Coming in from the wilderness…

I have spent the past six months writing and interacting primarily on a social networking site. While I had been growing in my writing abilities I got “stuck” and seemed to be in the midst of a months-long dry spell. So I busied myself by being a social butterfly. Not very conducive to writing, but I have met some fantastic people there and we are all kindred spirits of a sort. Well last week this site helped make my decision to leave for me by experiencing some technical difficulties with my account for the second time this year. The last time I just opened a new account and started over. Not so this time. It doesn’t appear to be clearing up so next week I will begin to clear out and leave it altoghether. But not my friends. Not those who have been an inspiration and so encouraging the past several months.  No, these stay with me. I hope.

So I hope to be back here regularly once more. It will take me awhile to hit my stride to be sure. But I’m hoping it will be like falling of the proverbial bike and I will once more be in the groove.

Summer Reading List

I usually compose and publish such a list each year. I’d also appreciate you mentioning a book or two that is on YOUR list for the summer. It’s how I find those hidden gems.

In no particular order (though the last book looks to be fascinating):

Drood. By Dan Simmons. I started reading this book a week ago and am just starting to get a feel for it. Dan Simmons imagines a terrifying sequence of events as the inspiration for Dickens’s last, uncompleted novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, in this unsettling and complex thriller. In the course of narrowly escaping death in an 1865 train wreck and trying to rescue fellow passengers, Dickens encounters a ghoulish figure named Drood, who had apparently been traveling in a coffin. Along with his real-life novelist friend Wilkie Collins, who narrates the tale, Dickens pursues the elusive Drood, an effort that leads the pair to a nightmarish world beneath London’s streets. Ultimately this is a tale of envy and its effects.

Wicked / Son of a Witch. By Gregory Maguire. I’ve seen Wicked on the bookshelves for years. But until co-worker John Roby and his wife went to see the Broadway musical of the same name a few weeks ago I never gave this book much thought. Until now. This Barnes & Noble edition combines two modern classics spun from the imagination of author Gregory Maguire. Wicked, told from the perspective of Elphaba Thropp, the Wicked Witch of the West, gives the wildly entertaining prehistory of the Emerald City of Oz before the arrival of Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, and the Tin Woodsman. The saga continues in Son of a Witch, the whimsical coming-of-age story of Liir, the Wicked Witch’s secret son.

There’s a third installment to the trilogy, A Lion Among Men, that was only recently published.

Atlas Shrugged. By Ayn Rand. A book that I’ve been meaning to read for fifteen years and have finally decided to do so. Seems especially relevant in our current day. I’ve read what I consider the trilogy of “totalitarian” novels (Huxley’s Brave New World, Benson’s Lord of the World, and Orwell’s 1984), but this one may top them all. I’ll soon find out.

Jesus of Nazareth. By Pope Benedict XVI. I’ve been reading this book since receiving it as a Christmas gift. It’s a wonderful book, but not one that you can just fly through. I’ve been in the section on the Beatitudes for weeks. Wonderful stuff.

The Screwtape Letters. By C.S. Lewis. I’ve read this book a dozen times. Why? Because it’s simply the best book on the subject of evil I’ve ever read. And because I’ve been working on writing a study/devotional on this book for over two years. Maybe one day I’ll finish.

The Problem of Pain. By C. S. Lewis. Because every year I read at least one Lewis book I haven’t read before. This year it’s this one. The subject is the universal question, “Why would an all-loving, all-knowing God allow people to experience pain and suffering?”

The Heart Set Free: Sin And Redemption In The Gospels, Augustine, Dante, And Flannery O’Connor. By Kim Paffenroth. As Augustine, Dante and O’Connor are among my favorite authors it was hard to pass this book up. I didn’t. In Christian experience, one of the central themes recurring over time and in the attendant literature has been sin and redemption. From this book one sees selected snapshots of this issues from the Gospels (first/second century), Augustine (fourth/fifth century), Dante (thirteen/fourteenth century), and Flannery O’Connor (twentieth century). According to Paffenroth, ‘these thinkers offer timeless criticisms of four of the greatest and most flawed societies of all time – Israel, Rome, medieval Europe, and America – and they do so in a way that raises their critiques out f the particular historical context and renders them relevant today.’

