Escape to Holy Week

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. A subsequent test monitoring my blood pressure for 24 hours showed excellent results, thanks be to God! 

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.

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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.

"I Am with You"

Our backyard tree coming to life.

“I am with you.” God-with-us. Where two or three are gathered. Always.

This is my “aha” of Holy Week. Not original, but deeply felt. I lost myself in these thoughts and feelings that came to me this morning of Good Friday, on the eve of Passover. The stories of both these observances are meant to assure us that God is with us.

God has heard the people cry. Whatever your cry, God has heard it. God is with you. Always.

That’s really all I have to say. But you know me, I want to tell you how I got there.

I almost did not follow my usual Holy Week practice of reading Will Quinlan’s The Temple of God’s Wounds, a chapter per day. I’ve written before of its mystical power for me, though I am not in sync with all its tenets.

This year I coupled these daily readings with the passages of crucifixion and resurrection in the four Gospels. Each day I read a crucifixion text in chronological order of its writing: Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. On the days that followed I read the resurrection texts in the opposite order: John, Luke, Matthew, and Mark.

What I didn’t realize is that I unconsciously followed the pattern of The Temple of God’s Wounds. The narrator is instructed to view six paintings, one per day. The first three have to do with the crucifixion, the last three have to do with the resurrection.

On this reading, I once again profoundly embraced the narrator’s need for confession. As regular readers of this blog know, I am not too keen on sin, as it has, in my view, been over-emphasized in Christian tradition, plus many of the things labelled sin do not match my experience of what sin really is. That does not mean I am not aware of how I have failed in my human relationships, my relationship with earth and its creatures, and my relationship with God.

On this reading, I also recognized the narrator’s longing not only for transformation, but for an experience of transcendence that left him, in Charles Wesley’s words, “lost in wonder, love, and praise.” That came for me with the remembrance that the whole of the biblical witness testifies to God’s steadfast presence. God has not left us alone.

The incarnation is less important to me as a doctrine than as an experience that God has somehow joined us in Jesus’ passion and compassion, offering a life refreshed rather than defeated by wilderness and suffering and death.

The differences in how Jesus’ story is told among the Gospels allow our own differences. We don’t have to subscribe to every “jot and tittle” of those stories to “get” the meaning, the inspiration, of the story that God is with us.

And, as I review the first draft of this post, I realize I overlooked two other “texts” or better, “contexts” that enhanced and influenced my “aha” about God’s presence: my body mending after a severe cold and our yard and the ravine beyond coming to life after winter. These “gospels” speak even to those who do not know Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.

“I am with you.” God has heard our cry. God-with-us. Where two or three are gathered. Always.

On this 50^th anniversary of the death of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr: “Keep the Dream Alive!”

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Copyright © 2018 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

"Woman, Behold Your Son. Son, Behold Your Mother."

Jesus’ Seven Last Words, sayings offered from the cross, may serve as guidance for the spiritual life. You are invited to contemplate each saying during the seven Wednesdays of Lent and Holy Week.

I was surprised when I first learned that our word atonement is simply the combination “at-one-ment.” We tend to think of atonement as something God does with us or Jesus does for us or the Holy Spirit does inside us to join us to God. But these words of Jesus to his mother Mary, “Woman, behold your son,” and to his beloved disciple, “Son, behold your mother,” suggests the at-oneing is among us as well.

“Isn’t that nice that Jesus would provide for his mother in this way,” we might think. But what if we’re taking the story only at face value, a literal reading?

What if the intention of the story is to open our eyes that every woman should be valued as our mother and that every man should be cared for as the beloved disciple? What if the hope of the story is that we create family outside familiar criteria?

“Behold,” Jesus says, “behold!”

Behold the grieving mother. Behold the starving girl. Behold the sexually assaulted female. Behold the woman awaiting execution. Behold a female fetus about to be aborted for being the “wrong” gender. Imagine women in all kinds of suffering and imagine Jesus saying to us, “Child, behold your mother.”

