Christ was born for this

On Friday night my son, Ian, complained bitterly about how bored he was. Usually, when he's home on a Friday night he's glued to his PS3; shooting at things and people that have been framed as "the enemy." But on this Friday he was observing a request made by his school not to engage in any video games that involved the firing of weapons in act of respect for the 26 shooting victims of the Sandyfork Elementary School on the previous Friday. Just the day before he asked not to go to school because there was a threat of a shooting made against his school on Facebook and picked up in the local newspaper. There was also a lock-down drill this week in case such insanity should bear fruit in our own small town. The drill was followed by classroom discussions between the teachers and their students. I later ran into one of the high school teachers in Wal-Mart who said that she was amazed at how much the kids had thought through the possible scenarios of what-ifs. Also on Friday morning, at 9:30am, to mark the one week anniversary, our church rang our bells 26 times in concert with all the bells of all the churches in town. It has been a week filled with funerals, and raw, terrible sadness. Despite all this and so much more, it is now two days before Christmas. It seems discomfortingly surreal when our glittery celebration of Christ’s birth runs up against the unflinching, cruel edges of life.

Christmas and its annually repeated litanies of activities seem oddly, artificially fixed in an otherwise unpredictable world. Every year we do many of the same things, though the people we share those events with may come and go, or simply grow up into different people, as the case may be. But Christmas Eve is always on the 24th and Christmas Day is always the 25th. And in its fixedness, it has become statuesque - an inanimate object of sorts to which we give a nod each year through the various rituals and habits that surround it. The result is that these rituals and habits have taken on a life of their own, with a highly personalized and individualized nature. In this way, Christmas itself has become highly personalized and individualized with only the slightest tangential connection to the birth of Christ for those of us who observe it in its enormously secular context. And so we re-enact the sacred event of Jesus' birth every year, not just to remember it, not just to honor it, not just to teach it to our children, but to break it out of its fixedness. To free it from the bonds of the rituals and habits that we have created in order to preserve its delicate sacredness but which has ironically rendered it silent. The sweetly enduring strength of Mary's song, Elizabeth's joyful exclamation and the singing host of angels are now as mute as Zechariah. It falls upon the church, on you and I, to proclaim:  It is for all the Newtowns and for all the Adam Lanza’s in this world that Christ was born.

Much as it warms my heart, our Christmas observance is intended neither for the opening of gifts on Christmas morning nor the discovery of Santa’s generosity; it is not to get an extra day or two off of work; and it is not to ensure the stability of the American economy which depends heavily on the annual average influx of $20 billion holiday dollars. No, Christ was not born in a shopping mall or under a glistening Christmas tree. Jesus was born amid farm animals in a cold barn in the middle of the night. Within days of his birth, upon hearing of it, King Herod ordered the death of all the newborn boys across the land. It was for this that Christ was born. Not for all we do out of the goodness of our hearts to relieve the suffering of the millions from disease, famine, starvation, human trafficking, war, genocide, poverty, random shooting sprees, and the destruction of natural disasters, but for all we do not do. Christ was born into a world of sin, not to reward the righteous, but to save the rest of us.

That is why to shun the soul of Adam Lanza and the hundreds like him is to deny the power of the incarnation. To hate and to reject, even one so deserving, is not our place. Adam Lanza and his mother, whose life he also took, are the neighbors Jesus demands we love as much as we love ourselves. Is it any wonder they nailed him to the cross? The world Jesus was born into was a broken and hard place; and it still is. There is a reason that the glitter and fanfare of the Christmas celebration runs counter to the world we live in – and we would do well to pay attention to its dissonant chord. It rings out the truth that Christ was born to redeem all that is wrong, not to dismiss it or ignore it, but to take it on in a way you and I cannot or will not do. Jesus’ birth is meant to awaken us to God’s ongoing redemptive work –which is not fixed - that can only be perceived by those with eyes to see it. The good news is alive and well but only to those with ears to hear it.

And so may your Christmas be filled with joy, the true and enduring joy of God’s redemption through Christ our Lord, our Savior, born for us.

Prom Date; and other ruminations about the love of God

Next weekend is my daughter's prom. It the first time she spent a chunk of her own change on the dress and drove 20 miles to a good seamstress to have the hem taken up. She's going with her best girlfriend. I, of course, had a few male candidates to suggest. But what does a mother know? I should know better. I remember with such clarity my senior prom. The boy I went with was totally mother-approved. I still have the photo around somewhere: The memory of the velvet dark green dress she made and his totally 70's gray tux is securely etched in my mental time-line. That was the last time he and I spoke, I'm pretty sure. Mom was disappointed, naturally. The lead up mantra to the event went something like this: "But he likes you so much... and he's so nice looking.... just try to get to know him... etc., etc. etc. I know it well, because to my horror, quite recently, I have used these very words myself. My bad.

