This
year I couldn’t wait till Holy Week to escape for my annual visit to The Temple of God’s Wounds. This
pilgrimage of the imagination was given me in 1988 by a retired fraternal
worker in the Church of North India who spent his last days in Southern
California, where I lived. He went to the mission field because, being gay, he
could not serve the Presbyterian Church in this country.
Several
weeks ago I couldn’t wait any longer for the respite, the sanctuary, the
clarity and the renewal of purpose depicted by the pseudonymous “Bishop of
Bombay.” Personal challenges and political “disturbances in The Force” demanded
less a solution than a resolution to
keep on keeping on. As a gift pillow I purchased for my sister earlier that
week during Ormewood Park’s Makers Festival declares, “Nevertheless, She Persisted.”
The
day after I began my visit to the temple “somewhere in the West” I learned
during a routine doctor visit that my
blood pressure was high, despite a
mostly healthy diet and daily vigorous exercise. He said that, given the
troubles of the last two years, most of his patients were experiencing ailments
that could be the result of stress and anxiety. He said only a handful of his
clients described things as “good.” He advised I pay more attention to the
spiritual and the relaxing aspects of life, advice I am only too happy to
follow.
The
narrator of the temple story meditates on seven portraits related to the
crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. This may seem a demanding
“escape”—after all, it’s not like going to the beach—but it is an opportunity for
finding meaning and purpose in a world that appears less in touch with meaning
and high purpose. “Lord, have mercy…” became a prayer one morning for all I
pray for, including myself. I view the phrase less as a confession than as a
spiritual Amber Alert.
The
painting on a particular day of my reading depicts a worker astride Jesus stretched
on the cross on the ground “driving home the nail which pierced the two feet.”
The poise of the hammering figure suggested the
rhythm of long practice, and the impersonality of habitual craftsmanship. … How
unconcerned it looked; how callously intent upon its task. As the hammer was a
tool in his hands, so was this man a tool to those whose minds had conceived,
and whose lips had ordered, this outrage.
Once distance or time could soften for me the
impact of the hammer on that nail. … Now my mind could not refuse the knowledge
that the same plots and betrayals and denials and shifts and stratagems and
mockeries and brutalities are as common now as then. …
Such acts did not belong only to other times and
places, and other races. By unmistakable instances it had been brought home to
me that my own folk were equally guilty. I was left without hope of
righteousness or justice, of gentleness or generosity in the world. … Every
crime against the helpless and innocent was an added blow upon that nail. My
own folk were striking many such blows…
Eventually
the narrator realizes, “I knew with complete conviction that as my own folk had
proved to be so was I myself.” What drags me/us down is the awareness that we
are caught in a system and are a part of the system that is “callously intent
upon its task.”
What
especially struck me in this scene was not the banality of evil, but how
mechanical evil had become. Not only was the figure wielding the hammer, but he
too was a tool wielded by political and religious “powers that be.”
In
a strange juxtaposition, during the same week that I revisited The Temple of God’s Wounds, I was reading
Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.
I’ve seen multiple productions of this story but can’t remember ever reading
the book. It’s about a beautiful young man who is willing to give up his soul if
a painting of him could take on his sins as well as the effects of aging so he
might remain young and handsome.
Perhaps
we’ve done something similar to Jesus. We’ve placed on him “every crime against
the helpless and innocent” so that we
can be saved, delivered from responsibility for our own agency in that
enterprise.
I
had been reading Jesus’ words as part of my Lenten spiritual practice, what my
sister laughingly referred to as my “red letter” Jesus when I told her,
referring to those Bibles which highlighted Jesus’ words in red font. Though
his words comfort and console at first, I found I stumbled when it came to his woeful
words about pious religious people and then, the apocalyptic judgment on us all
in the end times. That was when I escaped to my Holy Week practice revisiting
the temple of God’s wounds.
My
Lenten “aha” was that Jesus’ gospel/good news was “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven
is at hand,” not John 3:16, which Martin Luther called the gospel in miniature. In
his time and our own, Jesus’ gospel is far more necessary.
I grieve with all who mourn the devastating fire that burned Notre Dame Cathedral of Paris this Holy Week. It sent me back to Joseph Campbell's understanding of the vital spiritual power of such sanctuaries, and I will probably reflect on that in two weeks.
Progressive
Christian Reflections is entirely
supported by reader donations. To
support this blog: http://mccchurch.org/ministries/progressive-christian-reflections/
Scroll down to the donate link below its description. Thank you!
Copyright © 2019 by Chris
R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and
blogsite. Other rights reserved. The Temple of God’s Wounds first published by The Morehouse-Gorham Co.
(NY) in 1951, British edition published in 1953 by S.P.C.K. (London), all rights
reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment