Category: Reflections

Watch Your Mouth? Offensive Language and Christianity

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Andrew Jones has an interesting post up about offensive language. He writes about recent offense that has been taken by the usage of certain words and then delves into the history of what offends. He proposes that in premodern times people were offended by words that were “excommunicatory in nature – offensive words were religious terms that threatened punishment and damnation.” In modern times it was “words that cause most offense affront our personal and private sensibilities. These offensive words are normally associated with private body parts, bodily functions of a toilet nature, and sexual relations.” In our postmodern times “it is exclusionary language that causes most offence. Marginalizing people due to their race, gender, disability or status is about the most offensive thing you can say.” He then mentions the bible passages that refer to offensive language including “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” Eph 4:29.

Call me a stereotypical postmodern, but I understand the pre- and postmodern views on offensive language, but just can’t justify the modern. Biblically if the point is not to use the Lord’s name in vain (which referred to making flippant curses or oaths) or not to tear anyone down, the modern sensibility just doesn’t fit. In fact the modern approach does just the opposite – instead of building people up, modern bans of “offensive language” exist to exclude and ridicule. Most of the language that is offensive under the modern sensibilities (bodily and sexual references) is called vulgar. While we have come to perceive of “vulgar” as anything bad, dirty, and lower, it was originally just a term of derision used for the lower classes. So anything associated with the poor, uneducated masses (including their language) was considered vulgar and inappropriate for civilized folk.

So usage of terms that implied that one didn’t subscribe to classism, racism and the like became taboo. Proper people don’t use the germanic/anglo language of the poor (shit, fuck) they use the latinate language of the rich and powerful (excrement, fornicate). Over time the taboo took on mythic dimensions. Certain words came to hold almost magical powers. Say a certain word (incant this spell) and you have sinned (cursed yourself to hell). I doubt that most Christians actually stop to think about what sort of theology they are promoting when they insist that just saying “fuck” is a sin.

The fact that for most Christians it’s okay to use language of hate and derision (making fun of homosexuals, women, and other religions), but its sinful to say certain “vulgar” words displays a seriously messed up theology in my opinion. We are told to build others up with our language and encouraging language of hate while forbidding the language of the poor achieves the exact opposite. So label me as just being postmodern, but I see the more constructive (and biblical) option to be to avoid language that excludes, tears down, and ridicules. So I really don’t care if someone drops the “f-bomb” but I won’t abide “you throw like a girl.”

So it has nothing to do with wanting to be hip and cool or selling out to the culture if I choose to use a word that for a certain period of English history was considered taboo. It has more to do with actually considering my theology of sin, understanding the call to love my neighbor, and living accordingly. But that just pushes the walls of the box a little too far for most people…

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Arcadia

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My Mother’s Day gift was tickets to a play of my choosing. So yesterday we dropped Emma off at a babysitter and went down to the University of Chicago’s Court Theater to see one of my favorite plays – Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia. We also got to wander around the campus stopping at Chicago Theological Seminary (my top choice in my wishful thinking return to school). It was a fun day and a great production of the play (read the Chicago Trib’s review here).

Arcadia published in 1993 was written by Tom Stoppard (most commonly known for his play Rosencranz and Guildenstern are Dead and the screenplay for Shakespeare in Love). As explained by Wikipedia – “Arcadia explores the relationship between past and present, order and disorder, and the certainty of knowledge. It looks at the nature of evidence and truth in the context of modern ideas about history, mathematics and physics. It shows how the clues left by the past are interpreted by scholars. The play refers to a wide array of subjects, including mathematics, physics, thermodynamics, computer algorithms, fractals, population dynamics, chaos theory vs. determinism (especially in the context of love and death), classics, landscape design, romanticism vs. classicism, English literature (particularly poetry), Byron, 18th century periodicals, modern academia, and even South Pacific botany. These are the concrete topics of conversation; the more abstract philosophical resonances veer off into epistemology, nihilism, the origins of lust, and madness.

