WHAT IS HOLY ABOUT HOLY WEEK

I have not written anything here for awhile, and have all kinds of excuses: busy with church work, (we pastors earn our pay during these days, for sure!).  Distracted with many things.  Lazy.  And sometimes I feel like I just don’t have anything to say.

Being so immersed in Holy Week activities doesn’t always give me space to actually reflect much on what it means.

This blog is about justice and beauty.  Where are justice and beauty found in a crucifixion?

I grew up in a very religious family, and I carry in me wonderful memories, beautiful memories of special services of Holy Week.  The long procession around the church on Holy Thursday, the power of stripping the altar that night, the darkness and emptiness of Good Friday, the flowers and candles of Easter Vigil.

But I also grew up, in many ways, with a punishing God.  I was told, along with lots of other impressionable youth, that “every time I sinned, I drove another nail into Jesus’ hands”.  (How many nails are there?)  I’m not trying to minimize my sin, but what a terrible thing to say to a child!  That they are co-conspirators in a capital punishment carried out by an oppressive empire. 

As I have grown to know a God of grace and mercy, whose love extends to me and to all creation beyond what we can imagine, I have also grown to know a God of justice, who hears the cries of the poor, and whose justice will triumph over evil.

Walter Bruggeman talks about the crucifixion being the ultimate prophetic criticism of a system of death.  A system that turns human beings into objects.  That is what torture and capital punishment are (which is exactly what the crucifixion is): the treating of the human body and the human spirit as objects to be broken into, violated, humiliated and discarded.

It’s easy for those of us who are Christians to recognize the forgiveness of our sins.  It’s not as easy for us to recognize that we are the executioners.  When we torture, when we kill—as we have and as we continue to do in our wars—we become that punishing God I was taught to fear, and ultimately, hate.  We can say that we don’t torture “personally”, but in today’s global society, we all share responsibility for the evils done in our name, by our system.

What then is the liberation from this?  All too often, I think we stop at a forgiveness that is incomplete.  I know that God forgives me, and that even from the cross Jesus cried, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”  But it’s too easy to see that announcement of forgiveness as the end of the issue, when what is really called for is a reconciliation of humans with humans, humans with the earth and ultimately humans with the Creator.

Yesterday, I walked with people from five other churches in a Community Way of the Cross in our Phillips neighborhood.  We stopped at different places in the neighborhood—housing for elders, a drug treatment program, a community garden—and prayed for issues that effect us: racial divisions, gun violence, immigration reform, the desire for healing.  I led the reflection at a mural on Chicago Avenue and 25^th Street, on the side of a corner store.  The mural was done by Waite House, Hope Community and other groups that work with youth in Phillips. 

I shared a line from one of Robert Frost’s poems: “there’s something about a wall”, and talked about how walls can protect and support us, and also how they can divide us.  This past week—which included Frost’s birthday—saw a number of artistic actions for justice at walls meant to divide us.  A demonstration at the Berlin Wall, where art that flourished during the fall of the Stasi state was being dismantled to make room for “development”.  Ongoing demonstrations and prayer vigils at the beautiful murals dividing Palestinians from Israeli citizens. And when some of the “Gang of Eight” went to the border fence between Mexico and the US, they saw a woman trying to scale the fence, who was then arrested for “breaking the law”.  You could look at it from the view of the United States’ side of the wall, and talk about “protecting the border”, “illegal immigrants”, “national security”.  You could look at it from the Mexican side of the wall and see “family reunification”, “justice for the poor” or “following the harvest, as people have for centuries.”  I hope for reconciliation across this wall (or rather, it being torn down as an act of prophetic reconciliation), but that is a hope seed still planted deep in frozen ground.  Which does not relieve us of the joy or responsibility to water the seed.

There is an imbalance at these walls. To my knowledge there are no bright, beautiful murals on the US or Israeli sides of the dividing walls.  There are lights and dogs and men with guns.  On the side of those clamoring for freedom and opportunity, there are beautiful murals of hope.  Why is it that those who have more—more power, more money, more freedom—cannot find any aching beauty to put upon the wall?  Why is it that those who have less—can paint such joyful, hopeful and yet challenging images that speak louder than bulldozers or bullets?

Our church, St. Paul’s Lutheran in Phillips, has done 17 murals in the neighborhood, a part of more than 30 that make the community a living artscape.  One of those is a mosaic mural on Hans Christian Andersen School a couple blocks away.  The school was built in the US in the early ‘70’s, but it has the feel of late Stalinist architecture!  Masses of concrete, a very few small windows.  With the school children, their parents and the neighborhood, we’ve been building a living colorful Semilla—a seed of hope that dares to be beautiful.  Mosaic as an art from lends itself to that hope so well, because its very action of taking what is broken to make beauty is an act of prophetic imagination.  We have used pieces of broken plates, cups, mirrors, even a broken communion chalice to add to the beauty.

At the mural in Phillips, I shared that most of the murals in Phillips were done by youth in the community, who paint not only the reality that they know, but also the reality that they need.  (I stole that from Eduardo Galeano, the Uruguayan writer).  An artistic vision that sees the inequality and violence that exists, but sees the seed of new life arising out of that death.

That, I think, is what Jesus saw from his death when he said, “Father, forgive them…”

As we left to march to the next stop on Friday, I looked down at the ground and saw a beautiful piece of blue ceramic.  It looked like one of our mosaic pieces from one of our murals.  Then I saw that there were others around it, and they were indeed mosaic pieces; pieces of the mosaic that is Phillips, pieces that we will use in a mural this summer.