We Who Are Alive and Remain: Untold Stories from the Band of Brothers. By Marcus Brotherton. I actually bought this for Nolan for his summer reading, but hope to grab it from him once he’s finished. We’ve both read Stephen Ambrose’s original Band of Brothers, and watched the HBO series. These are the stories of 20 of the surviving men from E Co, 506th PIR, 101st Airborne, the original Band of Brothers.  They were the men of the now-legendary Easy Company. After almost two years of hard training, they parachuted into Normandy on DDay and, later, Operation Market Garden. They fought their way through Belgium, France, and Germany, survived overwhelming odds, liberated concentration camps, and drank a victory toast in April 1945 at Hitler’s hideout in the Alps. Here, revealed for the first time, are stories of war, sacrifice, and courage as experienced by one of the most revered combat units in military history. In We Who Are Alive and Remain, twenty men who were there and are alive today—and the families of three deceased others—recount the horrors and the victories, the bonds they made, the tears and blood they shed…and the brothers they lost.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance – Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem! By Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. Why? Because this looks like a damn fun book. I’ve yet to read Austen despite owning two or three of her books. So why not read this version of Pride & Prejudice first?

From a review:

This may be the most wacky by-product of the busy Jane Austen fan-fiction industry—at least among the spin-offs and pastiches that have made it into print. In what’s described as an “expanded edition” of Pride and Prejudice, 85 percent of the original text has been preserved but fused with  “ultraviolent zombie mayhem.” For more than 50 years, we learn, England has been overrun by zombies, prompting people like the Bennets to send their daughters away to China for training in the art of deadly combat, and prompting others, like Lady Catherine de Bourgh, to employ armies of ninjas. Added to the familiar plot turns that bring Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy together is the fact that both are highly skilled killers, gleefully slaying zombies on the way to their happy ending. Is nothing sacred? Well, no, and mash-ups using literary classics that are freely available on the Web may become a whole new genre. What’s next? Wuthering Heights and Werewolves?

What’s on your list this summer? I’d really love to know.

Staying in the Groove

Three moments from fifteen minutes of today’s lunch hour:

The NCAA Women’s Gymnastics Championships are in town the next three days. Thus I had the pleasure of meeting a few of the gymnasts from the University of Utah at Subway. They are adorable. And probably more than capable of kicking my ass if I patronized them by calling them adorable in their presence.

While making my turkey breast sandwich Bobby and I consoled each other from either side of the lunch counter about the awful start to our beloved Red Sox’s season. But the season is still young…very young.

Sandwich in hand and waiting to cross the street to my building a short blonde woman stands next to me talking to her small son in a language I did not recognize. She did so the entire length of the crosswalk and once we reached the other side I asked her what language she was speaking. She said, in a delightful English accent, that it was Swedish as she was originally from that country. They had lived in London for years before her job brought them to Lincoln six months ago. There was no time to go into any further detail than that because the little guy (who looked almost exactly like the little boy in “Jerry Maguire”) wanted in on the conversation. I crouched down to his eye-level, welcomed him to town, and asked him what he thought of the move. He replied that he loved it here. We exchanged four or five low-fives in front of my building before we parted. I would have enjoyed talking more to them. You don’t get that opportunity every day.

Or do we? How many moments each day do we miss?

For those of us old enough to remember, each record album had anywhere from four to six songs per side. Once you set the needle down into the groove you had to listen to the entire side of songs. Or walk over and manually lift the stylus out of the groove and try to negotiate it back into the small area between songs if you wanted to skip over one of the less favorite tunes. You would have to do the same if you wanted to re-listen to your favorite that had just finished.

I decided this month to finally enter the iPod era and have been busy copying all of my CDs onto my computer and then transferring them to my iPod. As I’ve been doing this something occurred to me. The way we listen to music today is oftentimes a metaphor for how we briskly run through our lives.

We no longer have to bother ourselves to sit through that four-minute song that we’re not in love with on the record. With the touch of a button or with a tap to the screen we move quickly to the next track. Or more likely, we never downloaded it in the first place. It simply never existed.

How many moments in the lives of those around us do we miss because we cannot be bothered to keep ourselves in the groove? We pick and choose those things and people we’re comfortable with, not engaging in some of the events around us that may be more fulfilling in the long run, but uncomfortable at first. We risk nothing and remain in our comfort zones. We skip the songs we don’t like. We take the easy way out.

I used to hate the Eagles song “New Kid in Town”. When I’d listen to Eagles Live, it was the five-minute annoying nuisance bridging “The Long Run” to “Life’s Been Good”, two of my favorites. And on Hotel California, it was stuck between the title track and “Life In The Fast Lane”. It was my strong opinion at the time that the song should never have been recorded. But it took too much work to constantly move the needle or speed the cassette forward. So I kept listening. And do you know what? In time it became one of my favorite songs.