Arcadia is set in Sidley Park, an English country house in the years 1809 and 1989 alternately, juxtaposing the activities of two modern scholars and the house’s current residents with the lives of those who lived there 180 years earlier. In 1809, Thomasina Coverly, the daughter of the house, is a precocious teenager with ideas about mathematics well ahead of her time. She studies with her tutor, Septimus Hodge, a friend of Lord Byron, who is an unseen guest in the house. In 1989, a writer and an academic converge on the house: Hannah Jarvis, the writer, is investigating a hermit who once lived on the grounds; Bernard Nightingale, a professor of literature, is investigating a mysterious chapter in the life of Byron. As their investigations unfold, helped by Valentine Coverly, a post-graduate student in mathematical biology, the truth about what happened in 1809 is gradually revealed. The play’s set features a large table, which is used by the characters in both 1809 and 1989. Props are not removed when the play switches time period, so that the books, coffee mugs, quill pens, portfolios, and laptop computers of 1809 and 1989 appear alongside each other in a blurring of past and present. ”

The title refers to the pastoral ideal of Arcadia and to the memento mori spoken by Death: “Et in Arcadia ego” (“Even in Arcadia, I exist”). This theme presented itself a few times as I reflected on the play. The concept of determinism is a constant theme in Arcadia. Are our lives determined? If we had a big enough computer (or enough time, paper, and pencils) could a formula be written that tells the future and explains the past? We can program fractals – why not everything? But if populations are “determined’ to follow a formula even taking into account small fluctuations of nature (the populations of goldfish regulates) where does that leave the concept of justice? If everything (even tragedy and death) can be explained mathematically there can be no room for grief or outrage in the face of an inevitable determined universe. But death intrudes even in Arcadia and we are grieved. The influences of human emotion and love contradict the faith in an all encompassing deity of science. Romanticism and Classicalism collide.

Death also enters the play in a more concrete form. We learn that the mathematical genius Thomasina dies in a fire on the night before her seventeenth birthday (the age her mother insists she should be married by before she is “educated beyond eligibility”). Her tutor then takes up the pursuit to prove her theories, become a lunatic hermit to do so. But the death of a woman “condemned” by genius in a fire has direct parallels to the “madwoman in the attic” theory. Referring to Bertha, Rochester’s insane wife in Jane Eyre, who died in a fire, this concept was adopted by feminist literary theorists as a metaphor for the madness imposed upon women when they were denied using their talents because of their sex. Here Thomasina on the verge of great discovery and threatened with the cage of conventionality finds that even in Arcadia, death exists. Paradise has its flaws (especially a paradise of human creation). For all the talk that the universe is determined – demands of society and the accidental tipping of a candle intrude to shatter dreams and introduce chaos to the mix. Understanding the fluctuation of populations of pigeons and goldfish through math and science doesn’t see death as a bad thing (unless you are the pigeon), but the death of a friend and family member has a more serious effect.

Not that death is the main theme of the play, it just struck me during this encounter with the work. I was also intrigued and amused by the exploration of interpretation and truth. Our assumptions in the present influence our reading of the past. Texts takes on new meaning and small bits of evidence become the shaky foundation for entire theories. Our postmodern humility in accepting the limits of our understanding was clearly illustrated in the negative examples of characters’ hubris. The discovery of knowledge and the fame in brings them prevents them from actually seeing the truth and leads to their downfall. It is a much more relevant theme to me now than it was a decade ago when I first encountered this play.

Anyway, it was a fun day and great play. It’s run has just been extended if anyone in the Chicago area in interested in attending.

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Engaging in Dialogue?

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Mike has been spending a lot of time recently responding to the “Ask a Christian Pastor” series over at the Friendly Atheist blog. (go here for links to his responses). He addressed questions on biblical interpretation, hell, and why he’s a Christian among other things. It has of course sparked some lively debate.

So if your interested in an emerging pastor’s response to atheist’s questions, go check it out. I personally don’t have the patience for that sort of thing. While there are a majority of people interacting with those questions that are truly thoughtful and open-minded people, there is the vocal minority that drive me nuts. Its the same reason why I avoid most Christian message boards these days. There is a small group that thinks that their take on life, the universe, and everything is the absolutely only right way to think forever and ever amen. They are enamored with the sound of their own voice and never actually engage in dialogue, just drown out intelligent conversation with their navel gazing (how’s that for some mixed-up metaphors). Christian or atheist, it doesn’t matter, I really don’t have the patience for it.

