I drove into White Pine County listening to Ranger Doug’s Classic Cowboy Coral, feeling thankful for Sirius radio when the Spanish language cd’s have over taxed my brain. After awhile I had heard enough of Gene Autry and The Sons of the Pioneers, and switched to Andrea Bocelli singing Cor Te Partio and Jasha Heifetz. I take my musical vacillations as proof that we are made up of diverse subpersonalities. My subpersonalities have little appreciation for each other’s music.
I arrived in plenty of time to check into the Hotel Nevada where they recognized me on the computer, if not by face, as a regular. Last time I was here, it was Halloween. Looking back at my blog posts, I seem not to have described the amazing bar scene at the Hotel Nevada that night. Right out of Star Wars. Incredible costumes on characters of all ages, many of whom would have been pretty colorful without costumes. Saturday afternoon in mid-April, things were more sedate.
When I drove to St. Bart’s for Margaret Bath’s slide show presentation on her mission trip to Kenya with Melvin Stringer’s Kenya Keep project, the first thing I noticed was that there was nowhere to park for a long way around the church. The second thing I noticed was that the parish hall was packed with people. The third thing was that the people included young adults and children. This was Saturday night at church. And in Ely there are options.
The slide show was splendid. It was not the old pity and guilt kind of thing we used to get on TV with Sally Struthers. We saw a lot of beauty and fascinating culture. We saw a land that is trying to get it right – protecting its environment, struggling unevenly toward democracy, working constructively with religious and cultural diversity. We also saw the Kibera slum, one of the world’s largest and poorest centers of urban blight with devastating impact on human lives. We saw the Emmanuel Clinic supported by Kenya Keep alleviating that suffering in Kibera. We saw schools where Episcopalians are sponsoring children for a better life. It was a presentation about poverty and affliction but surrounded by hope and an opportunity for us to make a difference.
To my bishop’s eye, there was something else noteworthy about this – a shared mission between St. Bart’s, Ely and St. Tim’s, Henderson. A diocese is not a regulatory body. It is a partnership (koinonia) in God’s mission. A diocese does not exist in a static way. It is always becoming, forming anew, like fresh skin cells. Margaret’s trip with Kenya Keep was an occasion of our becoming a diocese anew.
Breakfast at the Hotel Nevada. Generous portions. Good prices. Waitresses engaging in witticisms about people with bad altitudes needing altitude adjustments in the form of stiletto heels. I barely noticed the man sitting a stool away from me, but after he left my waitress told me he had bought my breakfast. What do such things mean? My guess is that I was the beneficiary of a gesture of thanks to God for some blessing in his life. Had he not done this, the waitress might not have asked my name and where I am from. She told me about a traveling preacher she knows who lives in Tonopah and also works in mine safety. “Oh, that would be Ken Curtis, I said. He’s sorta one of ours.” A grouchy mustached man sitting down the counter glowering over allegedly hard biscuits explained what Ken does at their mine. We all agreed that Ken is an exemplary person. Before long the waitress owned knowing Fr. Red and Paula Sims. I told her about the Kenya presentation by Margaret – of course, she knew Margaret and Tom, and said the former cook at Hotel Nevada went to St. Bart’s. I opined that “They are good folks over there.”
All I said. Evangelism – all starting with the generous gesture of an anonymous man – who, btw, was only there this morning because his coffee maker broke. Rare to find such generosity in a man with a broken coffee maker.
It was a good Palm Sunday complete with receiving into the church a new young adult. We got the perfect photo of Fr. Red with a mother and baby for the planned billboard ad. Then we dashed to make a house call for a home communion, receiving another new member, and anointing a St. Bart’s veteran member for healing. He is facing a possible major surgery late in life. The new member was his daughter in law who was serving the Lord at home with the gathered family.
Then off to Eureka to celebrate Palm Sunday with St. James. Along the way I listened to Hillbilly Jim’s Moonshine Matinee with included Whisperin’ Bill Anderson singing “The Tips Of My Fingers” and Baldomar Gomez Garza (aka Freddy Fender) singing “Wasted Days And Wasted Nights.” St. James is still a small gathering – 8 people this time – but we sang “the blood songs.” Fitting for the day.
Then it was on to Austin for a working dinner with Frank Whitman, our Lay Chaplain to Miners and Energy Workers. We ate at the Toiyabe Café where I had my customary Ortega Burger. There is a lot of shifting of roles along the Highway 50 Corridor these days. Frank and I were strategizing how to respond to the coming molybdenum boom in Eureka, the geothermal and mining surge around Austin, and the challenge of population growth and social services reductions in Tonopah. A productive meeting. Things are exciting in Central Nevada these days.