The same kind of thing tends to happen when well-meaning Christians try to convince non-believers or "the lapsed," that they should try to find a way back to Jesus, who is waiting for them with open arms. There is mother, truly out of a place of love and wanting the best for their beloved child, working every angle to leverage some change of heart. "But he loves you... he died on the cross for you... why can't you see that if you opened your heart to him you'd be so much happier?" etc., etc., etc.
When will we finally understand that we cannot talk people into love - not with their prom dates and certainly not with God?

Aside from the obvious, the prom date approach is ill-fated from the start because it misses the point, completely. Love is not logical. It cannot be planned or reasoned out or scheduled. Love is not within the control of human constructs, nor can it be constrained. With the first spark, the flame of love licks out large and bright before settling down into what is steady and predictable; no longer threatening or alarming to those who are readily prepared to dispense judgment on such things. Sometimes it diminishes for no apparent reason; the charred and fragile remains are humble evidence that something that was once alive is no longer. Sometimes love outlives even itself; its passion for being a part of life's design enables it to smolder for a very long time hidden under thick ash cover, guarded and preserved. These are human experiences of love: whether love for another or love for God. God does not love as we do. Rather God is the full expression of both the love we possess and claim as our own and all that we cannot. By simply being God, love is made known and accessible. When we find that we are bound to Jesus/God in love, we are embracing love itself. It is one thing to know that we are loved by God and to have the knowledge that our return affection is requested. It is quite another to give oneself over to that love, however imperfectly offered. Human love is always constrained by guarded reservations. A mere tear in the fabric of our stalwart defense again the persistent assault of God's love can mean the end for whatever self we had hoped to preserve. To walk this earth with the love of God in one's heart is a powerful elixir for healing the deep wounds this life so randomly inflicts on the body and soul. To know that we can love at all because we were loved first provokes the most divine speculation about what else may be revealed in the course of time and place. Yes, we have been loved from the beginning: our beginning, the world's beginning, even still, at the beginning of this day. And before we awake tomorrow, love will have already arrived.

During the season of Easter, many churches conclude their worship with a formal dismissal couched in Alleluias, which means: "Give praise to God." For the forty days of Lent, observed during the coldest, darkest part of the Pennsylvania winter, this word of acknowledged love was hidden from plain sight; smoldering under the thick ash of what we perceived as ruined. In these great 50 days of Easter, with targeted intention, we fan the embers, throwing off the dead ash and coaxing up the young flames until on Pentecost they boast the height of heaven. The Sunday readings seek to teach us about this love. The pastors expound upon it. And both the earnest and the blind respond: Alleluia! Alleluia! Let us go in peace to love and serve the Lord. Thanks be to God. Alleluia! Alleluia!

Good Friday's Healing Balm

One of the benefits of seeing people in hospitals is that I have an opportunity to look at all the artwork that line the main hallways. Gone are the days of stark, sterile walls; they have become galleries for local artists. I rather like the trend. I've seen some stunning works on hospital walls in recent months. There is a hallway gallery at my parents' retirement home too. Every visit there includes time spent gazing at wall art. During my extended stay there in January as my father neared the end of his journey, I spent quite a lot of time wandering the halls, taking in the many and varied viewpoints of everyday things and places captured on canvas, paper and film. One small watercolor drew me in every time; nestled in the center of a fragile nest were five open months of newly hatched Robins. It was so lifelike I could almost hear their shrill, alarming cries: "Mother, mother, we've awoke and we are very hungry! Where are you mother?" After father had gone, the baby birds remained; a memento of the quiet time we'd spent together contemplating the cycle of life.

I later contacted the artist and purchased the framed print. We had a delightful conversation and she told me when and why she had painted it; a bond was forged. It captured for she and I a time we both wanted to forget and at the same time remember with great clarity. Pictures do that very well; sometimes better than words that make up stories or poems or hymns. Pictures are very direct. With words you have to work to get at the image; then, when fixed in our mind as an image we can then do the work of associating it with our own life experience.

The violence and despair of the cross has been captured on canvas and paper as many times as there are people in China. And I prefer it that way - I prefer that someone else has thought through the details of the scene; that someone else committed it to memory; that someone else brought into light that which I wish could remain in darkness; that someone else wrestled into plain sight that which we kept hidden. I do not like this day. I do not like being reminded so vividly of human wickedness. In these lovely days of this year's early Spring I do not want to sit with death. I do not want to contemplate the evil that brought us to this moment. Deny it as I may, it remains. It is the stain I cannot remove.