And I don’t have the time for games of online “Taboo.” You know the game where you can’t say certain words or else you get buzzed out and eliminated. That’s what some of these dialogues are like. So many of the atheists have the a priori assumption that all forms of faith are just stupid and utterly unreasonable (of course ignoring the multitude of ways they make use of faith…). So when a Christian starts discussing his faith, they freak out, pull out the buzz, point the finger and say “see you talked about faith and not just reason (by which they mean science), you’re out.” my response – of course I’m going to talk about faith when I talk about my faith – that’s a freaking no-brainer so just get over it! But of course that never happens which is why I really don’t engage in those dialogues much anymore. It boils down to the fact that the biggest gap between us is not the atheism/theism divide but the modern/postmodern divide. I find the concept of scientific objective knowledge just as far-fetched as they find belief in God.

Anyway, just some random thoughts spilling out of my head as it tries to cope with a lot of other crap right now. If you’re up for dialogue and learning from others, go check out Mike’s posts.

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Colossians Remixed 8

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This is the concluding post in my series of responses to the questions I posted as part of last month’s book discussion on Colossians Remixed by Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat over at the Emerging Women blog. (read my other responses – here).

Question #8 –

“We can argue until we are blue in the face that Colossians is good news for an oppressed and marginalized community at the heart of the Roman empire, but unless this good news is for those truly at the margins – slaves, children, and women- it is nothing but a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal.” (p201). But the household codes in Colossians 3:18 -4:1 have more often been interpreted as justification for oppression of those groups instead of good news. The authors address this issue through a fantastic expanded account of Onesimus (the slave) and Nympha (who had a house church) – the whole book is worth just this story imho. The authors propose that the household codes can be interpreted as (1) Just an affirmation of the imperial view of the household, the Aristotelian hierarchy of man over women and all that (not likely if this letter is about subverting empire and not being captive to the philosophies of men). (2) A loving patriarchy when the wives and slaves choose to submit and husband (amazingly enough) love and not beat their wives (wow – that seems full of hope). or (3) Paul is challenging the status quo by promoting the freedom and full rights of women and slaves. He couldn’t of course say so directly because to commit that to writing would lead to serious persecution from the empire for such revolutionary practices. But the language he uses connotes the themes of inheritance and jubilee. Remember that Colossians was delivered and read with Philemon (about treating a slave as an equal), the subversion is evident. Are we willing to challenge systems that oppress others if it means questioning the philosophies and assumptions of empire (ending global slavery, grant equal rights to women, not treating children as commodities)?

This is of course one of the most controversial parts of the book (bring up equality for women and you’re bound to find controversy). The idea that Paul was intending a certain meaning through his use of allusions to inheritance and jubilee that he couldn’t say outright challenges the assumptions of many contemporary Bible readers. The average reader is so used to assuming that their 21st century cultural lenses and vague familiarity with English versions of the Bible is all they need to fully grasp the Biblical text. Try to suggest that there may be elements there that a 1st century reader would hear, but which require a tad more complex reading from the reader today and one is met with cries of “the Gospel is simple enough for a child to understand, how dare you assume the masses need education and intellect to understand God’s word!” (a claim that I have issues with, but which is believed as gospel truth by many).

But assuming that the household codes listed here and the language that surrounds them really does claim a revolutionary inclusion of all, then what does that mean for us now? Perhaps to forget these passages as confining the church to rules and philosophies that don’t even make sense in our culture today and instead see them as messages of hope that can alter our world for good. To recall the language of jubilee and shalom they connote and actually put that into practice. To live in this subversive and revolutionary way.

I always laugh when I hear Christians tell me that I’m just being influenced by the world when I stand up for women’s rights. In what universe do they live in where women actually have equal rights in the dominant culture? Where do women actually receive equal pay and benefits? Where do women not have to live in fear of being raped or trafficked into sexual slavery? Where are women appreciated as people instead of sex objects? Where do women get the same publishing and speaking opportunities as men? I’m not giving into the world – I’m trying to subvert the world by promoting women’s equality. It’s the church that has sold itself to the lies of hierarchy and inequality.

