I-YOUniverse

What good does it do to meditate on atrocity? (The short answer is: None, except…)

Last week I meditated, for the first time I can remember, on the Stations of the Cross, as found in Celtic Daily Prayer. Like the book as a whole, this meditation is beautiful, poetic.

What I’m thinking of as meditation on atrocity involves dwelling on Christ’s being whipped, his flesh being torn, his shoulders being wrenched, and so on.

It led me to wonder about such meditations on the cross as Mel Gibson’s The Passion. I understand that many people regard that film as almost sacred. I respect their viewpoint.

Focusing on torment can become unhealthy.

The cross is about denying self, loving your enemies, doing the Father’s will not your own. Psychological meanings demand as much of us today as the physical suffering, and are more likely for the average person than dying a horrific death. We may get carried away with the “glamour” of the thing, and forget the boring cross of everyday life.

Suffering is real. Ask military veterans, people living with chronic illness, survivors of abuse and real torture. You don’t need to make it up. Just be thankful that God hasn’t led you there yet.

However, the cross was officially sanctioned torture.

For the first time in American history, our country allows torture. I know the verbal dance our officials do, and I don’t buy it. Torture is torture. The US has turned to Guantanamo and some of the new democracies in the former Soviet bloc to find territory outside the media glare where it can torture people.

Some lines you don’t cross as a civilized society. It took hundreds, thousands, of years to get to the legal ban on self-incrimination and the ban on cruel and unusual punishment in the US Constitution—and only a day 9-11-2001 to knock it down.

When we meditate on the cross, we should see there all tortured people, including those since 9-11. Our reflections should lead us to resolve never to allow torture, or anything that even comes close to it, not only for the sake of victims (which in itself should be sufficient), but for our own sake.

Studies at Stanford showed that the average person is likely to obey instructions from a perceived authority to administer electric shock to subjects of scientific experiments. In another study college students placed in a “concentration camp” social structure began to abuse the “inferior” social group.

People who torture violate minimal standards of human conduct. Do they become less than human? They certainly are not behaving as God wants us to behave.

What an irony that a president who thinks of himself as a “Christian” (assuming others weren’t as good Christians as he) should be in office when we begin torturing people. That way of treating enemies must be in some part of the Sermon on the Mount I haven’t read yet.

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-

Friday March 21, 2008

Good Friday

 Dereliction

 Jesus cried, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?”

 Sunday’s a cinch, Lord-
what about mean days, moan mundane days,
you’re off holding revival meeting someplace far
from me,

pain day someday pays today in full.
The pills aren’t working, Lord.
My sweet Lord, you listening?

You’re American as Toyota, Lord,
My Methodist ancestors conquered the continent in your name.
Not so sure any more how the conquered ones felt about it,
happy as Tibetans under Chinese rule, maybe.
But my great grands sang “Glory, hallelujah!”
every step along the Santa Fe.
You bore them through on eagles’ wings
wars and depression and the 60s.

Me?

Folks don’t talk to the one in the chair.
Plenty of people, if they think of me
(which they don’t),
say, “He had it coming.”
They sing me a chorus of “Cabaret”
and swing out the door slinging over their shoulders
“Lemme know if you need anything”
like their eye balls don’t work.

 I came out of the belly three months early, should not’ve lived.
Guess you had other plans.
(You can clue me in any time.)
First thing, Momma taught me
not to drink, and “Jesus loves me.”

You still there?
If you’re not there, my sweet Jesus, I’m done.
Nobody gets it -constant pain-
like you.
There’s only so much loving people can do,
Then it’s just me and pain,
6 on a 1-10 scale,
(get to 10, bite the stick in two)
Well, it’s 7 really,
but gimme a few deep breaths, and I can call it a 6.
What’s one point between friends, huh?
Pain?

I feel like death in the afternoon,
Fresh meat for a pride of lions,
a carcass for a pack of pit bulls.

The physical stuff ain’t the worst.
Inside, I’m worn thin like losing to cancer gets;
you wouldn’t notice, just looking,
unless you took a soul scan. 

This is my 911 call, Lord, on my 9-11.
You’ve helped me before,
I’m ashamed to ask,
but I got nobody else,
I got nuthin’ else.

If you ain’t there…