Jesse Sharpe PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText ...

Herbert Discussing the Word 139
Thus Adam my first breathing rendereth:
Was ever grief like mine? (69-72)
Here Jesus is describing himself as the creator of humanity, so once again the reader is
presented with how terrible the reality of the Passion is because we are constantly
reminded of who Jesus is, what he is doing for humanity in the Passion, and how blind and
ungrateful humanity is.
In Herbert’s construction of his collection, The Church, there is an interesting and
important bookending that takes place. The poems ‘The Altar’ and ‘The Sacrifice’
introduce the reader to a broken relationship in desperate need of repair. Physical anguish
of God in the person of Jesus is required to emphasise this divide between humanity and
the divine, but when we reach the end of The Church, we find ‘Love (III)’, and here the
sacrifice of Jesus is revisited, but in a very different context. The Church begins with the
voices of Herbert and Jesus inhabiting different poems. They are disconnected. Christ’s
flesh and blood are ripped from him as he is sacrificed for and on Herbert, who is
represented as a stone, an inanimate object, incapable of true conversation or relationship.
However, in ‘Love (III)’, Jesus and Herbert are able to converse and inhabit the same
place. Furthermore, the sacrifice, the offering of Christ’s body, is freely and happily given
in ‘Love (III)’. It is between these two points that the rest of The Church plays out. There
is wrestling with God; there is pain and frustration and remorse and rejoicing and
celebrating and repentance and acceptance. There are all the elements of a difficult, but
loving, relationship that is worked through, and where we end is not so much a point that
has been gained but that has been realised.
It is with ‘The Sacrifice’ that the conversation truly begins. From the words of
Christ on the cross, we are moved to Herbert’s response in the very next poem, ‘The