And it gets worse when slavery is brought up. The fact that our clothes, our food, our junk is made at best by underpaid workers in sweatshops and at worst by abused slaves doesn’t seem to bother most people. It keeps our stuff cheap and helps our economy. To care about those people would just be hurting ourselves and our country. Phrases like “you can’t change the laws of economics” or “those jobs are better than what they had before” get thrown around as poor excuses for not giving a damn. (and don’t even get me started on the people who say that if those poor people would just live morally, then they would have better options available to them). When it’s our greed that brought about most of the conditions for slavery worldwide and it is our greed that sustains it, it is up to us to fix the mess we created.

Guess what. This might take sacrifice. To live for Christ and the values of the Kingdom just might mean having to deal with some hardships. Maybe we can stop seeing “carrying the cross” as not getting to pray in school or not having our candidate win and start having to actually identify with Christ by caring for those he cared about. By being willing to pay workers a fair wage, to not support the (cheap readily available) products that were made by slave using companies, to stand against sexism even when the church openly supports it (and labels you a liberal feminist). These are lessons, I’m still learning. To get over my sense of entitlement and wanting to be liked by everyone in order to actually live for Christ.

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Colossians Remixed 7

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This post is part of my ongoing response to the questions I posted as part of this month’s book discussion on Colossians Remixed by Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat over at the Emerging Women blog. (read my other responses – here).

Question #7 –

If Christians are not to be at home in an empire characterized by sexual sin, greed, and violence, the authors ask what should the Kingdom look like? They proposed a life lived where the peace of the victim of an empire is spread, where community is lived, gratitude is practiced, and worship proclaims that Christ not Caesar is Lord of our lives. Practical suggestions the authors give include – pledging our allegiance to Christ not to the empire; investing as much each year in the hurtings present needs as we do in our future retirement; paying attention to where our food comes from and what’s in it; setting up food co-ops where you can get food produced as locally as possible, in environmentally responsible ways, and that seeks to do justice to the producer of the food; be ecologically responsible by reducing our use of cars and start walking. biking, or using (or lobbying for) public transit; be good stewards of the ecosystem and stop dumping diapers (for babies or women) into the landfills (and hence streams and rivers). How do you react to those suggestions? What else could you add?

I like all of their suggestions. I care about those things. And yet I don’t always live that out. I’ve blogged on that issue before (here). Sometimes, I don’t know what exactly to do to change things. If I care about stuff like this and still have issues living it out, how can I ever hope to encourage others to live justly?

Plus most of the time I just really don’t know what to say. When my friends and family start going off on things that really contradict my values and understanding of the Kingdom I generally just don’t say anything. I’m torn. I want to share what I am passionate about, but I don’t want to do it in an argumentative way or in a way that invalidates the things they are passionate about. So I don’t say anything and let them assume I completely agree with them.

For example. Easter. We didn’t do the whole egg thing this year. I didn’t want to stuff plastic eggs with cheap crap made in Asian sweat shops nor with unhealthy unneeded candy made by child slaves. I also didn’t want to waste food by dying eggs nor spend money on cheap eggs that support environmentally and ethically harmfully practices. But all my friends were talking about those things. Who has the best price on eggs? On candy? When can we get together to dye eggs? I don’t know what to do in those situations. Do I explain my choices, do I question their choices, and do I endure the “OMG what a religious freak who won’t let her child enjoy life” accusations? (which I of course said about the families who banned the Easter bunny because it detracts from the real meaning of Easter. And shudder that I am coming to the same lifestyle conclusions as the fundamentalists but for completely different reasons)

So this isn’t really a real answer here. Just to say that I find it really easy to write about stuff like this on my blog, but find it a lot harder to consistently put it into practice or to share it with the people I interact with everyday.

