I-YOUniverse

You dig out of a hole many different ways. The truth is, often it’s somebody else who gives you a hand up. In Lord of the Rings, the movies, a hand up is an important symbol. Frodo gives Sam a hand up into the boat (in contrast to Isildur who drowns at the beginning); then Aragorn offers Wormtongue a hand up, which he spurns. Galadriel offers Frodo a hand up as he struggles beyond Shelob’s cave. Of course, it’s Sam who gives Frodo the ultimate hand up by carrying him toward the crack of doom, when he’s totally out of juice.

Counting my blessings is an antidote for the blues. Here’s a sampling:

I am

… grateful for my wife, who loves me in spite of my faults. It’s her nature to love. We’ll celebrate 38 years of marriage this anniversary.

… grateful for my son, who showed up at 7:30 a.m. last week so that I could get to church. Sandy had to be there all day, and Jim made it possible for me to go for one hour. We also had pancakes and real maple syrup. My son is a man of integrity. I’m grateful he’s part of my life.

… grateful for God’s good gifts of a functioning brain, good eyesight, hearing, the ability to move about. (If you’re young and able-bodied, you may not get it. But one of the secrets of successful aging is to focus on the things you have, not the things you don’t have.) This is something I learned in the retirement center. People ate themselves alive by dwelling on the negatives, and overlooked many positive gifts they had.

… grateful for the scripture. The 90^th, 130^th psalms to name just two.

 … grateful for friends who come to the house every Tuesday evening, every Thursday morning (at 7 a.m.) to study the Bible. Bible study is so much richer when in a small group.

… grateful for Bible study tools like the New Interpreter’s Bible. What a commentary!

…grateful for my African friends’ safety and well-being.

… grateful for a peaceful home, full of goodness.

…grateful for the riches of literature. As I do when I hit a bump in the road, I returned to Tolkien. I haven’t  read LOTR in a couple years, and it always renews and refreshes my spirit.

… grateful for a cat who curls up in my lap in the wee morning hours.

… grateful for the chance to write a blog, and for you who take time to read it.

My friend is gone, the house is still, I’ve slept around the clock almost twice. How Sandy, who resumed 10 hour days Wednesday, manages I don’t know. I hoped to write about his stay, but like an Orthodox Jew on Temple Mount not knowing precisely where the Holy of Holies is, I choose not to walk anywhere.

I think of these lines from Stephen King’s Rita Haworth and the Shawshank Redemption (an incredible piece):

We’re glad he’s gone, but a little sad, too. Some birds are not meant to be caged, that’s all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.

We spent the last couple nights at the movies: Gandhi and Pope John Paul II. I agree with Gandhi’s statement, “Poverty is the worst form of violence.”

Invisible Violence

I am convinced that one of my and the Western church’s chief sins is materialism. We’ve had several Enlightened Ones now, Gandhi and Mother Teresa, and others who have shown us that God empowers the poor to change the world.

There are 9-11 massacres happening every day among nameless millions who lack food, water, vitamins, shoes, childhood inoculations. But they are invisible, they are institutional. Nobody sets out to harm them. They just fall to the side because of globalization policies that give preferential terms to the wealthy.

We do not realize when we shop for the cheapest price we are perpetuating child labor; when we buy multinational brands we enable employers who pay less than a living wage for commodities like coffee, while drug lords pay handsomely for the drug-makings that poison our streets.

I feel so damned helpless.

Learning to See

I am fascinated by Charles Freer Andrews, the Anglican clergyman who spotted Gandhi early on and quickly allied with him. How did he see differently from other Christians? I’ll be commenting on his biography in awhile.

(I’m half through three or four books: The Life of Dialogue, Anglo-Saxon Spirituality, Sadhana: The Realization of Life, by Rabindranath Tagore, the first Asian Nobel laureate, friend of Gandhi, an overview of one kind of Hinduism, a religion I’ve never understood.)

Sick of Religion

We had a get together of my wife’s relatives, some of the best people on the face of the planet. And as we usually do, our conversation turned to the Southern Baptist history of the last 30 years, much of which is written in our families’ sweat and blood. But my son left the room. After awhile I went to find him.