Then it was on to Tonopah. I am now safely ensconced at Tonopah Station. Tomorrow Deacon Clelia Garrity and I will sit in on a meeting of Attorney General Reps, county officials, and ecumenical leaders to discuss how this community can find ways to fend for itself as the population surges while state services are being withdrawn. I’m just here to listen, but it sounds like we need to do something.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Monday, April 4, 2011
A Strange But Prophetic Day On The Strip
We were an unlikely crew of protesters: a deacon from St. Matthew’s attending her first demonstration; a deacon from Christ Church chiefly known for her pastoral and charity work; a lay person from Christ Church; a priest from Epiphany, Henderson who despite her California roots was born considerably too late to even remember the Free Speech movement; and me, the Mad Hatter Bishop. But there we were on the Strip on a bright April Day carrying signs and passing out pamphlets on the moral blight of human trafficking and child prostitution in Las Vegas.
It may have been for the best that my colleagues were not veteran demonstrators since this was a different kind of event. First, we had to register for the Rally. Our organizers were really organized. We registered on line well in advance. Then we were required to sign liability waivers in case we twisted an ankle or got poked in the eye by a sign. Then we had to sign in at the registration site, where for a $25 donation, we got a red Not For Sale t-shirt and a bottle of water.
Someone eventually helped me realize that social activism has a new paradigm modeled on the marathon.
As we walked from where we had parked our car in the Harley Davison Café parking garage, people were already stopping us to ask what this was all about. We gave them pamphlets and explained the cause which they readily supported.
Then we took our places on the island at the corner of Harmon and Las Vegas Blvd. Other parts of our Diocese of Nevada family were elsewhere on the Strip. There were 4 venues in all. Ellie and her daughters were standing for justice at the corner of Flamingo and Las Vegas Blvd. At Harmon, we were not alone. There were a group of amiable teens of diverse ethnicity – Latino, African-American, Anglo, and Asian. The Asians were my favorite. They were vigorously chanting, “Stop Human Trafficking” while shaking their signs up and down like the folks who advertise tax preparation services.
A truck with a mobile billboard kept circling past us. The bold billboard, with boldly dressed people on it, proclaimed “Hot Babes Direct To You.” While it was stopped at the red light, the Rev. Helen McPeak got a pic of me holding my Not For Sale sign along with the billboard. Eventually, the guy driving the truck and the demonstrators began waving when he went by.
This is a strange world, at least a strange city.
The pedestrians gave us a mixed response. One tourist from Florida was supportive. We had a pleasant talk and she took a pamphlet. A couple of hours later, she came back, having just won $200 at a Casino, and wanted a pic with me, helping me hold the sign, as way to give God the glory for her winnings. It did not seem the time to engage in theology about God and gaming. I just welcomed her support.
Many took pamphlets. One man who refused a pamphlet was wearing a t-shirt that said “Father Of The Year.” After he had turned down a pamphlet from one of the teenagers, Dcn. Carolyn Shannon stopped him, and said, “Now, wait a minute. You’re the father of the year. You need to know about this.” He took the pamphlet.
An Imperial Storm Trooper also walked by. I could not remember whether the guys in white worked for the Evil Empire or Princess Leia’s rebels. I asked one of the teenagers. But she had never seen Star Wars. I felt old.
We achieved our brief moment of fame when Channel 3 and Channel 5 filmed us for the evening news. It was a surreal but inspiring day in what promises to be a long term effort that is shared all over the Diocese. On the last Sunday in March, the following Episcopal Churches observed a Sunday of Witness Against Human Trafficking: St. Bartholomew’s, Ely; Holy Trinity, Fallon; St. Martin’s, Pahrump; Trinity, Reno; St. Paul’s, Sparks; St. Matthew’s, Las Vegas; and Christ Church, Las Vegas. (Did I leave anyone out?) The Rev’s. Red Sims and Kathy Hopner wrote collects for the occasion.
Epiphany, Henderson will host the Interfaith Service to raise awareness of issues of children’s well being, with a special focus on the sexual exploitation of children, on Sunday, May 22, at 5 p.m. Improved legislation would be a good thing. But the main goals we need to accomplish are to make this crime a priority for enforcement and prosecution and even more importantly to build a Safe House for care and rehabilitation for the young victims. To learn more, go to www.notforsalecampaign.org and www.nevadachild.com.