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Virginia

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The mass killing at Virginia Tech yesterday is on everyone’s minds. It is hard to understand the why, but I found some of the information released in today’s news to be disturbing –

The suspected gunman in the Virginia Tech shooting rampage, Cho Seung-Hui, was a troubled 23-year-old senior from South Korea who investigators believe left an invective-filled note in his dorm room, sources say. …
A note believed to have been written by Cho was found in his dorm room that railed against “rich kids,” “debauchery” and “deceitful charlatans” on campus….
Timothy Johnson, a student from Annandale, Va., said people would say hello to Cho in passing, but nobody knew him well.
“People are pretty upset,” Johnson said. “He’s a monster; he can’t be normal. I can’t believe I said ‘hi’ to him in the hall and then he killed all those people.”

Two things struck me. How Cho’s suppossed “reasons” for the attack parallel some of the reasons given for 9/11. And then the response of the fellow student. Just the assumption that to be nice to someone who is abnormal or even evil is so out of the question.

I in no way want to justify Cho’s actions or blame the victim’s for his choices. I know we don’t know much about Cho and what other issues he was dealing with. But I have to wonder at how people like him are pushed to the edge. When normal people won’t interact with the guy who’s a bit off, when one sees valid concerns in the structure of society and feels powerless to have a voice against them – what then are constructive ways to work for change?

I know I get frustrated by how the normal response to me by my friends is just to roll their eyes or make fun of me when I go off on one of my liberal hippie jesusy rants. And on the national scale when countries don’t change the way we want them to, we go on killing sprees with bombs. I guess that’s what my rambling is leading to – trying to figure out how to change the world effectively without resorting to violence or despair. That’s what’s running through my head as I reflect in shock on the recent events.

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Colossians Remixed 3

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This post is part of my ongoing response to the questions I posted as part of this month’s book discussion on Colossians Remixed by Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat over at the Emerging Women blog. (read my other responses – here).

Question #3 –

Poetry of subversion. The authors explore how the hymn presented in Colossians 1:15-20 is a hymn of subversion of Empire. It takes the language of Empire and proclaims the supremacy of Christ over Caesar – radical, subversive, dangerous. They then contribute a “targum” (an extended translation and expansion that reads our world through the eyes of the text) of this passage. You can read it on p.85 or here. (and a short article on the point they are making here). What is your reaction to the poem? Does this imagination of an alternative to empire make sense?

I love that poem/hymn. We do live in a culture of images vying for our attention, or allegiance, our time and our money. The numbers vary, but it is thought that an individual is generally exposed to around 600 advertisements per day. We pay companies for the right to wear their name brand on our chest or butts.

I watch TV, I buy stuff, I surf the web (a lot). I don’t see any of that stuff as evil in and of itself. In fact most of that stuff has and can be used for good. I see the value in patronage and support and sponsorship. Issues arise though when said images and economic structures dominate our consciousness. When we allow the greed promoted by our economic system to let us forget that Christ is the image we should focus on. As Walsh writes, “this means that the ideology of economic growth is not Lord over our lives. We are not subservient to the imperatives of consumerism, ecological despoliation, technological innovation, and seeking our own self-interested security because we are subjects of another kingdom. We are committed to submitting our lives – including our economic aspirations, consumer habits, ecological practice, political involvement – to the one in whom, through whom and for whom all things are created.”

So this is about being image bearers for Christ rather than for someone else. I personally don’t see this as a polemic against style but an attitude encouragement. And neither is the point to eschew name brands in favor of whatever the cheap brand is. The allure of Walmart is just as seductive as that of Abercrombie – when both challenge the supremacy of Christ’s love by using his children in sweatshops our patronage of either demonstrates our allegiance to an economic system over Christ.

I don’t do a very good job at this. I live in suburbia. So many days I really don’t stop to think if my economic purchases put Christ first. Scratch that, most days it is only about my needs and wants. The poem proclaims –
the church reimagines the world
in the image of the invisible God

I’m trying to figure that out. To see the good in stuff. To not be a slave to systems of greed. To think about if my purchases are just. To be an image bearer.

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Colossians Remixed 2

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This post is part of my ongoing response to the questions I posted as part of this month’s book discussion on Colossians Remixed by Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat over at the Emerging Women blog. (read my other responses – here).