He said, “Dad, I’m sick of religion. I’m not interested in religion, it’s not my thing.” He no longer goes to church, although we raised him to. In that moment I got a glimpse of myself. This is what my sectarianism has done! God, have mercy!

Mid-Year Milestones

Tonight we’re celebrating my son’s birthday, bringing in meals from Outback. Sunday will be Mother’s Day, then wedding anniversary and our birthdays, all bunched up in the middle of the year.

But I’ll have to punch my way through this damned depression to do all that. Writing is the last thing I want to do. I’m out of pain meds until next week sometime, and pain hovers at 5 or 6 or more. Not only that, I’m depressed as hell.

Don’t you wonder what the ascension of Christ was like? Some sacred rendition of “Beam me up, Scottie”?

Or the disciples’ walk home?

Luke says they worshiped and were filled with great joy. Matthew adds “but some doubted.”

We don’t really know what a video camera would have recorded. My money’s on nothing. The Risen Christ is only for human eyes (and perhaps other critters’, too). But that still begs the question of what a skeptical reporter would have seen.

It all smacks of hocus pocus.

My childhood tradition ignored the Ascension. Oh, maybe a preacher pitched a sermon at it now and then, but mostly it got swallowed up by the Old Rugged Cross.

Baal Cult, Yahweh Style

The daily lectionary calls for the reading of Psalm 68 on the eve of the ascension. That I can get into.

Depending on who you read, psalm 68 is early or late. Everybody agrees it’s difficult, at points barely translatable.

It celebrates Yah, rider on the clouds, Anglo-Saxon like:

Yah Cloud-Rider, Clap of Thunder-Roarer.

It’s also barely Yahwistic, a brash borrowing from the cult of Baal, Canaanite God of thunder. “Escape from death” (68.20) alludes to the primordial conflict between Baal and Mot, God of death. It celebrates how God shatters the hairy crown of the guilty, and promises a blood bath for the righteous to enjoy.

Worship in Temple and Heart

It transports us to the Temple, filled with the smoke of incense and sacrifice, maidens dancing, beating tambourines on palm and thigh, shofars blaring, the mighty Ark of the Covenant Shaddai’s throne taking its place at the head of the great congregation.

It reminds us that, although Yahweh’s might exceeds that of Egypt and all the wild animals that live among the reeds, compassion for orphans, widows, the desolate and prisoners is God’s key attribute.

It insists that we humans define ourselves by our response to God, that the humble and faithful will spiritually prosper, but the rebellious will live in a parched land.

Wilderness Wandering

I’ve been trudging through the desert these past few weeks:

O God, you are my God, I seek you,
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
     as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. Psalms 63:1 (NRSV)

Or is it, “God, I’m sick of you”? Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner!

The whirr of my visiting friend’s jam packed schedule, extravert’s delight, and his bone-shattering fatigue. The stunning poverty and degradation which is Africa. My wife’s joyful integration into the United Methodist fold, while I remain of my own choosing outside the camp (Heb 13.13).

Outside the Camp

I prefer the Tent of meeting to the Tabernacle (Exo 33.7-11). A verse or two, a deep commentary (not just intellectual, but spirit-filled), a blank sheet of paper, a waiting heart.

I remember as a college student serving on staff at Glorieta Baptist Conference Center for the summer, and during music week the presentation of Handel’s Messiah, 2500 trained voices singing the Hallelujah Chorus together.

But that’s all gone with the wind.

What remains is the sound of sheer silence, and the fresh scent of rain far out across the desolation of the desert.

I’ve found four references to Jesus of Nazareth in I and Thou:

• Jesus and love (not a feeling): his response to a demon-possessed man, to the beloved disciple; his bold risk “nailed his life long to the cross of the world…to love man” (pp. p. 66-67).
• The craving for redemption grows until “assuaged by one who teaches men to escape the wheel of rebirth, or by one who saves the souls enslaved by the powers into the freedom of the children of God” (p. 104)
• In the company of Socrates and Goethe is Jesus’ I-saying, the I of the unconditional relation in which a man calls his You “Father.” (p. 116)
• The gospel of John is the Gospel of pure relationship. “The father and son being consubstantial-we may say, God and man being consubstantial, are actually and forever Two, the two partners of the primal relationship.” (pp. 132-133)

Bare Essentials

Kyrios Christos!