Our advocacy efforts on this issue are part of an overall priority of caring for children in Nevada. Our restored relationship with St. Jude’s Ranch For Children, our partnership with Communities in Schools and other one-church-one-school initiatives, the participation of congregations in Family Promise, our partnership with St. Luke’s, Leogane to vaccinate Haitian children against disease are other examples of our efforts to serve and speak out for children here and around the world.
It may have been for the best that my colleagues were not veteran demonstrators since this was a different kind of event. First, we had to register for the Rally. Our organizers were really organized. We registered on line well in advance. Then we were required to sign liability waivers in case we twisted an ankle or got poked in the eye by a sign. Then we had to sign in at the registration site, where for a $25 donation, we got a red Not For Sale t-shirt and a bottle of water.
Someone eventually helped me realize that social activism has a new paradigm modeled on the marathon.
As we walked from where we had parked our car in the Harley Davison Café parking garage, people were already stopping us to ask what this was all about. We gave them pamphlets and explained the cause which they readily supported.
Then we took our places on the island at the corner of Harmon and Las Vegas Blvd. Other parts of our Diocese of Nevada family were elsewhere on the Strip. There were 4 venues in all. Ellie and her daughters were standing for justice at the corner of Flamingo and Las Vegas Blvd. At Harmon, we were not alone. There were a group of amiable teens of diverse ethnicity – Latino, African-American, Anglo, and Asian. The Asians were my favorite. They were vigorously chanting, “Stop Human Trafficking” while shaking their signs up and down like the folks who advertise tax preparation services.
A truck with a mobile billboard kept circling past us. The bold billboard, with boldly dressed people on it, proclaimed “Hot Babes Direct To You.” While it was stopped at the red light, the Rev. Helen McPeak got a pic of me holding my Not For Sale sign along with the billboard. Eventually, the guy driving the truck and the demonstrators began waving when he went by.
This is a strange world, at least a strange city.
The pedestrians gave us a mixed response. One tourist from Florida was supportive. We had a pleasant talk and she took a pamphlet. A couple of hours later, she came back, having just won $200 at a Casino, and wanted a pic with me, helping me hold the sign, as way to give God the glory for her winnings. It did not seem the time to engage in theology about God and gaming. I just welcomed her support.
Many took pamphlets. One man who refused a pamphlet was wearing a t-shirt that said “Father Of The Year.” After he had turned down a pamphlet from one of the teenagers, Dcn. Carolyn Shannon stopped him, and said, “Now, wait a minute. You’re the father of the year. You need to know about this.” He took the pamphlet.
An Imperial Storm Trooper also walked by. I could not remember whether the guys in white worked for the Evil Empire or Princess Leia’s rebels. I asked one of the teenagers. But she had never seen Star Wars. I felt old.
We achieved our brief moment of fame when Channel 3 and Channel 5 filmed us for the evening news. It was a surreal but inspiring day in what promises to be a long term effort that is shared all over the Diocese. On the last Sunday in March, the following Episcopal Churches observed a Sunday of Witness Against Human Trafficking: St. Bartholomew’s, Ely; Holy Trinity, Fallon; St. Martin’s, Pahrump; Trinity, Reno; St. Paul’s, Sparks; St. Matthew’s, Las Vegas; and Christ Church, Las Vegas. (Did I leave anyone out?) The Rev’s. Red Sims and Kathy Hopner wrote collects for the occasion.
Epiphany, Henderson will host the Interfaith Service to raise awareness of issues of children’s well being, with a special focus on the sexual exploitation of children, on Sunday, May 22, at 5 p.m. Improved legislation would be a good thing. But the main goals we need to accomplish are to make this crime a priority for enforcement and prosecution and even more importantly to build a Safe House for care and rehabilitation for the young victims. To learn more, go to www.notforsalecampaign.org and www.nevadachild.com.
Our advocacy efforts on this issue are part of an overall priority of caring for children in Nevada. Our restored relationship with St. Jude’s Ranch For Children, our partnership with Communities in Schools and other one-church-one-school initiatives, the participation of congregations in Family Promise, our partnership with St. Luke’s, Leogane to vaccinate Haitian children against disease are other examples of our efforts to serve and speak out for children here and around the world.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
The Seven Last Words
It is a 500-year-old tradition of the Church to reflect in Holy Week on the Seven Last Words of Jesus, the poignantly short utterances of Our Lord from the Cross. They were short utterances because they had to be gasped by a man dying of asphyxiation. It is difficult to consider these verses together because each of the four Gospel accounts of the Passion has its own special perspective. None of the accounts includes all seven utterances, so to pulling them together risks a certain blurring and incoherence. Still, considering the statements together is a spiritually important exercise since all of them are part of our tradition. My friend, Jocelyn, in the Episcopal Diocese of Santiago has asked me to write a brief reflection on the Seven Last Words, so this is my attempt.
1. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
This statement of forgiveness is found in Luke. In this Gospel, Jesus is a healer and a reconciler. In him, God becomes the archetypal victim of all human cruelty and sin for a special reason. Sin is committed against victims and only the victim has the moral right to forgive the wrong. God sitting serenely in heaven cannot morally forgive sins which God has not suffered. But without forgiveness, there is no way forward into new life. Without forgiveness, sinner and victim alike are ensnared forever, the sinner in guilt, the victim in grievance. In Jesus, God became the victim so that he could forgive. Injury gives rise to a claim, a right, to vengeance. But acts of vengeance are a new violence creating new victims and so the cycle of retribution continues. It can end only when a victim says “It stops here. I will forgive rather than perpetuate this.” Anwar Sadat going to Jerusalem after the death of his brother is a modern example. Antigone is an ancient one. Jesus is the archetype. God in Jesus took the wound of sin upon himself so he could forgive all sin and set us free from our guilt and our grievance alike, both prisons of the soul. But we can claim our freedom, live into our freedom, only when we follow the example of our way shower, our Savior and Liberator, Jesus who in his agony showed mercy to the merciless.
2. Truly, I say to you, this day you will be with me in Paradise.
These words are also in Luke, the Gospel of healing and reconciliation. The dying thief acknowledged his guilt and, offering no excuse or defense, asked for a small mercy. “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Simply to be remembered by a just person was all the immortality he hoped for. What has that to do with us? To live a human life is to incur guilt. To be human is to be fallible at every level, physical, moral, and spiritual. Moreover, to live a human life is to live in a network of relationships that constitute personal, moral obligation. Those obligations often conflict, so that to do what is right by one person is to hurt another. The moral philosopher Martha Nusbaum called such situations “tragic choices” in her book, The Fragility of Goodness. No one lives this life without guilt. It is hard to acknowledge our own sin. Our egos compel us to justify ourselves. But our desperate efforts to preserve our self-image as good people are at odds with what we know to be true. It is an agony to admit to ourselves and to others that we are guilty. The dying thief admitted his guilt. That is all he did. He had no opportunity to turn from his evil path and live a pure life. He had no chance to “go and sin no more.” He had no opportunity to earn his salvation with good works or piety. “Could my zeal no languor know, could my tears forever flow, these for sin would not atone. Thou must save and thou alone.” The dying thief simply asked for a crumb of mercy and Jesus promised him paradise. Salvation cannot be earned by fallible people such as ourselves. Salvation depends on grace alone, the infinite mercy of God revealed in Jesus. Many great spiritual teachers have said wise and helpful things that have helped me in my life challenges. But as the years have passed, as the weight of guilt has inevitably grown heavier and my efforts to justify myself have proven increasingly futile, I find nothing sufficient but this promise of Jesus to redeem me – not for the sake of any good thing I might ever do, but simply for the sake of his mercy.
3. Woman behold your son; behold your mother.
John’s Gospel alone relates that Mary and John stood at the foot of the cross. His mother and his best friend were there for him. They were drawn to this place of pain by their devotion to him. It is unlikely that they would have been close to each other before Good Friday. But Jesus redirected their mutual grief into a relationship. Tradition tells us that they remained close for the rest of their lives, that Mary spent her final years in Ephesus where John led the Church and wrote this Gospel. I have visited the house outside of Ephesus (Kusadasi) where tradition says that Mary lived. Who knows if that is historically true, but thousands of Christians, including Pope John Paul II, have visited that small shrine to remember the lasting bond John and Mary formed at Calvary and honored to the end. Whether it is vestiges of Mary’s presence or vestiges of the pilgrims’ presence, that spot is palpably sanctified by reflection on the tenderness of wounded healers, the bereaved living on with and for each other. But what does this say to us? Many Christians are devoted to Jesus. Their spirituality is a heart-felt longing for him. But in this moment Jesus actually redirected the attention of John and Mary away from himself and toward each other. Life is laced with grief and escape into otherworldly spirituality is a denial of life, a refusal to live the life we have been given because sometimes it hurts. Jesus did not invite Mary and John to escape. He did not say, “Don’t worry. This is really ok.” It was not ok. But he gave meaning to their grief by teaching them to console each other, to support and sustain each other. The spirituality Jesus taught from the cross was one of compassion, commitment, and personal engagement with each other. If we have grief, the way through it is to turn our grief into compassion for one another.
4. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Mark and Matthew give the darkest versions of the Passion. For them, the Cross is a disaster. Redemption comes with the Resurrection, but the Cross itself is a horror. In their dark account, Jesus does not speak with confidence of being that day in Paradise. He feels abandoned and betrayed even by God. He cries out his complaint, but he does not curse God or abandon God, even though he believes he himself has been abandoned. This is the most profound expression in Scripture of obdurate, invincible love of God for God’s own sake. In Job there is a verse which is sometimes translated (perhaps not an accurate translation of the Hebrew but a spiritually profound one nonetheless) “Even though he slay me, I will trust in him.” Most of us love God for our blessings. We love God for what God has done for us or for what we hope God will do for us. In truth, this is loving ourselves and using God as a means to the higher end of our own well-being. But to love God without hope of our own gain would be another matter altogether. It would be to lose ourselves in the sublime light of a value supremely higher than ourselves. And that would be the ultimate liberation – the liberation from compulsive self-absorption. I am not capable of that kind of love for God, but I can aspire to it because Jesus revealed it. There is a second point in this utterance. Jesus was up against the experience of meaningless suffering. After the Resurrection, we see Jesus’ ordeal as the most meaningful suffering in history. But at the moment when Jesus felt forsaken, his suffering seemed altogether futile. Religious people are all to quick to tell the afflictedis that their suffering is actually ok because God doing something good in it. But suffering is often just suffering. Evil really is evil, not part of God’s plan. Jesus did not hang from the cross expounding platitudes about providence. He experienced disaster as disaster. It is only after we face that kind of despair head on as he did that we are able to rise from it as he did. The Cross alone is a catastrophe. God made meaning of it in the Resurrection. Instead of pretending that the horrors of life are not really horrors, we can call them what they are, and then make meaning out of them by rising from the grave of despair to live for others.
5. I thirst.
It is no surprise that Jesus said these words. Anyone who has sat at the bed of a dying person and put ice chips to their lips knows of the thirst of the dying. During crucifixion, Jesus would have been seriously dehydrated. It is no surprise that he said, “I thirst.” But it is surprising to me that John included this utterance. Johns is the spiritually lofty Gospel. Someone said that “In John, Jesus’ feet never seem to touch the ground.” In Mark’s earthy Gospel, these words would be natural; in John, they seem out of place. But there they are. I don’t know what possessed the spiritually minded John to include them. But this is what I make of it. When our mortal life does not satisfy, then we turn our eyes to the transcendent. The medieval theologian Boethius said that tragedy is where we find God. In the Jesus experience on the Cross, there is a spiritual thirst that John would have found worthy of his Gospel. “As the deer longs for the flowing steam, so longs my soul for you O God.” Psalm 22. But John knew that spiritual longing, like spiritual truth, were not free-floating in the clouds. Spiritual longing is enfleshed. “The Word became flesh . . . .” So there is a spiritual and a physical aspect to every longing. All desire, as St. Augustine taught us, is a partial expression of our ultimate desire – which whether we know it or not, is for the true end of all desires: God. When we hunger, thirst, or long for any earthly thing, it is an incarnate form of our longing for our Source and our Destiny, our Highest Good, the Ultimate Beauty. “O God you have made us for yourself,” Augustine wrote – but that is a misleading translation. It does not mean God made us for his own amusement or use. The word “for” means something more like “toward.” It means God has made us so that our longing is toward God. The “repining restlessness” (George Herbert) in our hearts, the perpetual dissatisfaction that keeps us uneasy, is the magnet and iron attraction drawing us toward God. That makes sense of the rest of the sentence. “O God you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” Jesus’ all too physical thirst and his longing for peace and consolation in the heart of God were one. It is the same for us in all our desires.
