Wounding God

The Asian-Americans who have endured hate crimes during our current pandemic brought me back to this post from the week following Holy Week of 2016, March 30, 2016. This year, 2021, I read The Temple of God’s Wounds earlier in Lent, so in need was I of its spiritual insights and spiritual sanctuary. The friend in recovery mentioned in this post still struggles, and we alongside him, after multiple programs before and after a year incarcerated. 

Something burning in my heart is demanding the oxygen of expression. 

Regular readers of this blog know I am not persuaded by one line of thinking about the crucifixion: I don’t believe God demanded the death of Jesus to forgive our sins. Of the Passion narrative, I’ve written that the crucifixion was our idea, while the resurrection was God’s idea, however we understand resurrection. 

Yet I do believe the story of the crucifixion reminds us that we wound God. 

I know that’s not an original thought—many theologians, contemplatives, writers, and preachers have written about this. But it’s being brought home to me in several ways that culminated this past Holy Week as I read again The Temple of God’s Wounds. 

Monday night of that week I attended the fourth and final class on the themes of the Confession of Belhar, which the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. is in the process of welcoming into its Book of Confessions. It was adopted during the days of apartheid in South Africa by the Dutch Reformed Mission Church resisting the government’s separation of the races. 

Johnson C. Smith Theological Seminary offered it online, but I attended its meetings in person at the Martin Luther King Center near our home in Atlanta because I wanted to engage in the conversation directly. I thought this would be a way to hear concerns that current movements such as Black Lives Matter raise, but in a context of shared faith. As an aside, I felt very welcomed as a gay man. 

The class was small, about 70% African American and 30% Anglo-European, though the final Monday I was the only white person attending. 

Long before the course I had concluded that there is no way white people will ever understand the experience of black people in American society. The brutalization of slavery and the degradation of racism and segregation that followed (and still follows) cannot be erased, no matter how forgiving African Americans may be and no matter how transformed Anglo-European Americans may become. 

During one class session, we listened to the tape of the families of those murdered in the Charleston church offering forgiveness to their vicious and racist assailant, and I noticed that alongside “I forgive you” were cries of pain and anguish and grief at their loss, calls for repentance of the perpetrator and an expectation of justice for the victims so that “hate doesn’t win,” something the media largely left out in its eagerness to report their forgiveness. 

Their mercy was transforming for South Carolina, bringing down the confederate flag, while affecting broader American sensibilities as well. 

But, as one woman pointed out to me after class, “There was a lot of anger in black communities for how easily they forgave” that young man. Yet hearing their forgiveness while holding him accountable suggested they were not offering cheap grace. 

In class I told the story of participating in a “dog and pony” show at four venues around the state of Iowa for UCC pastors as their denomination was changing its positions on LGBT issues some years ago. One pastor had asked, “Where’s the repentance?” At first we thought he was expecting repentance from LGBT folk, but what he meant was, where was the church’s repentance for its mistreatment of LGBT people? 

I suggested to the class that maybe the church needed something like South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission where wrongs could be named—the wounding of all kinds of folk because of race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Ultimately this is how we wound God. 

By the next session of the course I had learned that several presbyteries have passed “A Healing Overture for the Admission of, and Apology for Harms Done to the LGBTQ/Q Members of the Presbyterian Church (USA), Family and Friends.” Hallelujah! 

When I’ve written on this blog about the need of being forgiving in the spiritual life, I’ve sometimes received friendly pushback from those who have been abused or work with the abused. It’s been pointed out to me that forgiveness in certain circumstances may not always be possible, even may not be a healthy choice.  

In “Forgiveness: The Last Step,” Marie Fortune writes in the context of family violence, “Once justice has been accomplished, even in a limited way, forgiveness becomes a viable opportunity. Prior to justice, forgiveness is an empty exercise.” She points out that Jesus said, “If another sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive.” [See Luke 17:3-4 NRSV.] 

That suggests at least four steps toward reconciliation: confrontation, confession, repentance (as in metanoia, an “about face”), followed by forgiveness. Only when justice is served, she writes, is “a victim of violence and abuse…freed to forgive.” 

On Maundy Thursday last week, Wade and I were part of a support community for a friend in a recovery program. After an afternoon meeting with our friend, a counselor, and a dinner out, that evening we attended what was essentially an Al-Anon meeting for support communities of others in recovery. Emotions ran high, as they must have when Jesus shared his last meal with his disciples: communion and hope, but also shared grief and feelings of betrayal, denial, abandonment. 