If I strip Christianity bare, what’s left is the cry of the martyrs: Jesus is Lord. Close at hand is the history and experience to which the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament writings bear witness. But at the irreducible core is my experience of the Risen Christ:

You ask me how I know he lives-
He lives within my heart.

My spirituality for the past 20 years has centered on loss:

• loss of the mainstream Southern Baptist identity in which I was reared
• loss of the local church in a crucible of racism and parochialism
• a pastoral counseling residency which I would describe as a shamanic initiatory rite of being “cut up, cooked, and eaten”: loss of self, an internity of which my teaching colleagues were unaware

Anabaptists

Not surprising, then, in the years since to find myself drawn to the Anabaptists of 16^th century Europe, slaughtered by the tens of thousands for their simple insistence on adult baptism, symbolizing soul competency and liberty.

My church history course labeled these forebears as the radical reformation, and moved immediately to the English Baptists of the 17^th century.

But I’ve been drawn to these men and women who carried lists of scriptures in their boots and bore witness to the living flame of God’s love in their lives and deaths.

The Jesus whom they worshipped as Son of Man, Son of God, Savior, and the exemplary human Jesus of I and Thou are light years apart.

Spirit, which Buber conceived of as existing in between I and You, person and person, human being and God, is light years removed from the Holy Spirit of the New Testament.

How do I reconcile these two very different viewpoints?

Where does Jesus fit in

No need to. Buber wrote as a Jew, and as a Jew viewed Jesus in purely human terms, although his conception of Jesus is quite lofty. Jesus is one of humanity’s great religious founders of culture like the Buddha, one of history’s great philosophers like Socrates and Goethe.

Jesus also boldly risked loving humanity itself, and is an exemplar of the I-You relationship with God as of Father and son. There is not a hint of the Trinity. Spirit is not person, but the in between of an actual I-You relation.

The Jesus of the New Testament is not merely human, however exemplary he might be; he is God made flesh. You can’t work him into Buber’s ideas in some nifty fashion. But, as God-become-human he enters the human condition and relates to human beings as one among us.

However you fit the Logos and the man from Nazareth and the Risen Christ with Buber’s eternal You, Jesus is able to sympathize with our weaknesses from inside our skin.

That changes everything.

Dust blows in every crevice, grit sifts into your boots, through every piece of clothing next to your skin, your lips, your nostrils, cakes around the rim of your protective goggles. Who wants this god-forsaken country? Why the hell fight over this?

The rifle slung over your shoulder, the tension in each step because it could be your last if you trigger a land mine, the profane chatter of your buddies, however, assure you: it’s real. This dust is fought for. Somebody calls it home.

Just not you.

And the interstate north of town, the A&W where every car in the county ends up after Friday night ball games, the green fields of corn and soybeans, the white steeple church where you learned Bible verses by heart for bookmarks, the smile of your sweetheart, the tears of your Dad, and Mom’s Sunday roast beef and mashed potatoes-all shimmer, a mirage beyond your fingertips.

You think sometimes you’ll never get home again. But you deep six that thought. You’re gonna make it. Death, dismemberment, is somebody else’s fate, not yours.

You’re gonna make it.

Maybe the hardest thing, though, is how most people back home don’t notice you’re here, so very far from home. Preoccupied with the price of gas, the mortgage, the race for the White House, what Brittany Spears is going through, they scarcely even realize you’re putting your life on the line every damn minute for them.

Brian Williams announces five, ten more Americans killed in the war (not to mention uncounted Iraqis, Afghanis). “Honey, what do you want to drink with supper?” somebody asks.

Far from home.

Far from hearts that beat a little faster when the national anthem is played, that believe in what this country stands for-freedom-believe enough to give their life for the guy fighting beside them.

The big debate, WMD, how many 100s of billions of dollars spent-it costs the arm and leg of one amputee, the life of one who planned to go to college or work in a factory or raise kids. That’s what it costs, ten thousand times over. The big debate is irrelevant out here where the dust blows into every hole, and longing for home wells up in every silence.