On social networking sites I fritter around, typing my attempts at witty remarks here or there, sprinkling them around like happy social dust. Never delving too deeply into things because hey…I’ve got things to do and so many to see. And yet some of my closest friends are here, from my childhood, school years, and adulthood. I wish I did better. But it’s so easy to push the button and move along.

Don’t miss the moments. Be still. A dear friend of mine recently told me she loved me despite my brooding, or maybe because of it. I don’t know that I brood over something so much as I ponder or meditate. I miss many moments I’m sure because I am deep in thought while walking along the sidewalk of life. But then there are days like today where I walk wide-eyed and aware and an epiphany occurs. And in fifteen minutes meet a gymnast, discuss baseball, and exchange handshakes with a little boy from across the Atlantic. Those are the moments I treasure. Those are moments spent in the groove. When you’re in that groove you love. You befriend. You reach out. You trust. And you care.

And you do get that opportunity every day. Just leave the needle down and let it play. You’ll be surprised at what you discover hidden between your favorite songs.

©2009 Jeff Walker. All Rights Reserved.

Good Friday. The Seventh Words: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

Luke alone gives us this Seventh Word from the cross. Mark says that “Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last.” Similarly, Matthew reports, “And Jesus cried again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.” According to John’s Gospel, “When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, ‘It is finished’, and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.” So Mark, Matthew and Luke say there was yet another word, indeed a loud cry, but only Luke tells us what it was. Note that in this last word God is once again “Father.”

The Aramaic Abba captures the intimacy of the relationship. Even in the anguish of the garden the night before he was to die, especially then, it was “Abba, Father.” “Abba, Father, all things are possible to you; remove this cup from me; yet not what I will, but what you will.” The early Christians understood that, in Christ and through Christ, they could approach God in the same way. St. Paul writes, “But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba, Father!’”

The Seventh Word is typically depicted as tranquil resignation at the end of the storm and the horror. We are told that it was uttered as a loud cry, which is not the mark of tranquility. This Seventh Word is a cry of trust, hurled almost defiantly, into the absence of the One of whom Jesus spoke when he said, “Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me.” Prayer can be an expression of childlike faith, and it can be trust defiantly hurled. Parents change their mind about a promise made, and the child, teetering on the edge between disillusionment and faith, exclaims, “But you said so! You promised!” There is something of that in this Seventh Word.

Between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the joyful consummation is forever. Their love, which was from before the foundation of the world, is now magnified by the homecoming of all the prodigal children adopted into their love. Stumbling our way toward home, we worry to ourselves about the unworthiness of our love, only to discover that it has already been attended to. It was taken care of in that representative moment, that vicarious moment, in which he cried out, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit,” and so saying he handed over to the Father all that he had assumed in the womb of Mary. There on the cross the life of every mother’s child who ever lived or ever will live was handed over to the Father. Every hair has been numbered, every fallen sparrow taken into account. All has been offered up, all has been redeemed, nothing is lost.

On the cross the wounded Word is returning from his mission, bringing with him the totality of all that love assumed; in the lead a thief who believed and half believed, followed by a ragtag band of tax collectors and sinners and the victims of history beyond numbering, victims who only now know the sacrifice of which their sacrifice was part. Choirs of angels, cherubim and seraphim come out to meet him, to welcome home the Son of God. They stand aghast at the battered, tattered company he is bringing with him. “They are all mine,” he says. “They are my brothers and sisters; they are the ones whom I went to seek and to save. I am taking them to the Father. I am taking them home.”

The cross is not the dark side of which the resurrection is the bright side. In John’s Gospel, Jesus speaks repeatedly of being glorified in his death. The glory is in having kept faith, in having seen it through to the end, in having surrendered himself in unqualified love to the Father. This is now, because of him and through him, a human possibility. The only dark side, for him and for us, would be to turn against the light by setting our will against the will of God. At the cross point of history, at the moment of catastrophe beyond all catastrophes, the entirety of the human project was definitively turned toward the light. “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” From now on, the eternally important decision in every human life is whether, with him and through him, we say the same.

To prodigal children lost in a distant land, to disciples who forsook him and fled, to a thief who believed or maybe took pity and pretended to believe, to those who believed or maybe took pity and pretended to believe, to those who did not know that what they did they did to God, to the whole bedraggled company of humankind he had abandoned heaven to join, he says: “Come. Everything is ready now. In your fears and your laughter, in your friendships and farewells, in your loves and losses, in what you have been able to do and in what you know you will never get done, come, follow me. We are going home to the waiting Father.”

Excerpts from Death On A Friday Afternoon by Richard John Neuhaus.

 

6th Sunday of Lent: “It is finished.”