Behold the abandoned son. Behold the uneducated boy. Behold the adolescent male in poverty. Behold the man being tortured. Behold the man unjustly imprisoned. Imagine men in all kinds of suffering and imagine Jesus saying to us, “Mother, behold your son.”

It’s not so far-fetched when we remember Jesus’ parable of final reckoning, “As much as you have done it to the least of these, you have done it so to me.”

The spiritual life for Christians is about stretching our imaginations, wrapping our minds around the “new thing” that God is doing, opening our hearts to share our common wealth, seeing others as if for the first time, living “as if” Jesus is in charge.

Our spirituality is sterile if it’s just “me and Jesus” or just “me and God.” Spirituality becomes fertile if it’s “me and everyone and everything else.” Spiritual growth is possible only as our spirit expands to include all there is. Yes, we may focus, but we can’t forget that every body and every thing carries its own sacred value.

“Behold,” Jesus says, “behold!”

Yes, we may gaze at the cross and contemplate Jesus’ passion, but we may also look around at one another with his compassion. That too is at-one-ment.

For those who would like daily readings for this week of Lent, click here and scroll down to the end of “My Loneliness Led Me to God.”

Thanks be to God for the life, writings, ministry, and friendship of Malcolm Boyd. Our prayers are with his partner, Mark Thompson. Malcolm still runs with Jesus!

A post about Malcolm: Everybody Has a Story

Think about it:

“A Death Row Inmate Finds Common Ground with Theologians”

Please support this blog ministry by clicking here or mailing to MCC, P.O. Box 50488, Sarasota FL 34232 USA, designating “Progressive Christian Reflections” in the memo area of your check or money order. Thank you!

This year, I offer a signed gift copy of my book, Communion of Life: Meditations for the New Millennium, to each one who donates $100 or more (at once or in installments) over the course of 2015.

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Progressive Christian Reflections is entirely supported by readers’ donations. It is an authorized Emerging Ministry of Metropolitan Community Churches, a denomination welcoming seekers as well as believers.

Copyright © 2015 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

Evangelical

As a progressive Christian, I am hesitant to admit how dearly I wanted my college buddy to know Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. Clearly it was a desire for intimacy on my part, but I also wanted him to know how dearly loved he was: if he could never be told of my love, at least he would know the love of Jesus.

I recognized the experience decades later upon reading Henri Nouwen’s  Life of the Beloved, written for a young secular Jewish friend requesting generic spiritual guidance. Henri wrote:

All I want to say to you is, “You are the beloved,” and all I hope is that you can hear these words as spoken to you with all the tenderness and force that love can hold. My only desire is to make these words reverberate in every corner of your being. (p 26)

When offered the manuscript to read, Henri explains in the epilogue, the young man responded basically “thanks, but no thanks,” as it was still so Christian. But Henri published the book anyway! I gave the book to a gay friend graduating from seminary, fearing that he might lose his sense of belovedness serving the church from the closet.

What awakens these memories is reading again Paul’s letters to his “beloved,” congregations he founded or shaped for whom he behaved as a mother caring for her children (1 Thes. 2:7), treating “every one of you as a father treats his children” (1 Thes. 2:11). I am in awe of Paul’s passion for the first Christians and their passion for one another, sharing all things in common, giving thanks in all circumstances, as well as their passion for loving and helping their neighbors, what made the faith so attractive in its beginnings (see Elaine Pagel’s Beyond Belief). Among progressive Christians, such passion is often focused in our pursuit of peace and justice. Obviously, that’s a good thing, but do we welcome spiritual intimacy in this process?

Our fear, of course, is becoming like some of our evangelical brothers and sisters, who, as Jesus said of the Pharisees, “cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves” (Matt. 23:15).