Far from home is where you discover the high cost of the war, one heart at a time.

Yet, in each beating heart here is home. Such courage, devotion, and steel of commitment no matter what is the very best any human being is capable of.

Presence and mission

Saturday, April 12. 5 a.m. Last night nobody drank the cinnamon decaf, this morning I have a carafe full. The basket of grounds overflowed; as I empty it, dark wet grounds clump on the counter, in the napkin, on my fingers. I nuke a couple slices of leftover pound cake to go with my coffee; read the psalm and gospel for the morning; over pound cake, ponder the last few pages of I and Thou.

The cat waits at my shoulder on the shelf beside me, emitting sharp cries “Myow! Myow!” demanding attention; if I stop working and settle back for her to lay in my lap, she hops off.

When you are sent forth, God remains presence for you; whoever walks in his mission always has God before him: the more faithful the fulfillment, the stronger and more constant the nearness.

I and Thou, p. 164

No one’s sure what Buber means precisely. That much is clear from translator Walter Kaufmann’s notes (see footnote 8, pp. 163-164.)

The cat hops between me and the keyboard.

We want God always to be there; so if, waiting before the Countenance, we feel only absence, we fill the gap with faith. We substitute faith that sustains us during the absence or latency of You for the actuality of You. We turn God into a God-thing which we can manipulate.

But those who wait for the actualization of the eternal You and who act for the world find that they live before the Countenance.

I give both cats Whiskas treats and they race off into the dark house.

Gathering of people on mission

Friday, April 11. 4 p.m. In less than three hours twelve people were gathered to meet Dr. Jean-Emile Ngué, including the ministers of Trinity United Methodist Church Dr. John Peters and Teresa McRoberts. Dr. Ngué is Executive Director of the African Counseling Center (ACC) in Yaoundé and Secretary General of the Council of Protestant Churches in Cameroon.

Once Sandy and Jean-Emile had arrived home, the rush of preparation was on. We set out a dish of granola, lemon pound cake, strawberry-blueberry tarts; sliced kiwi fruit and plantain; brewed tea and made cranberry-ginger punch. We had a take-home sheaf of info and a prayer reminder; song sheets with favorite hymns which we often sing over long distance telephone lines.

After introductions people shared their experience with missions. Several are involved with high risk youth in Richmond. Others participate in the church’s annual medical mission to Honduras.

Divine appointment

Folks enjoyed hearing how Dr. Sam Roberts showed up at the Virginia Institute of Pastoral Care (VIPCare) 11 years ago, with an African pastor and grad student interested in pastoral care. My wife Sandy, untypically, had a free hour to speak with them.

Cameroon pastors had sent Jean-Emile to the States for one year of study, but when he discovered pastoral care and counseling he recognized the critical need for this discipline in Africa. He remained, earning a DMin degree from the School of Theology at Virginia Union University and completing counselor training programs at VIPCare.

He adapted Western psychology and counseling for the African context and developed a model based on the African identity. In 2000 he began the African Counseling Center (ACC), the first pastoral counseling service and training center in Africa.

Companions in Hope

In 2002, VIPCare staff including Vic Maloy, Executive Director, Dennett Slemp, Mary Fran Hughes-McIntyre, and Sandy Hamilton, and Sharron Hawke, RN, a graduate of the VIPCare congregational care program, visited Yaoundé to present a pastoral counseling seminar to 70 pastors. The African staff chose the name “Companions in Hope” for the American and African partners.

The ACC provides training for children in protecting themselves from sexual abuse and HIV/AIDS infection. It runs support groups for HIV+ mothers and grandmothers rearing children whose parents have died of AIDS. It has an outreach program to street children.

In addition, its staff provide counseling to individuals and couples, and pastoral care and counseling training for pastors.

The American Association of Pastoral Counselors invited Dr. Ngué and ACC Program Director Samuel Lindjeck to present a seminar on multicultural issues in training international students in the United States at its annual meeting in Norfolk in April. Because of delays in being granted visas, however, VIPCare staff were presenters, using materials prepared by Dr. Ngué and Mr. Lindjeck.