6. It is finished.
In John, these are Jesus’ last words. When I was a parish priest, my congregation observed Holy Week devoutly. The stripping of the altar was the most solemn ritual of the year. We then sat in one hour shifts with the reserved sacrament in a Gethsemane Garden though the night. At 9 in the morning, the hour of the crucifixion, a small group gathered around the altar in silence and slowly, reverently consumed the reserved sacrament. All year long, the sanctuary light burned beside the reserved sacrament, representing Christ’s presence. But now his sacramental presence was gone – the light extinguished. I placed the chalice on its side and said “It is finished.” We left in silence. Ending is tragic. But there is a beauty hidden in the tragedy. There is another meaning in these words. Sometimes they are translated, “It is accomplished.” You might say, “It is complete.” “It is perfect.” “It is made whole.” In his death, Jesus set something right. He brought a broken world together. The word “salvation” is often confused with pardon. It is actually much more than that. It is to be made whole, to have the fragments of our lives drawn together. It is to have the random joys and sorrow, the triumphs and the tragedies, the incidents and accidents which are like the scattered pieces of a puzzle assembled into a picture we can understand. When the final chapter in our meta-narrative has been written, everything that came before makes sense. Everything falls into place. In this moment of supreme sacrifice, meaning was restored to life. The chaos became a cosmos once more as God intended. The evil, the violence, the pettiness and greed -- all that makes a mess of life was swallowed up in that sacrifice. At the cost of the life of humanity and God, the fragmented universe was made whole.
7. Into your hands I commend my spirit.
These are Jesus’ last words in Luke, a final expression of faith. Jesus has completed his mission of healing and reconciliation. His purpose has been fulfilled. That is “a consummation devoutly to be wished” -- to have accomplished all one has been given to do. But it is a terrible moment too because one no longer has a purpose. One no longer has a claim of right to exist. One no longer has anything with which to bargain with reality, nothing left to offer. Jesus was at that moment empty, as it says in Philippians. Having nothing left in himself, he entrusted himself to God. Most of my life, I have thought I had something to offer the world, even something to offer God. But there came a time when I felt I had nothing left to give, that my continued presence on the earth would probably do no good. Like the dying thief, I had no justification. That’s when I prayed the words of Jesus, “Into your hands I commend my spirit.” It seems God had a few more things for me to do and I am doing them as I am able, “with God’s help.” But from that time, I have known that it’s all grace. Every day is God’s gift. My spirit is in God’s hands, dependent on his mercy and his will. Each of us comes to the end of our rope from time to time – sometimes in big ways, other times in small ways. That is when we can pray these words of Jesus; these “Turn it over. Turn it all over” words – a prayer that is not so much spoken as exhaled into God. There is a peace in that surrender like no other. It is a letting go and floating in God. Dying to self is the only way to live in the Spirit. That is the message Jesus taught us with his last breath.
1. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
This statement of forgiveness is found in Luke. In this Gospel, Jesus is a healer and a reconciler. In him, God becomes the archetypal victim of all human cruelty and sin for a special reason. Sin is committed against victims and only the victim has the moral right to forgive the wrong. God sitting serenely in heaven cannot morally forgive sins which God has not suffered. But without forgiveness, there is no way forward into new life. Without forgiveness, sinner and victim alike are ensnared forever, the sinner in guilt, the victim in grievance. In Jesus, God became the victim so that he could forgive. Injury gives rise to a claim, a right, to vengeance. But acts of vengeance are a new violence creating new victims and so the cycle of retribution continues. It can end only when a victim says “It stops here. I will forgive rather than perpetuate this.” Anwar Sadat going to Jerusalem after the death of his brother is a modern example. Antigone is an ancient one. Jesus is the archetype. God in Jesus took the wound of sin upon himself so he could forgive all sin and set us free from our guilt and our grievance alike, both prisons of the soul. But we can claim our freedom, live into our freedom, only when we follow the example of our way shower, our Savior and Liberator, Jesus who in his agony showed mercy to the merciless.