So Question #2 –

Empires are defined here as (1) built on systemic centralizations of power, (2) secured by structures of socioeconomic and military control, (3) religiously legitimated by powerful myths and (4) sustained by a proliferation of imperial images that captivate the imagination of the population. In comparing how both the Roman and current Western empires maintain the status quo of privilege and oppression the authors give the examples of “most major corporations use the equivalent of slave labor to produce clothing, toys, tools and some foods. Most of this labor is done by people in Asia, Latin America or Africa. While cash-crops farmers include both men and women, the majority of those who work in sweatshops, on coffee plantations and in the sex trade are women and children. … although our culture does not openly subscribe to an ethos of patriarchy, racism, and classism, the effects of the global economic market create the same kind of societal dynamic that was present in first-century Rome.” (p 59-60). I want to ask the same questions the authors then ask – “In the face of an empire that rules through military and economic control, what is the shape of a community that serves a ruler who brings reconciliation and peace by sacrificial death rather than military might? If the empire elevates economic greed and avarice into civic virtues, while Paul dismisses such a way of life as idolatrous, then how does a Christian community shaped by Paul’s gospel live life in the empire?” (p61).

Start calling America an empire and you get in trouble (even if you are the Vice President). Granted I’ve heard dispensational interpretations of Daniel’s vision that insist that Rome never fell so we are therefore still living in that fourth empire waiting for the seventieth week pre-trib rapture and all that, but even then the spin was pro-America.

I agree with Walsh and Keesmaat that America is an empire in the tradition of Rome and I don’t think that’s a good thing. The very raison d’etre of empire is power which directly contradicts the way of service and love preached by Jesus. But the systems and values of empire creep into the lives of its people, even those who ostensibly profess other values. Under the Roman empire the apostles had to combat warped values like it being okay to use people as slaves if it increased your profit or made your life easier; if you didn’t like another people group or wanted resources off their land, you liberated them of such land; sexual promiscuity and gluttony being considered natural indulgences of one’s appetites; and women being seen as mindless sex objects. But of course that’s all different today, right?

What really gets me is the subtle replacement of the values of the cross with the values of empire. The propaganda machines that push the virtues of the state have swayed Christians so that now civic virtues are promoted and Christian virtues questioned. When I can sit in a church and hear sermons in support of capitalism, preemptive war, racial discrimination, and sexism and fail to hear the words of Jesus actually preached, empire has won. When we sing hymns in praise of our country and think that forcing our children to say creeds of allegiance to an idol is a form of Christian witness, empire has won. When it is more important to be patriotic than care about the children we blew up, then empire has won. We have been taken captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.

So how do we live in this empire? How do we love and not fear and yet challenge that which promotes evil? How can we (and I am very much included in this) stop pointing fingers at individual sins and actually think about how we’ve bought into (been indoctrinated into?) the values of empire? Can we stop trying the mesh or replace the values of the Kingdom with the values of the empire? Basically can we take a step back and ask why? Why do I believe/buy/promote this? Is this really a good thing? Does this fit into Jesus’ message? What is Jesus’ message anyway? How do I need to change?

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[Grid::Blog::Via Crucis 2007] – Good Friday

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In reflecting on Good Friday, I was reminded of W.H Auden’s poem “Horae Canonica” which is a procession through the divine hours on Good Friday (in its own way). This section stood out to me –

From W.H. Auden’s Horae Canonica –

What we know to be not possible,
Though time after time foretold
By wild hermits, by shaman and sybil
Gibbering in their trances,
Or revealed to a child in some chance rhyme
Like will and kill, comes to pass
Before we realize it: we are surprised
At the ease and speed of our deed
And uneasy: It is barely three,
Mid-afternoon, yet the blood
Of our sacrifice is already
Dry on the grass; we are not prepared
For silence so sudden and so soon;
The day is too hot, too bright, too still,
Too ever, the dead remains too nothing.
What shall we do till nightfall?