Saturday, March 29, 4:44 PM

A friend did a real live retreat at Richmond Hill, an urban retreat center, last week.: since my wife was going to a conference Wednesday through Saturday, I thought, being the spiritual superhero that I am, and humble, why not do one at home? So I made up some rules (what’s a retreat without rules?):

• Evening, morning and noon, read lectionary scriptures and pray
• OK to write
• Limited computer stuff
• NO TV, radio, Shakespeare CDs or recreational reading
• NO talking except when absolutely necessary
• Light eating

Right out of the chute, I got into this snit about how many Oreos dance on the head of a pin. Of course, this tipped me off to where I could start. But I didn’t want to spend the whole 72 hours salivating over  Oreos. So, I decided: three a day-they’re low fat.. Hair shirt, bad; low fat Oreos, good.

Only later I noticed that I began by asking, how little can I get by with?

Three days, Easter week. My brilliant theological mind drew parallels between Good Friday to Easter and my three days alone with God.

Here’s some snippets from my journal:

Wednesday, March 26

5:43 PM. First thing that hits is pain, 5 on 10 scale. The gateway theory says the brain can process only so many stimuli. If I don’t have stimuli, pain roars in.

8:13 PM.  After resting pain’s down to 2.  It’s dark now, only two dim lights on in the house.  If Sandy were home, there’d be light, music and conversation.

Thursday, March 27

At night awake I did a bit of web searching on Just War theory. How can we say our response to the threat in Iraq is proportional? Winnable? Has support of American public and international allies? EB says just war derived from Roman law and medieval theology.  If so, does it even apply to a world of WMD?

5:36 AM Awake. Coffee. Bible  study at 7 a.m. So Spirit-filled! We talked about our lives, also how ending the system of animal sacrifice signaled a change, now we are to care for animals and the environment. I thought about free trade coffee. Found this site (don’t know anything about it) http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/coffee/

1:05 PM. Posted PowerPoint presentation for AAPC conference about partnership between Virginia Institute of Pastoral Care and African Counseling Center-it went very well. UM Bishop Huie’s husband is at the conference. Sandy and Mary Fran, a colleague, will meet him.

Friday, March 28

 12:16 AM - Can’t sleep, raided fridge for green beans, whole wheat bagel, Easter cake. The spiritual silence, emptiness is palpable, scary. About 30 hours into this self-imposed retreat, I hear the ticking of the clock, the traffic on the main artery several blocks away. The classic music cable feed helps block the pain that clamor for self-pity at night.

3:18 AM We have no water! Water main break, nobody has water.

5:50 AM Water still out. I have three bottles of drinking water in the fridge, and several cartons of peach Fresca. So I’m good. Also a sink full of dishes I left, assuming there’s always water. Yeah, right. How fragile my way of lifeow fragile life is.H is. A water main breaks. Imagine if they can’t fix it, and we had to buy water, or if we couldn’t get water!

Used half a bottle to make my morning cup of coffee. Still dark outside. Time for devotions which I do online at http://satucket.com/lectionary/ . They present at AAPC this morning 10:00-11:30.

Sandy reports in conference went very well. Houston UM Bishop Huie’s husband is at the conference, VIPCare staffers hope to meet him,

6:47 PM - completed 48 of 72 hours. OK, frustrated that I can’t make the style uniform on my post. Pain level typically high at this time of evening, so I gotta stop for now.

Saturday, March 29, 2008

11:16 AM 7 hours to go, and my three day retreat will be over. Gotta admit, this hasn’t been that much of a thrill ride. Some moments I felt God’s presence, like when I wrote the post Free Hula Lessons, but mostly I’ve just hung around waiting for it to be over. I’ve kept the three times of prayer each day. I’ve eaten pretty wisely, with one lapse, and a grand total of three Oreos.

6:14 PM DING! Retreat’s done.

So what did I learn?

Spiritual life is often boring. I want to build wigwams on top of the Mount of Transfiguration. But Moses spent 40 parched years herding stupid sheep in the Sinai desert before he got the first glimmer of a burning bush.