2. Truly, I say to you, this day you will be with me in Paradise.
These words are also in Luke, the Gospel of healing and reconciliation. The dying thief acknowledged his guilt and, offering no excuse or defense, asked for a small mercy. “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Simply to be remembered by a just person was all the immortality he hoped for. What has that to do with us? To live a human life is to incur guilt. To be human is to be fallible at every level, physical, moral, and spiritual. Moreover, to live a human life is to live in a network of relationships that constitute personal, moral obligation. Those obligations often conflict, so that to do what is right by one person is to hurt another. The moral philosopher Martha Nusbaum called such situations “tragic choices” in her book, The Fragility of Goodness. No one lives this life without guilt. It is hard to acknowledge our own sin. Our egos compel us to justify ourselves. But our desperate efforts to preserve our self-image as good people are at odds with what we know to be true. It is an agony to admit to ourselves and to others that we are guilty. The dying thief admitted his guilt. That is all he did. He had no opportunity to turn from his evil path and live a pure life. He had no chance to “go and sin no more.” He had no opportunity to earn his salvation with good works or piety. “Could my zeal no languor know, could my tears forever flow, these for sin would not atone. Thou must save and thou alone.” The dying thief simply asked for a crumb of mercy and Jesus promised him paradise. Salvation cannot be earned by fallible people such as ourselves. Salvation depends on grace alone, the infinite mercy of God revealed in Jesus. Many great spiritual teachers have said wise and helpful things that have helped me in my life challenges. But as the years have passed, as the weight of guilt has inevitably grown heavier and my efforts to justify myself have proven increasingly futile, I find nothing sufficient but this promise of Jesus to redeem me – not for the sake of any good thing I might ever do, but simply for the sake of his mercy.
3. Woman behold your son; behold your mother.
John’s Gospel alone relates that Mary and John stood at the foot of the cross. His mother and his best friend were there for him. They were drawn to this place of pain by their devotion to him. It is unlikely that they would have been close to each other before Good Friday. But Jesus redirected their mutual grief into a relationship. Tradition tells us that they remained close for the rest of their lives, that Mary spent her final years in Ephesus where John led the Church and wrote this Gospel. I have visited the house outside of Ephesus (Kusadasi) where tradition says that Mary lived. Who knows if that is historically true, but thousands of Christians, including Pope John Paul II, have visited that small shrine to remember the lasting bond John and Mary formed at Calvary and honored to the end. Whether it is vestiges of Mary’s presence or vestiges of the pilgrims’ presence, that spot is palpably sanctified by reflection on the tenderness of wounded healers, the bereaved living on with and for each other. But what does this say to us? Many Christians are devoted to Jesus. Their spirituality is a heart-felt longing for him. But in this moment Jesus actually redirected the attention of John and Mary away from himself and toward each other. Life is laced with grief and escape into otherworldly spirituality is a denial of life, a refusal to live the life we have been given because sometimes it hurts. Jesus did not invite Mary and John to escape. He did not say, “Don’t worry. This is really ok.” It was not ok. But he gave meaning to their grief by teaching them to console each other, to support and sustain each other. The spirituality Jesus taught from the cross was one of compassion, commitment, and personal engagement with each other. If we have grief, the way through it is to turn our grief into compassion for one another.
4. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Mark and Matthew give the darkest versions of the Passion. For them, the Cross is a disaster. Redemption comes with the Resurrection, but the Cross itself is a horror. In their dark account, Jesus does not speak with confidence of being that day in Paradise. He feels abandoned and betrayed even by God. He cries out his complaint, but he does not curse God or abandon God, even though he believes he himself has been abandoned. This is the most profound expression in Scripture of obdurate, invincible love of God for God’s own sake. In Job there is a verse which is sometimes translated (perhaps not an accurate translation of the Hebrew but a spiritually profound one nonetheless) “Even though he slay me, I will trust in him.” Most of us love God for our blessings. We love God for what God has done for us or for what we hope God will do for us. In truth, this is loving ourselves and using God as a means to the higher end of our own well-being. But to love God without hope of our own gain would be another matter altogether. It would be to lose ourselves in the sublime light of a value supremely higher than ourselves. And that would be the ultimate liberation – the liberation from compulsive self-absorption. I am not capable of that kind of love for God, but I can aspire to it because Jesus revealed it. There is a second point in this utterance. Jesus was up against the experience of meaningless suffering. After the Resurrection, we see Jesus’ ordeal as the most meaningful suffering in history. But at the moment when Jesus felt forsaken, his suffering seemed altogether futile. Religious people are all to quick to tell the afflictedis that their suffering is actually ok because God doing something good in it. But suffering is often just suffering. Evil really is evil, not part of God’s plan. Jesus did not hang from the cross expounding platitudes about providence. He experienced disaster as disaster. It is only after we face that kind of despair head on as he did that we are able to rise from it as he did. The Cross alone is a catastrophe. God made meaning of it in the Resurrection. Instead of pretending that the horrors of life are not really horrors, we can call them what they are, and then make meaning out of them by rising from the grave of despair to live for others.
