Patrick Comerford
We are in the countdown to Christmas in the Church since Sunday, which was Advent Sunday or the First Sunday of Advent (3 December 2023), the first day in a new Church Year.
The Church Calendar today (7 December) celebrates Saint Ambrose (397), Bishop of Milan, Teacher of the Faith.
The eight-day Jewish festival of Chanukah (Hanukkah) starts at nightfall this evening (7 December 2023) and ends with nightfall on 15 December 2023. It marks the victory of the Maccabees over the Seleucid Greek occupiers in 139 BCE. After recapturing the Temple in Jerusalem, which had been converted into a place of idol worship, they searched for pure oil to light the Temple menorah. They found just enough to burn for one day, but miraculously it burned for eight days until more oil could be brought.
Before this day begins, I am taking time early this morning for prayer and reflection.
Throughout Advent this year, my reflections each day include a poem or song by Leonard Cohen. My Advent reflections are following this pattern:
1, A reflection on a poem or song by Leonard Cohen;
2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.
The Songs and Poems of Leonard Cohen: 5, ‘Last Year’s Man’:
Leonard Cohen released his third studio album, Songs of Love and Hate, on 19 March 1971. The album was recorded the previous September, and all eight songs are written by Leonard Cohen: Avalanche, Last Year’s Man, Dress Rehearsal Rag, Diamonds in the Mine, Love Calls You by Your Name, Famous Blue Raincoat, Sing Another Song, Boys, and Joan of Arc. There is a bonus track on the 2007 remastered edition: Dress Rehearsal Rag.
I had already become an avid reader of Leonard Cohen’s poems, and I listened to this album throughout the summer of 1971. I was in my late teens, and it was a summer that became nothing less than life-changing in terms of my spiritual growth and maturity.
The second track, ‘Last Year’s Man,’ has images of ‘a lady’ with a secret identity who ‘was playing with her soldiers in the dark’ – perhaps an image of Esther; an image of the dreadful fate Haman had plotted; an image of the Maccabees defeating an occupying force; an image of Bethlehem being ensnared in the evil plots of Babylon or of Herod; an image of the murderous schemes of Cain, who represents all who would want to plot the extermination of another people.
This song has remained on the periphery of Cohen’s classic songs, and is often interpreted as a song about an obsessive love that Cohen has experienced, still seeking this unrequited love.
But the song is filled with Biblical images, and like many of Cohen’s songs it has its parallels with the songs of many of the Biblical prophets, who see God as faithful to the people, the God who keeps on loving them and yearns for their return, and the people as a wayward, unfaithful spouse or lover.
‘Last Year’s Man’ is no-one less than God, who is the great architect, the Creator, who is dismissed too easily in today’s, modern culture as no longer relevant or credible.
In our wars, violence and lifestyles today, we frustrate God’s plans, we spoil and sully his plans for humanity, and we dismiss him as ‘last year’s man.’
We make new gods of power, wealth and war, we invent our own new superstitions. But God still has plans and hopes for his wayward people, and waits like a faithful husband for the lover who has turned away to return.
There is an echo of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Micah and other prophets in the promise:
And we read from pleasant Bibles that are bound in blood and skin
that the wilderness is gathering
all its children back again.
The relevant passages include Isaiah 64 and 65, Jeremiah 31, Hosea 1 and 2, and Micah 7.
At first hearing, there may be a Jewish reference in the description of ‘a Jew’s harp on the table.’ But a Jew’s harp is not Jewish at all, and we have to search deeper in this song to draw water from the well of Jewish mysticism in which Cohen so often found refreshment.
In Jewish mysticism, it is God the Creator who breaks through the cracks – whether they are in skylights or in unmended drums – to pour his light into the world. ‘There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in,’ as Leonard Cohen sings his song ‘Anthem’ (The Future, 1992).
Cohen hints in his songs that redemption – the tikkun olam that will repair the broken world – remains possible. He returns to the Judaism of his childhood and youth, wraps the tefillin around his upper arm, and finds new insights in the Torah: ‘And we read from pleasant Bibles that are bound in blood and skin’:
But everything will happen if he only gives the word;
The lovers will rise up
And the mountains touch the ground.
Leonard Cohen, Last Year’s Man:
The rain falls down on last year’s man,
That’s a Jew’s harp on the table,
That’s a crayon in his hand.
And the corners of the blueprint are ruined since they rolled
Far past the stems of thumbtacks
That still throw shadows on the wood.
And the skylight is like skin for a drum I’ll never mend
And all the rain falls down Amen
On the works of last year’s man.
I met a lady, she was playing with her soldiers in the dark
Oh one by one she had to tell them
That her name was Joan of Arc.
I was in that army, yes I stayed a little while;
I want to thank you, Joan of Arc,
For treating me so well.
And though I wear a uniform I was not born to fight;
All these wounded boys you lie beside,
Goodnight, my friends, goodnight.
I came upon a wedding that old families had contrived;
Bethlehem the bridegroom,
Babylon the bride.
Great Babylon was naked, oh she stood there trembling for me,
And Bethlehem inflamed us both
Like the shy one at some orgy.
And when we fell together all our flesh was like a veil
That I had to draw aside to see
The serpent eat its tail.
Some women wait for Jesus, and some women wait for Cain,
So I hang upon my altar
And I hoist my axe again.
And I take the one who finds me back to where it all began,
When Jesus was the honeymoon
And Cain was just the man.
And we read from pleasant Bibles that are bound in blood and skin
That the wilderness is gathering
All its children back again.
The rain falls down on last year’s man,
An hour has gone by
And he has not moved his hand.
But everything will happen if he only gives the word;
The lovers will rise up
And the mountains touch the ground.
But the skylight is like skin for a drum I’ll never mend
And all the rain falls down Amen
On the works of last year’s man.
Matthew 7: 21, 24-27 (NRSVA):
[Jesus said:] 21 ‘Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord”, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of my Father in heaven.
24 ‘Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. 25 The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. 26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell – and great was its fall!’
Today’s Prayers (Thursday 7 December 2023):
The theme this week in the new edition of ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘The Hope of Advent.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (7 December 2023, Saint Ambrose of Milan) invites us to pray in these words:
Abba Father, we give thanks today for the personal relationship we have with you. Thank you, Lord, for knowing each one of us and for your unconditional love.
The Collect:
God of hosts,
who called Ambrose from the governor’s throne
to be a bishop in your Church
and an intrepid champion of your faithful people:
mercifully grant that, as he did not fear to rebuke rulers,
so we, with like courage,
may contend for the faith we have received;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
God of truth,
whose Wisdom set her table
and invited us to eat the bread and drink the wine
of the kingdom:
help us to lay aside all foolishness
and to live and walk in the way of insight,
that we may come with Ambrose to the eternal feast of heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
‘Last Year's Man’ by Leonard Cohen, Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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