The wind has dropped and we have lost our public.
The faceless many who always
Collect when any world is to be wrecked,
Blown up, burnt down, cracked open,
Felled, sawn in two, hacked through, torn apart,
Have all melted away: not one
Of these who in the shade of walls and trees
Lie sprawled now, calmly sleeping,
Harmless as sheep, can remember why
He shouted or what about
So loudly in the sunshine this morning;
All if challenged would reply
-‘It was a monster with one red eye,
A crowd that saw him die, not I.-
The hangman has gone to wash, the soldiers to eat;
We are left alone with our feat.

The Madonna with the green woodpecker,
The Madonna of the fig-tree,
The Madonna beside the yellow dam,
Turn their kind faces from us
And our projects under construction,
Look only in one direction,
Fix their gaze on our completed work:
Pile-driver, concrete-mixer,
Crane and pick-axe wait to be used again,
But how can we repeat this?
Outliving our act, we stand where we are,
As disregarded as some
Discarded artifact of our own,
Like torn gloves, rusted kettles,
Abandoned branch-lines, worn lop-sided
Grindstones buried in nettles.

This mutilated flesh, our victim,
Explains too nakedly, too well,
The spell of the asparagus garden,
The aim of our chalk-pit game; stamps,
Birds’ eggs are not the same, behind the wonder
Of tow-paths and sunken lanes,
Behind the rapture on the spiral stair,
We shall always now be aware
Of the deed into which they lead, under
The mock chase and mock capture,
The racing and tussling and splashing,
The panting and the laughter,
Be listening for the cry and stillness
To follow after: wherever
The sun shines, brooks run, books are written,
There will also be this death.

Today we celebrate the goodness of the day God died. For Christians this day defines who God is, for others this day proves that our religion is untrue because gods don’t die. What strikes me today is the ordinariness of this day. I had my morning coffee, I will fix dinner tonight, I will take my daughter to playgroup. Perhaps Good Friday doesn’t disrupt my life enough. Our church is holding services/events on Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday this year. So Good Friday must be remembered in the ordinariness of everyday life.

But isn’t that as it should be? That the death of Christ should influence and change everything? That enacting the ritual of the everyday should be imbued with the significance of Christ? That there is something different about changing the diapers, cutting the grass, or doing the dishes because of this death?

But that change occurs in two ways. At first those habits seem so ordinary as to be meaningless. In the shadow of cosmic redemption dramas, our daily actions seem so pointless and boring. Yet at the same time in light of the call that cosmic drama gave to each of us, those actions now take on new meaning. They become part of the drama, a way of identifying with the story. Acts of remembrance and service and hope.

So I will walk through my everyday rituals today in hope. In knowing that this day is good and that this death has changed the ordinary forever.

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[Grid::Blog::Via Crucis 2007] – Carry the Cross

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“You broke the bonds
And you loosened the chains
Carried the cross
Of all my shame
all my shame
You know I believe it
But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”

– U2, I Still Haven’t found What I’m Looking For

So I was listening to my U218 CD in the car and these lines from the most preached on U2 song ever caught my attention. I had just been looking at the images from the life of Christ visual we are using in our Maundy Thursday service and recalled this image from Nicaragua. So often we get so caught up in the personal affront to Jesus – the beatings, the torture, and the via crucis – and the personal freedom it grants us without placing it in context.

Jesus did come to loose the chains of injustice. He came to set the captives free. His people were living under oppression. A military government controlled them and occupied their land. Jesus came to offer the way of peace and love even amidst that lack of freedom. A revolution more radical than any violent uprising, more subversive than any secret army.

I like the reminder the painting gives of how oppressive military regimes still exist in our world today – and Jesus carries the cross for them too. He came to set captives free and loose the chains of injustice for Israel and for the nations. He suffered for their freedom. He suffered so that they may have hope.

I believe that. I believe the way of Christ is possible. I believe love and peace and justice can be lived out. But I still haven’t found it. I haven’t seen “justice become a light to the nations.” I haven’t found what Christ came to establish.

Which is why I work for it. Which is why the via crucis is not just a personal affront or a personal hope, but an invitation into an entirely new way of being. A life where walking with Christ and carrying the cross with him involves caring for the things he cared about. Working for the same goals. Seeking justice. Rescuing the oppressed. Living the life of love and peace.

[Grid::Blog::Via Crucis 2007]

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