Some could tell stories in which the recoveries of their loved one held; others told stories of multiple heartbreaking attempts; many acknowledged that they too were powerless over what addictions were doing to their loved ones. I was deeply moved by the love and commitment in that room. I awoke Good Friday morning with involuntary tears streaming from my eyes thinking of them. 

The Twelve Steps are all about truth-telling, another requirement of justice. And the eighth and ninth steps are about making “a list of all persons we had harmed” and making “amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.” 

I had thought that I should find some service to attend the evening of Good Friday, when a close friend told us that the day was the 20^th anniversary of the death of his beloved partner to AIDS. So he came over and we ordered Chinese take-out. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend Good Friday. And I better understood his flash of anger about the Reagans when Hillary Clinton misstated after Nancy’s funeral that they had been instrumental in the “national conversation” about AIDS. 

A blog reader once pointed out to me that Jesus did not forgive those who betrayed, denied, abandoned, tortured, and crucified him, but rather, asked God to forgive them. That makes sense, for only God could administer the justice required for mercy. Could that be how Jesus’ sacrifice came to be understood as expiation for our sins? 

It is a sacred challenge to administer justice without vengeance. Jesus calls us to go the extra mile beyond retribution (“an eye for an eye”) and love our enemies. But real love holds the beloved accountable. 

The biblical witness is of a God of justice and mercy. Both are required for transformation. But scapegoating is never just, even if it is Jesus as the sacrificial lamb. Justice requires truth-telling, changing our ways, and making amends (penance).  Only then, to paraphrase Psalm 23, can “mercy and justice follow us all the days of our lives, and we shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” 

 

Copyright © 2016 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

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What Right-Wing Talk Radio Would Make of Jesus

Okay, listeners. Today we’re going to take on the myths surrounding this Jesus who has come to our fair city of Jerusalem to cause trouble. He’s ghetto trash that has fooled a bunch of illiterate peasants and bleeding heart liberals into thinking everyone deserves to be fed and healed and welcome in the temple.

What are his credentials? Does he have a degree? NO! Does he have a doctorate? NO! Does he come from a good family? NO! Rumor has it that he is the bastard son of an unwed millennial teen—born in a barn, no less.

Apparently his family headed south to Egypt, but migrated north again to Nazareth—that’s why we need that wall on our southern border, to keep out such refugees. And how do we know for certain he was even born in this country, anyway? Maybe he’s an Arab—after all, he came “out of the land of Egypt.”

He doesn’t come from the priestly class, and he prides himself on having no home and no financial stability. His followers smell of sheep and fish, fields and laundry—one of ‘em was a Roman collaborator, a tax collector for our overgrown government.  He declares we should turn the other cheek and walk the extra mile when it comes to those of the opposing political party—I say, hell no. They’ll get no hearings from this quarter!

He’s supported by feminazis—y’know, women who think they have as many rights as men, deserve equal pay and control over their own bodies, but are weak in the knees when it comes to orphans, widows, eunuchs, and the poor who only take from our society and contribute nothing.

He defended that adulterous woman, remember. And what’s going on between him and that unnamed “beloved disciple”? More than one woman has been seen anointing his body, kissing his feet, washing them with tears and even drying them with their hair! Now that’s twisted! And what’s with his deep love for Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha? Can we say “poly-a-mor-y”?!

Sunday he charged into Jerusalem, appropriately on an ass [braying sound effects], causing a riot as people cheered him on, tearing branches off our trees to lay before his feet, crying “Blessed is one who comes in the name of the Lord.” They act like he can do no wrong, even walk on water!

What crap! I’ve never heard such B.S. in my life. They acted like he was a king, God’s chosen one! The decent people of our city held back, so I challenge them, do something about this maniac before it’s too late, and he incites a revolution that brings Caesar’s armies down on us, let alone give power to those who have never worked a day in their lives.

Then he attacks the business owners in the temple, overturning their tables, claiming they are exploiting and profiting off worshipers, declaring the temple is to be a “house of prayer for all peoples”—wherever did he get that notion? Are we to let just anybody in there? He acts as if one of our great prophets said that, like Isaiah, but I can’t find it anywhere in my Bible. Next he’ll be bringing in the lepers, the lame, the unclean, and—God forbid—Gentiles. Makes me want to puke!

This, after all, is our holy week of Passover, not a time to get political. Our founding fathers liberated us from Egypt, to be sure, but that doesn’t give Jesus and his followers the right to make a scene. I’d say bribe one of his minions to betray him, and let’s hoist him up on the nearest tree. Then we’ll see if he is truly sent by God.