Seeing even “in the center of an intimate relationship the seeds of violence,” Henri critiqued the passion that may lead from embracing to grasping in his third movement of the spiritual life, a movement significantly named “From Illusion to Prayer” in his book Reaching Out (p 84). Prayer and contemplation may lead us away from illusory power and control, away from idols and our own demons.

Religiously, we see this grasping in the misdirected passion of the self-inflicted martyr and would-be terrorist, the inquisitor and the enforcer, that can be found in every faith historically—even among progressive Christians.

The solution for Henri was hospitality, the ancient spiritual practice, which he explains “is not a method of making our God and our way into the criteria of happiness, but the opening of an opportunity to others to find their God and their way” (Reaching Out, p 51).

This, to me, is the best spiritual path and practice of progressive Christians.

“Last call” for this weekend’s Kirkridge Oct 3-6 retreat: “For All the Saints!” which includes a film and segment on Henri Nouwen.

Upcoming Henri Nouwen events led by Chris Glaser:

October 12 in Pasadena, CA:

From the Heart: The Spirituality of Henri Nouwen

November 9 in Dallas, TX:

The Wounded Healer vs. Getting Hooked in Our Wounds—A Retreat for Clergy and Caregivers

January 12, 2014 in Seattle, WA:

Henri Nouwen: Forgiveness, Fruitfulness, and Fun

January 18, 2014 in Chicago, IL:

            What Community Meant to Henri Nouwen (Sat. aft. TBD)

May 2-4, 2014 at Kirkridge, PA:

            Henri Nouwen’s Road to L’Arche

           

Progressive Christian Reflections is an authorized Emerging Ministry of MCC. Your donations by mail or credit card are its only means of support. Thank you!

Copyright © 2013 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. Check out past posts in the right rail on the blogsite. Consider using a post or quotes in personal reflection, worship, newsletters, and classes, referencing the blog address when possible: http://chrisglaser.blogspot.com. 

"Faggot" Jesus

Copyright © 2011 by Chris R. Glaser. Painting Copyright © by Becki Jayne Harrelson. All rights reserved. 

When Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ first appeared in movie theaters, a Jewish friend of ours asked if my partner and I would go with her to see it. She wanted to view it with Christians, she said, to get our perspective.

The severity of Gibson’s religion, combined with the film’s alleged anti-Semitism and blood-soaked violence, had kept it from my Top Ten list of films to see. Drawn partly from the visions of mystics of the 17th and 18th centuries, the film also carried for me a misogynistic and transphobic feeling, as evil was incarnate in an effeminate, androgynous figure.

I flinched and squirmed watching the film’s gore. Yet all I could think of is that people in this country and around the world are still enduring such vile and extreme suffering at the hands of others.

Long ago I wrote that, though a Protestant, I think we may have overstepped by taking Jesus off the crucifix. As much as I don’t wallow in bloody atonement scenarios, a body on a cross should awaken our repulsion at violence and our compassion for those who suffer it, what the 12th century teacher Peter Abelard considered the true basis of our at-one-ment with God.

The epithet “King of the Jews” at the top of Jesus’ cross was the Roman Empire's way of mocking anyone who claimed their people’s dignity in the face of oppression. It was an insult not only to Jesus but to his people; thus the chief priests are portrayed in John's Gospel as unsuccessfully petitioning to have the epithet changed.

My friend and web-designer, the artist Becki Jayne Harrelson, has captured the concept of the crucifixion as a hate crime in an outstanding painting depicting Jesus on the cross with the epithet “FAGGOT” above his head. [See painting below.] You could imagine any slur against a group of people in that slot, and understand the blood-curdling intimidation intended by those who perpetrate hate crimes, whether through physical violence or through religious or political violence.

The message for me in the story of Christ’s Passion is God’s identification with all who suffer violence. Despite our bloody church history, I do not believe that God consecrates violence. As I’ve written elsewhere, the crucifixion was our idea; the resurrection was God’s.



The Crucifixion of Christ by Becki Jayne Harrelson - http://beckijayne.com/