triumphalism. We internalize and spiritualize the cross to rid it of its revolutionary message. We ignore the pain and suffering of the cross to focus on the joy of resurrection. When Christianity becomes enmeshed in power politics, in empire, nationalism, and white supremacy, the symbol of the cross often becomes a weapon wielded against the weak, the stranger and the alien, unbelievers, adherents of other religions.

One of our great challenges as Christians in this historical moment is to proclaim Christ crucified, folly and stumbling block, or literally, scandal. Our challenge is to see and to proclaim the cross as power made perfect in weakness, not to wield it as a weapon against others. In this day, when much of Christianity seems to have become another means by which people assert their own individual rights in a zero-sum game that results in the infringement of the rights of others, preaching Christ crucified, taking up our crosses, is a truly revolutionary message and way of being in the world.

On the cross, we see God’s weakness and God’s power. On the cross we see God’s love, incarnate, and suffering. On the cross, we see Christ giving himself for us and for the world, forgiving our sins and the sins of the world. On the cross, we see Christ, showing us a new way of being in the world, forgiven, and forgiving, sharing God’s love, bring hope to the hopeless, offering love to a world filled with anger and hate. As we walk the way of the cross this Lent and into Holy Week, may we enter into the love that Christ shares, on the cross and in our hearts, may we experience the forgiveness of our sins, and share God’s forgiving mercy and grace with the world.