And yet, as we all know, if it weren't for this day, this event - we would bear a burden far greater. The sin that plagues us would be like an unchecked infection eating away at all of our goodness; like a millstone around our neck dragging us to drown in deep and wild waters; like the one eye that causes the other to sin; the camel who will never get through the eye of the needle; the water that will never be wine, the bread that is just bread; and a cross that is never free of the corpus. Were it not for this day, there would be no remedy, no solace, no reproach, no second chances, no redo's, no healing balm of Gilead.

The healing balm we have received is in the truth that he suffered so that we should not. His suffering does not invite that we share in it. No. It speaks out against suffering. There is no glory in it. There is no benefit in believing that in some way our suffering can accomplish that which only God can do. I say again, no. We are bonded to Christ in love not in suffering. Suffering is part of life, it is as much as part of living as is breathing. We cannot escape it; but neither do we bear it alone. The suffering of Christ is a different matter altogether, and cannot be compared or reduced to that which we have known. His suffering taken fully into the hands of God has the power to reveal the evilness of evil and the finality of death without hope; and then transform it into justice and grace that knows no end. The Good Friday picture we have fixed in our mind's eye only pauses in the suffering of the cross and then swiftly moves on to rest in mercy; mercy that is poured out on us like the water that gushes from the struck rock in the wilderness; anointing us with the healing balm of God's forgiveness and love; mercy that transforms us as surely as water becomes wine by the mere command of the voice of Christ.

Doin' Time

I recently saw the movie, Henry's Crime, with Keanu Reeves. It's a little-known black comedy about a young man who may best be described as "absent." Only the particles that make up his physical presence can be accounted for, until he has an epiphany - which he has while in prison. His passivity in all things relevant cost him his freedom and his marriage. He simply could not commit to anything, anything at all. He was used by friends to play an unwitting role in a robbery. When asked by a fellow inmate why he did not defend himself when he was totally innocent, Henry said he felt that prison was his ticket out. Little did he know that prison would be his ticket in. One day, his cell mate, played by James Caan, said that if you're gonna do the time, you might as well do the crime. This was the revelation that Henry had been waiting to hear his whole life. A short time later, when released from prison, to do the crime for which he had done the time, became his raison d'etre. As Henry's life was nourished by the purpose and challenge of actually robbing the bank for which he had been wrongly convicted, his life also flourished. He grew. He grew up. He grew into his life. It became a life he wanted, a life he claimed for himself and for those around him that he grew to love, and for that one in particular whom he grew to want to love him in return. In the end, as these things go, he had to chose to keep the life that had been born to him or return to the passive life of lost everythings.

Henry's Crime was not the best movie I've ever seen. But it rated more highlythen it probably deserved due to the after-thought factor. It had sticking power – stick to your ribs kind of sticking power. When I was a kid, my dad would always make a big breakfast for my brother and me. "Nothing like a bowl of grits to stick to your ribs – they’ll stick with you all day," he'd say robustly rubbing his belly. We need things in our life, like grits, and thoughtful films that no one has heard of, to stick to our ribs as we work our way through this life.

The sticking point of Henry’s Crime was the revelation, of course; or rather the revelation that begat a revelation. The advice Henry got was actually much richer then just robbing the bank; with it came a heartfelt plea from a long-time inmate who Henry looked up to like a father. The older man could see the emptiness in Henry’s young life; the flat affect and overt passivity that imprisons him far more than any iron-barred door. When Henry tells him that there is nothing he really loves about life, no vocation or anyone in particular, his mentor tells him that he must find something. He must find something to really care about – to feel really passionate about, something that he really wants and then to put everything he has into it. To do the crime for which he has done the time is simply the vehicle that gets him to where he needs to go. It’s the grits that sticks to his ribs.

The Maundy Thursday service is the grits of Holy Week. It has enough substance to stick to our ribs to see us through drama of Good Friday and the painful silence of Holy Saturday. It is also the vehicle that gets us to where we need to be. It takes us to the Upper Room; to the contemplation of Jesus’ mortality as well as our own. It leads us to the table, where we dine with Christ, in this Eucharistic way, for both the last and the first time. It leads us into the hands of Christ to whom we learn to entrust our feet and our spirits. It set us on the path of this annual pilgrimage into the longest of dark nights, enshrouds us with all its dread and despair, betrayal and denial. It leads us with great care into the very hands of God, in whom is found every revelation that leads us to every thing we have and ever will care about. And it leads us to an end; into that ending place where all new life must begin.