The Dolorous Stroke

The Golden Tree, by Edwin Austin Abbey (1852-1911)

Lections: The Second Sunday After Pentecost (Lectionary 10), AD 2026 A

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Wheresoever Jesus goes, death dies—whether it’s the political death of a Jewish tax collector collaborating with the Roman occupation, or the social death of a woman whose chronic illness keeps her ritually unclean, or the literal death of a father’s beloved daughter. Everything Christ touches comes to life. It’s as though He Himself were the living antithesis of violence, as though He were Love made Man.

We were all raised, to one degree or another, on tales of King Arthur, of Excalibur and Lancelot and Avalon. But one of those stories rarely retold, and certainly not included in any Disney adaptation, is that of the Dolorous Stroke. It begins with a knight named Balin. Known as Balin the Savage, or the Knight of Two Swords, he finds himself expelled from Arthur’s Court for violence. He seeks redemption, yet cannot let go of his vendetta.

Balin discovers a castle that hadn’t been there before, and wonders if perhaps the man whom he’s pursuing might be hidden there. This man had killed someone under Balin’s protection, and Balin wanted vengeance. He is greeted warmly at the castle and welcomed to a feast. But all celebrants must leave their weapons at the door. Balin, however, conceals a knife within his boot. There at the table of the Fisher-King, surrounded by sumptuous fare, he does indeed recognize the man whom he’s been hunting, and in a sudden rush of rage, Balin draws his knife and strikes him down.

This is a terrible violation of hospitality, and so the Fisher-King and his men immediately pursue Balin throughout the castle. Desperate, the savage knight searches the walls for weapons, for spears or for swords, but none can be found on display. As he flees deeper into the magical castle, the atmosphere changes, and he begins to hear the music of angelic voices: “Man of sin, come no further. Man of blood, stay back.” Alas, listening to reason isn’t really Balin’s strong suit.

He crosses the threshold into the holiest of places, the Chapel of the Grail. “Fall down on your face,” the celestial chorus cries. “The place where you are standing is holy ground.” There he sees the Holy Grail, the Cup of Christ, shining in glory; and above it a Spear from which three drops of blood continually fall. Balin doesn’t realize that this is the Holy Spear, the Lance of Longinus, which pierced the heart of Christ upon the Cross, brought to Britain long ago by Joseph of Arimathea. Again the voices tell Balin to stand back, and again he does the worst possible thing.

Balin rushes forward, seizes the Spear, this holy thing, and sacrilegiously uses it to wound the Fisher-King. In the moment that the king receives the wound, that entire section of the castle collapses upon Grail, Spear, knight, and king, burying them alive. For three days they lie entombed, until on the third day the stones move. The wizard Merlin has come, and having released Balin, he says to him: “You have dealt the Dolorous Stroke. And because the king and the land are one, you have laid waste the land for three counties all around. Fish die in the streams. Crops wither in the fields.”

And this indeed is horrifying, for Balin knew not what he did. He did not understand. Yes, he was violent. Yes, he broke the laws of hospitality, choosing bloodfeud over banquet. But he did not realize the sacredness of the relic which he seized, nor that so many people, even the very land itself, would be wounded when he turned to face the wrath of his pursuer. Yet is this not the world in which we live? Is it not perilous, this mortal realm wherein the sins of one affect the outcome for so many others? Does not our rage cause undo suffering?

Every parent takes a risk, bringing a child into our fallen middle-earth. Yet we must take that risk in hope. The only thing that makes Balin’s shame and guilt bearable, as he rides out into the devastation he has wrought, is that Merlin whispers to him a word of hope: “One day the good night, the Grail Knight, will come. He will win through the Wasteland and come to the castle, and he will achieve the Grail. With the same Spear that wounded the king, he will heal him. And when the king is healed, the land will be healed.”

And that’s Galahad, the knight who from his earliest days possesses a spiritual life, an awareness of Christ, the desire to heal and a heart for restoration. He shall undo the Dolorous Stroke.

In all of human history, since Cain slew Abel, there’s been a great chain of violence and hurting. Every act of violence is met with another act of violence, and the pain and the blood just deepen. Finally all that violence reaches Christ, the Son of God, and He is the one person who, as the Spear pierces His heart, turns it around and offers love and forgiveness. In a way that should’ve been the last time that a spear ever pierced a human heart, but we’ve carried on with our wars. That’s the way we are as fallen people. But at least that Spear should’ve been sacred. To turn the sacred and use it for internecine violence was the greatest sacrilege. Yet for even the greatest sacrilege, God has an answer.

We still live within the Wasteland. Every day we must confront the wounds which we have carved into Creation: ecological catastrophe, predatory economics, weapons of mass destruction, wars of choice, the disenchantment of our world, and bad philosophy falsely splitting the spiritual from the material. We did this and we do this because we are sinners, because we are out of line with God. “Earth felt the wound,” wrote Milton, “and Nature from her seat Sighing through all her Works gave signs of woe, That all was lost.” Yet we are promised hope.

The good knight, the Grail Knight, will come. He will achieve the Cup of Christ, the Blood of Christ, which is the Holy Sacrament. Thus shall the world be healed through the same instruments which wounded her—namely humanity, redeemed in Jesus Christ. These stories about kings and queens are always stories about you. Every one of us is the Adam and Eve of our own soul.

“The whole Creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God,” writes St Paul for us. Creation is now subject to futility, but in this is our hope: that the coming of Christ and His Resurrection make us new, make us into His New Creation. The turning of recovery is found for us in the Blood of Christ: “By His wounds we are healed.” It isn’t about doing nothing, waiting for Jesus to show up and make it all right. It’s about Jesus transforming us into Him, into His hands and His voice, into His Resurrection.

We must not make the Spear of Christ a weapon to wound the world. We must turn it, in us, offering Jesus’ own love and forgiveness. “Love,” wrote George Herbert, “is that liquor sweet and most divine, which my God feels as blood but I as wine.” You and I are Balin, but we are Galahad as well. We have done terrible things, the repercussions of which we must wrestle each and every day. But sin is not the end of our story. Here, today, at this Table, is the Grail! Here is the Holy of Holies! Here is the Blood of Jesus Christ poured out for all the world!

Come, taste and see that the Lord is good. Then let us ride out together, into the Wasteland, with healing in our wings.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Credit where credit is due: This homily is taken, shamelessly and with great gratitude, from a beautiful reflection by the poet Malcolm Guite.

Pertinent Links

RDG Stout

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St Peter’s Lutheran

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Nidaros Lutheran

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