I can’t speak for you, but I do self-deception well. Yeah, I want a deep relationship with God as long as it doesn’t eat into my cookie allotment.

Joy? It’s when I’m not on retreat. Sitting with friends doing Bible study. Talking to my sweetheart on the telephone. Remember what that was like, when you were a teen-ager and you only got to see her twice a week at church?

And, watching my cat circus. I’ve trained them by offering Whiskas treats. So now, when they heard me take my six o’clock meds, they came running for their pills. What a trip!

As for the burning question that ignited the first moments of my retreat-how many Oreos can dance on the head of a pin? The angel from RealLivePreacher stopped by on its way back to Gloryland and gave me the answer:

None. Oreos can’t dance.

Wednesday March 26, 2008

The improvement of the capacity for experience and use generally involves a decrease in man’s power to relate-that power, which alone can enable man to live in the spirit

(I and Thou, p. 89).

My wife’s cousin Billy visits every Wednesday morning.  Lately we’ve been discussing computers, specifically, migrating my blog to WordPress.  I only aspire to be a geek-I’m more Nick Bottom the weaver, who said, “I can gleek upon occasion.”  But that’s gotta be in an enchanted wood and Titania the mystic queen must be enamored of an ass (who shall remain nameless).

I told Billy, “it’ll take me six months to migrate my blog.”  Well, to my astonishment, it took four days!  Of course, there are a few advanced points  I still have trouble with, like username and password. 

Wisely, my wife Sandy left town for three days, the length of time, the resurrection takes.  She’s attending the national meeting of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors in Norfolk, Virginia.  Our African brothers scheduled to present a workshop on multicultural issues in pastoral counseling service and training were denied a visa or delayed in coming; Sandy and colleagues from the Virginia Institute of Pastoral Care, therefore, are pinch hitting.

I’ve decided to spend the next 72 hours in a kind of retreat, turning off the TV, struggling to listen to the Spirit, and writing.

Writing!

You remember writing.  It’s what the shaman does-goes into the dark womb of the earth and marks on the wall with a charred stick magic drawings; what the monument builder does-chisels the names of kings and conquerors; what the monk does-illuminates the sacred scrolls; what John-boy Walton does with a No. 2 pencil and a Big Chief tablet: point to life in all its fullness.

Is Martin Buber right?  Would I be better off without a Naturally Speaking head set and a laptop?  The jury’s still out.  The technology for making movies is light-years beyond what they began with, but the headlines a new film generates are the amount of box office receipts and who the stars are sleeping with.

Three days of silence.  Think what God can do in three days. And this time God’s got Billy advising on tech stuff.

Grunewald’s Crucifixion

Friday March 21, 2008

A Meditation for Good Friday

Part 2

Jesus said, “”If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” Luke 9:23 (NRSV)

Keener than a brain surgeon’s laser Jesus’ Word divides between soul and spirit. He begins with intention, not deeds; and the intention is following him. A popular school of thought associates sacred with sour and suffering. (My mother was principal of the school.)

But Jesus, “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross,” will have none of that carping, pharisaical spirit. Following Christ isn’t psychological masochism, “bearing your cross,” nor parading down the street beating your back raw. I can’t imagine a Jesus who didn’t run down country roads, breathless and joyous in the grace of a young man’s muscle. Who didn’t show off the day’s catch of fish to competitive brothers. Who didn’t polish fine carpentry for love of cedar.

Intention: “if any want to become my followers.” It’s incredible who Jesus called “evil-doers,” a pet term of some politicians today.

“Lord, Lord,” people will protest on the last day, “did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?” Preaching, casting out demons, doing deeds of power-evil? Then I have more to answer for than I figured.

The Father’s will isn’t a saint’s death (my fifteen minutes of fame), but a saint. Saints, at the least, are people who belong to God.

After identifying the intention of the daily cross-follow me!-Jesus next identifies two friction points. You’re 15 ½ years old, in driver’s ed behind the wheel of a manual transmission, parked facing upward on a slope, and the instructor’s blabbing about the friction point, the position of the clutch at which the car won’t roll backwards, but if you give it a little gas will begin rolling upward.

