Good Friday

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Good Friday

by Christina Rossetti

Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy blood’s slow loss,
And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter, weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon –
I, only I.

Yet give not o’er,
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.

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This is a poem by one of my favorite poets about (as the title implies) the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, but more specifically the condition of her heart in reaction to that event. The work is 16 lines long, divided into four stanzas, four lines each. The rhyme scheme is ABBA, CDDC, EFEF, GHGH and there is no set meter, though nearly all of the middle two lines from each stanza are ten syllables (five feet) long. There is less consistency with the first and fourth line of each stanza, though the lengthier second stanza gives a feeling that the action is speeding up as it shortens again in the 3rd and 4th stanzas.

The first stanza speaks of the poets hardened heart, comparing herself to a stone.  That sets the stage for the next two stanzas, wherein she first compares herself to the women weeping over Christ, Peter who wept bitterly over his thrice denial, and the thief at the crucifixion who confessed Christ’s divinity. Then in the third stanza she compares her own response unfavorably to the crucifixion to the responses of the sun and moon, noting that those two hid their face. She says that she alone was hard as stone. Finally, in the last stanza, she asks that her heart be softened / broken. In this stanza, she utilizes the imagery of the Torah when asking God to break her.

Numbers 20:10-13

Moses Strikes the Rock

¹⁰ Then Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, and he said to them, “Hear now, you rebels: shall we bring water for you out of this rock?” ¹¹ And Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock with his staff twice, and water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their livestock. ¹² And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.” ¹³ These are the waters of Meribah,^[a] where the people of Israel quarreled with the Lord, and through them he showed himself holy.

It is Christian teaching, found in multiple places, that Jesus is greater than Moses.

Hebrews 3

Jesus Greater Than Moses

3 Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, whom we acknowledge as our apostle and high priest. ² He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God’s house. ³ Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself. ⁴ For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything. ⁵ “Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s house,”^[a] bearing witness to what would be spoken by God in the future. ⁶ But Christ is faithful as the Son over God’s house. And we are his house, if indeed we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory.

Ultimately, the poet recognizes her own failings intellectually and asks God to break her, and in so doing, fix her. It is notable that she cites the scene of Moses striking the rock because water gushes forth after he does so. Here, she wants tears to come forward from her hardened heart.

Rossetti utilizes the imagery of “stone vs. sheep” to bookend her work. Sheep are soft, wooly, movable, whereas a rock is none of those things. Christ describes Himself as the good shepherd (John 10:11) just as Psalm 23 describes God as a shepherd to David.

I am a big fan of Rossetti’s poetry in general and I like this poem as well. It’s a thoughtful introspection about human emotion and a desire to master those emotions when we know intellectually that they are not what they should be. I think most people have times in life when they feel that they are hardened to something, when they should not be. But what do we do about it and what can we do about it? Here Rossetti’s answer is to ask God for help. There is both irony and beauty in the truth that she must seek God’s help even in the context of His own suffering.