Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

Today’s Gospel lesson sets up the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Rather than comment at length, I want to share a late medieval poetic text and a modern setting of it by Paul Spicer, an English conductor and composer who studied with Herbert Howells. This loud, excitable, pugnacious piece moves from “trumpet blast” to “wonder song” to “word of battle.” Throughout, the phrase “come out” forms a repetitious word-figure that punctuates the bellicose, mocking language. The sense of the text comes through clear enough, in spite of some antiquated Middle English vocabulary.

Yours in Christ,

Justin

Come out, Lazar!
Come out, Lazaro, what so befall.
Then might not the fiend of hell
Longer make that soule to dwell.
So dreadful was that ilke cry
To that feloun, our enemy.
The kinges trumpet blew a blast;
Come out! it said, be not aghast.
With that voice the fiend gan quake,
As doth the leaf when windes wake.
“Come out” is now a wonder soun,
It hath o’ercome that foul feloun
And all his careful company.
For dread thereof they gunne cry:
Yet is come out a wonder song,
For it has broken the prison strong.
Fetters, chains and bondes mo
That wrought wretched soules woe.
Come out! That kings voice so free
It maketh the devil and death to flee.
Say me now thou serpent sly
Is not? Come out! an asper cry?
“Come out” is a word of battle,
For it gan helle soon t’assail.
Why stoppest thou not, fiend, thine ear?
That this word enter not there?
He that said that word of might,
Shop him felly to the fight.
For with that word he won the field
Withouten spear, withouten shield,
And brought them out of prison strong,
That were enholden there with wrong.
Tell now, tyrant, where is thy might?
“Come out” hath felled it all with fight.

—14th-century Anonymous Middle English

Yours in Christ,

—Justin