5. I thirst.
It is no surprise that Jesus said these words. Anyone who has sat at the bed of a dying person and put ice chips to their lips knows of the thirst of the dying. During crucifixion, Jesus would have been seriously dehydrated. It is no surprise that he said, “I thirst.” But it is surprising to me that John included this utterance. Johns is the spiritually lofty Gospel. Someone said that “In John, Jesus’ feet never seem to touch the ground.” In Mark’s earthy Gospel, these words would be natural; in John, they seem out of place. But there they are. I don’t know what possessed the spiritually minded John to include them. But this is what I make of it. When our mortal life does not satisfy, then we turn our eyes to the transcendent. The medieval theologian Boethius said that tragedy is where we find God. In the Jesus experience on the Cross, there is a spiritual thirst that John would have found worthy of his Gospel. “As the deer longs for the flowing steam, so longs my soul for you O God.” Psalm 22. But John knew that spiritual longing, like spiritual truth, were not free-floating in the clouds. Spiritual longing is enfleshed. “The Word became flesh . . . .” So there is a spiritual and a physical aspect to every longing. All desire, as St. Augustine taught us, is a partial expression of our ultimate desire – which whether we know it or not, is for the true end of all desires: God. When we hunger, thirst, or long for any earthly thing, it is an incarnate form of our longing for our Source and our Destiny, our Highest Good, the Ultimate Beauty. “O God you have made us for yourself,” Augustine wrote – but that is a misleading translation. It does not mean God made us for his own amusement or use. The word “for” means something more like “toward.” It means God has made us so that our longing is toward God. The “repining restlessness” (George Herbert) in our hearts, the perpetual dissatisfaction that keeps us uneasy, is the magnet and iron attraction drawing us toward God. That makes sense of the rest of the sentence. “O God you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” Jesus’ all too physical thirst and his longing for peace and consolation in the heart of God were one. It is the same for us in all our desires.
6. It is finished.
In John, these are Jesus’ last words. When I was a parish priest, my congregation observed Holy Week devoutly. The stripping of the altar was the most solemn ritual of the year. We then sat in one hour shifts with the reserved sacrament in a Gethsemane Garden though the night. At 9 in the morning, the hour of the crucifixion, a small group gathered around the altar in silence and slowly, reverently consumed the reserved sacrament. All year long, the sanctuary light burned beside the reserved sacrament, representing Christ’s presence. But now his sacramental presence was gone – the light extinguished. I placed the chalice on its side and said “It is finished.” We left in silence. Ending is tragic. But there is a beauty hidden in the tragedy. There is another meaning in these words. Sometimes they are translated, “It is accomplished.” You might say, “It is complete.” “It is perfect.” “It is made whole.” In his death, Jesus set something right. He brought a broken world together. The word “salvation” is often confused with pardon. It is actually much more than that. It is to be made whole, to have the fragments of our lives drawn together. It is to have the random joys and sorrow, the triumphs and the tragedies, the incidents and accidents which are like the scattered pieces of a puzzle assembled into a picture we can understand. When the final chapter in our meta-narrative has been written, everything that came before makes sense. Everything falls into place. In this moment of supreme sacrifice, meaning was restored to life. The chaos became a cosmos once more as God intended. The evil, the violence, the pettiness and greed -- all that makes a mess of life was swallowed up in that sacrifice. At the cost of the life of humanity and God, the fragmented universe was made whole.
7. Into your hands I commend my spirit.
These are Jesus’ last words in Luke, a final expression of faith. Jesus has completed his mission of healing and reconciliation. His purpose has been fulfilled. That is “a consummation devoutly to be wished” -- to have accomplished all one has been given to do. But it is a terrible moment too because one no longer has a purpose. One no longer has a claim of right to exist. One no longer has anything with which to bargain with reality, nothing left to offer. Jesus was at that moment empty, as it says in Philippians. Having nothing left in himself, he entrusted himself to God. Most of my life, I have thought I had something to offer the world, even something to offer God. But there came a time when I felt I had nothing left to give, that my continued presence on the earth would probably do no good. Like the dying thief, I had no justification. That’s when I prayed the words of Jesus, “Into your hands I commend my spirit.” It seems God had a few more things for me to do and I am doing them as I am able, “with God’s help.” But from that time, I have known that it’s all grace. Every day is God’s gift. My spirit is in God’s hands, dependent on his mercy and his will. Each of us comes to the end of our rope from time to time – sometimes in big ways, other times in small ways. That is when we can pray these words of Jesus; these “Turn it over. Turn it all over” words – a prayer that is not so much spoken as exhaled into God. There is a peace in that surrender like no other. It is a letting go and floating in God. Dying to self is the only way to live in the Spirit. That is the message Jesus taught us with his last breath.
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