You find friction points-where the gospel meets resistance-immediately, in yourself. Jesus said, “Deny yourself.” In our sales pitch and appointment books we like to minimize this part of the gospel. And that involves a half truth (which has the half life of half a banana).

You can’t pour anything out of an empty cup. If it’s utterly empty, it’s a vacuum; it sucks into its void whatever it can. In The Screwtape Letters CS Lewis depicts demons as cannibals who feast on each other, when they can’t get human flesh.

Rather than face the anxiety of being made in God’s image, we semi-saints like to leapfrog over God’s intention that we be a self, define our likes and dislikes, become the work of art created for good works (Eph. 2.10, NJB). Instead, we say, “let Moses do it.” Let him face the fire on the mountain, let him tell us what God wants.

Jesus, however, spent 30 years becoming and being a self, ten times longer than in ministry, although I doubt he made the distinction. After Joseph’s death he managed a brood of brothers and sisters, ran the carpenter’s shop, debated Torah, listened to God. I doubt he made clay pigeons fly. But he felt adolescent hormones, smashed his fingers with loose beams, perhaps tangoed with a bossy elders. His love of all things everyday evident in the parables-yeast, the lost coin, the farmer sowing seed-suggests how deeply he invested himself in Nazareth goings on.

Psychology concerns our becoming mature, authentic selves, and (to the extent that we can) our discarding fake self-indulgent narcissistic selves. Spirituality concerns surrendering both fake and authentic selves to God-not throwing self away in humiliation, but simply opening your hands and offering whatever you hold to God. Sometimes God takes what lies on your palm, sometimes God does not.

Another friction point-here it is-”take up your cross daily.” Those of us who dodge the daily cross may not even recognize when Gabbatha and Golgotha arrive. The cross casts its shadow in Peter’s rebuke, the concerned church official’s advice, the empty pew and lagging budget offering, the subtle and not so subtle pressure of society to conform or at least be still. Paul speaks of the stumbling block, the scandal, and the folly; the author of Hebrews, the shame, of the cross. Those feelings, the foe friend’s confidential advisory, the group’s stolid inertia should set off the alarm: Calvary’s at hand, come, follow.

We preachers all know where the cross is: it’s where your career is buried.

Jesus said, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down your life for your friends” (John 15.13) You find crosses motivated by love of country, neighbor, truth everywhere. They don’t belong exclusively to church-goers or even Christians. Whistleblowers know about crosses. So do soldiers, aid workers, journalists, college students and teachers, the suffering and the aged.

Real followers of Christ always face the cross one way or another. This week the body of Chaldean Archbishop of Mosul Monsignor Paulos Faraj Rahho was recovered. Kidnappers also killed his driver and two bodyguards.  The Catholic agency PIME reports 47 Christians were killed in Iraq in 2007.

Shortly before his murder, Luis Espinal, a Latin American priest, wrote:

The faithful do not have a vocation to be martyrs. When they fall in the struggle, they fall with simplicity and without posing….Life ought to be given by working, not by dying….And if the day comes when they must give their lives, they will do it with the simplicity of someone who is carrying out one more task. (Gustavo Gutierrez, We Drink from Our Own Wells [Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002], p. 117.)

Jesus said, “Follow me.” When we do, we’re never alone. We live in solidarity with all who have followed through the ages.
 

Friday March 21, 2008

Eli
pain blurs everything can’t
move can’t adjust so weight doesn’t drag
shoulders grind. pain’s
all there is

faces, women’s Mother’s wracked, that young rich
kid John’s
son of thunder, you don’t look like you could
whimper now. he 

trusted in God let God deliver
him jeers taunts buzz ears. pain at least shoves
all that in
background. Papa Joseph, where’d you come
from? missed you long
talk in carpenter’s shop you knew cross coming didn’t you when
you died you. eyes

stinging can’t wipe them
can’t wait to
see everybody loud
crowding together. pulling at 

hands can’t move,
much harder now to breathe, dry lips mouth full of
leaves dark cursing
soldiers throwing dice for my
robe Eli, used to heal people who touched hem of 

people not born praise-Eli
where- You-
are- people in the dust
valley of shadow You are
with-You where are
I -Eli-