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.