President Reagan famously told Gorbachev: “Tear down this wall!”  It’s time for us to take that advice and tear down our walls.  And in the meantime, while the chisel of justice takes its slow and steady time, let us paint them with the beauty we need, the beauty we believe in.

Be justice.  Be beauty.  Be holy.

Patrick

See Semilla Project at:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Semilla-Project/148670385198684?fref=ts

EXTRAVAGANCE AND ENTITLEMENT

First a shout-out to the three women I live with on this International Women’s Day!  Thank you, Luisa, Natasha and Talia for all the blessings you bring, and all the blessings you are.

I’ve been thinking about extravagance lately, partly because we have some hard budget issues in our family, and we are taking a real look at what we spend our money on, and what that actually brings us.  We love to eat out, we love to go to the movies, and that has to be cut back. Luisa and I were talking at breakfast about how to bring—or build—other kinds of extravagance in our lives than ones that cost more money. Like actually harvesting all the food we plant each year in our gardens.  Like getting extravagantly simpler with the stuff that is in our house.   The paradox of our society right now is that we are literally drowning in all the crap we purchase—including the crap we put in our eyes and minds through these little screens, and yet by our actions show that we fundamentally believe in scarcity, rather than abundance.

For those of us Christians who follow Lent, the gospels for the next two Sundays are about extravagance.  Which of course, pissed off Jesus’ opponents.  And his disciples too!  The first is the Prodigal Son, who blew his inheritance on on-line gaming, trips to Vegas, hot cars and single malt scotch.  When he wises up—starvation in the midst of feeding pigs will do that to a young man—he decides to go back to his father and say, “I have really blown it. I know I can’t be your son anymore.  Please let me work in your fields, where I can earn my keep.”

So he goes back, broke, hungry with swollen feet and empty belly.  Does the father yell at him? Does he tell him “I told you so”?  Does he give him a lecture on responsibility?  No-he puts a ring on his fingers, the best shoes and best robe on him, and throws a big party!  With the fatted calf.  The one calf that is being saved for that year’s wedding or other big celebration.  His welcome back is an extravagance beyond all measure.  It really ticks off the elder brother, who is righteous and does everything he is supposed to. (I can imagine the inner dialogue in his head.)

In the next week’s story, Mary, the sister of Lazarus who has been raised from the dead, anoints Jesus’ feet with expensive perfume.  It fills the whole room with its fragrance, and probably cost a bundle.  Pretty darn extravagant.   That makes one of the disciples—ok, it’s Judas, but still, he is one of the 12 at that point—get all huffy about how they could have fed the poor with the money “wasted”.

Of course today, if you want to feed the poor in our country today, that’s considered extravagant, if not downright socialist.  Oh, it’s fine to have soup kitchens, and candidates will make sure that they are filmed “giving” to the poor before each campaign.  But to use a small portion of our shared abundance to actually help people survive is cut, because, as the saying goes “we can’t get the deficit under control without dealing with entitlements.”

"Entitlements" is a much more sophisticated word to pick on the poor than previous words, isn’t it?  “Welfare queens” comes off a pretty mean-spirited, while “entitlements”—which still blames recipients of government programs for receiving what is, at least in terms of social security and Medicare due to them—sounds technical. Like if we just get derivatives or entitlements or secondary market streams in control, we’ll be all right.

Leave off for a moment that most of the world sees food as a right, sees health care as a right, sees caring for elders as an obligation.  Leave off for a moment the fact that the main driver of the US federal deficit is that we started (and kept going for a decade) two wars and didn’t raise taxes to pay for them.  No, we cut taxes!  Leave off for a moment that our military budget is greater than the next ten countries combined.  Just look at who really acts entitled and who fights to keep that entitlement.

The one who feels the most entitled in the Prodigal Son story is the older brother—who has everything that is the father’s.  The one who feels most entitled in the anointing story is Judas—who holds the common purse; who has control of the money.  The ones who act entitled in our country today are not by and large the poor, the elderly, the disabled, but those who have and want to keep what they have.  Businesses who whine every time taxes are mentioned, because—get this—not only will they suffer, but we’ll all suffer because they will have to stop making money and will have to lay off people.  Wealthy actors, sports stars, investment bankers who resist considering paying their fair share.  Ball clubs who feel entitled to have cash-strapped governments pay for their new facilities.  Oil companies. Lobbyists.  The NRA. Those are the real entitlement junkies.   I’m entitled to my money.  I’m entitled to my gun.  I’m entitled to my stuff.

Look at the ads tonight if you watch TV, and see how many tell us that we deserve to be “unlimited”, to have what we want when we want it.

I’m not saying there’s no entitlement thinking on behalf of unions or non-profits or the like.  Nor am I saying that those who don’t have as much don’t ever act that way.  It’s a national disease that effects all of us.

I want to see some real extravagance in our country.  What if we made it a priority that all people will eat healthy food? That all people will have health care?  That we will work our tails off to eliminate poverty?  That’s extravagant thinking, and it also says something about our character. Our care of our elderly, our poor, our disabled and our children is what defines us as a people. (I would add immigrants as well, which is what the Hebrew Scriptures do over and over:  treat immigrants fairly because you were foreigners and slaves in Egypt, and now you are free.  That’s to be developed in another post).

Extravagance in this sense only comes from a depth of spirit that trusts rather than fears.  That sees other humans—especially those different from us—as part of us.  That believes in generosity.  That’s willing to risk.  Even to sacrifice.  That’s the kind of God I believe in, and that’s the kind of people I believe we can be.

Be justice. Be beauty.  Be extravagant

Patrick