I’m not a religious man, but mark my words, neither is Jesus. He’s blasphemed everything that a true patriot knows to be holy, from the temple to the Sabbath to our religious and political systems.

He preaches compassion, but shows no mercy toward the rich, the privileged, the powerful, the job-creators. He tells us we must be “born again” as if our births did not confer privilege; that we must sell our possessions and give to the poor—folks, this is communism, plain and simple. He says the meek shall inherit the earth—I say, over my dead body. They’ll have to pry my possessions out of my cold, dead hands!

Once he’s dead, we’ve got to seal up his tomb lest his disciples steal the body and launch yet another hoax on us, as if his words will resonate forever in the scheme of things. Let me tell you, a few years from now, people won’t even remember his name!

Blogger’s note: I almost didn’t post this, because it’s not uplifting; but then I thought, Jesus didn’t have a very good week either.

A reading for this week of Lent:

“Into Your Hands I Commit My Spirit.”

A reading for Maundy Thursday:

In the Company of Birds

Readings for Good Friday:

Where Is God?

“Faggot” Jesus

Readings for Easter:

What God Did for Love

Resurrecting Jesus

Whose Resurrection Was It, Anyway?

How Did Jesus Let Go of His Cross?

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Copyright © 2016 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

In the Company of Birds

Copyright © 2011 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved.

On Maundy Thursday last week, I discovered an empty turquoise shell beneath a tree. At first I was saddened to think an unhatched bird had met its demise in a fall from a nest or in the claws of a predator. Then I realized it was more likely safely hatched, and the shell cast from the nest, no longer needed.

Our dog Hobbes and I had just begun our walk to “her” church, the neighborhood Seventh-Day Adventist Church. She’s actually a “Fifth-Day Adventist,” because we go there on Thursdays. In truth, it’s the panorama of trees and kudzu along a ravine behind the church that is the draw. As Hobbes was doing her “scratch and sniff” routine along its edge, I caught sight of a huge, predatory bird on a high branch of one of the tall trees in the ravine. At first I thought it an owl, but soon determined it was a hawk, common in this part of Atlanta.

At that moment, to my dismay, I saw a much smaller bird fly right into the hawk. I was sure the predator would swoop down and devour this pest. Thinking it had been an accident, I was surprised to see the little bird again hit the larger bird, this time using its small body to dive bomb the predator, literally ruffling its feathers, and I realized it was trying to drive it off, probably to protect eggs or chicks in a nearby nest. The hawk didn’t budge. I guess the third time is the charm even for birds, because its next plunge prompted the hawk to fly away. I was amazed.

The next day, Good Friday, I was enjoying morning prayer on our deck, Hobbes, as usual, at my feet. A pair of finches had built a nest above one of the outside music speakers, laid and hatched three eggs, and the baby birds were sitting patiently waiting for mom and dad to return with food. From Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, I just happened to be reading my most visited scripture, one I selected for my long-awaited ordination, on God’s Providence. “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.” Closing with the Lord’s Prayer, just as I prayed “Give us this day our daily bread,” as if on cue, it was feeding time for the young birds, who erupted in a chirpy, ecstatic frenzy.

I chose an unusual spiritual discipline for Good Friday and Holy Saturday: re-reading a book that had meant much to me in my young adulthood, James Hilton’s Lost Horizon. It describes the opportunity of a middle-aged man to leave his frenzied work and world to enjoy a more contemplative and fulfilling life. “Lost Horizon” refers to Shangri-La, a land beyond a mountainous portal with a verdant valley overlooked by a well-appointed lamasery; but it also serves as metaphor for the protagonist’s own “lost horizon” of moral purpose and aesthetic pleasure.

As I sat reading this novel from the 1930’s, I was afforded the repeated spectacle of the parent finches returning from food gathering expeditions to feed their hungry babies—about every half-hour or so. This is the pleasure of contemplative life, I thought, to attend to things from which our schedules and schemes and self-importance distract us.

In a book about Celtic Christianity, Listening for the Heartbeat of God, J. Philip Newell writes that John Scotus Eriugena, a ninth century philosopher, taught that Christ walks among us in two shoes—that of Scripture and that of Creation. Celtic Christians recognized Creation itself as an epiphany of God. So do I.

The empty shell had reminded me of the empty tomb. The defeat of the predatory hawk made me think of our soulful resistance to bullies. And, though on Sunday morning we attended worship and brunched with family and friends, our household Easter this year occurred as we watched the finches finally leave their nest.