“It is finished” here should be taken in the sense of consummatum est—it is consummated, fulfilled, brought to perfection. This is much more than “It is over.” Of a terrible ordeal that has been endured we may say, “That’s over with.” In that case we mean that it is consigned to the past; now we can get on with life. “It is finished” is quite the opposite. It is a life brought to completion. Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth.” From the cross he declares that he has done just that, borne witness to the truth, to the very end. Some, with Pilate, ask, “What is truth?” That question can be asked honestly, or, as with Pilate, it can be asked to preclude its answer. To those who sincerely ask the question, the answer proposed is this: The truth—the truth about everything—is Jesus Christ and him crucified. It is not the answer the world expected then or expects now.

For one thing, it appears that he is finished. By any ordinary measure this is not completion, but poignant failure. It is death. It is the demolition of all those grand hopes he had aroused. He started out announcing the coming of the kingdom of God, and he ends up here. Some kingdom. Some king. The jeering crowds around the cross are having the last laugh. He talked so splendidly: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” What kingdom? What comfort? What inheritance? The time has come to face the fact: It is finished, it is over.

This is the cross point in the Great Story, from the “In the beginning” of creation to the last words of the Bible, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” At the cross point, everything is retrieved from the past and everything is anticipated from the future, and the cross is the point of entry to the heart of God from whom and for whom, quite simply, everything is. Here the beginning and the end come together, along with everything along the way from the beginning to the end. What is the Word of God but the love of God? In the beginning, God intended love. Why did God create? For love. Not for necessity, for, being God, he needed nothing, but that love might be, and that it might be more and more. Love is necessary, for “God is love.”

He created out of nothing—ex nihilo—but his love. The Word is both his love and his beloved. “Without him was not anything made that was made.” Through him God loved us into being. When he formed Adam from the primordial muck, he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. He breathes love. Adam inhaled love. Here at the cross point, the new Adam exhales, “It is finished.” The first Adam breathes in and the second Adam breathes out, and both breathe love. What began in Genesis is now finished. What began there is that love should give birth to love. So it was that through the Word the first Adam came to be and, because he did not love, the Word became the second Adam, who bore the fault of all the Adams and all the Eves of aborted love. Here at the cross point, that great work is definitely finished. Here is the one person who did and who was what through the centuries and millennia the rest of us had failed to do and be. Quite simply and wondrously, he loved the Father as he was loved by the Father.

It is finished, yet time goes on. It is not over. Through all time, the cross point is the point of entry into his life of love, for that life and that love fill all time. “I am the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” His eternity is not timelessness but the fullness of time, which means time fulfilled. The infinite is not formless but the form of Christ. It is from first to last, and at every point in between, cruciform, the form of the cross. Not any cross, but this cross; yet this cross is every cross. At a particular point in time, on a certain Friday afternoon on a dung heap outside the gates of Jerusalem, it is said of all time, “It is finished.” Yet it is not over. Now time, reformed because cross-formed, begins anew. The past and the future and this little in-between point we call the present are all in order. What happened at the cross point is what the first Adam was supposed to have done in the beginning. This is the Omega point, the end and the destiny of the love that was to give birth to love. It took the one who is both Alpha and Omega to restore life to love aborted.

Everything now and forever is to the glory of God. In his glory is our good. Humanity, said Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, is the cantor and caretaker of the universe. In directing the universe to the praise of God, however, we do not simply put the cross behind us. Quite the opposite is the case. In a cruciform world, the cross is the epicenter of everything. “It is finished” does not mean that suffering and loss and the rivers of tears are things of the past. “It is finished” means that they do not have the last word. It means that love has the last word.

Excerpts from Death On A Friday Afternoon by Richard John Neuhaus.

Moments

“My wish is to stare down a big league pitcher just as he is going into his windup, and give him a little wink, make him think you know something he doesn’t know. I wish for a chance to look at a sky so blue that it hurts your eyes to look at it, to feel the tingle in your arms as you connect with the ball, to run the bases, to stretch a double into a triple, and to flop face first into third and wrap your arms around the bag. That’s my wish.” — Archie “Moonlight” Graham, Field of Dreams

 

Burt Lancaster’s character, Moonlight Graham, is talking about moments. Moments he misses. Things missed by any of us who loved the game.

 

Baseball season is once again upon us. And thank goodness. This is why I love spring. Baseball. I’ve heard a lot of people through the years complain about the game of baseball. It’s boring. It’s slow. There’s no clock. No timer. I can’t keep my interest or focus long enough. Forgive me, but last one is not the game’s fault. The beauty is that there’s no timer. No clock. The game isn’t forced. It isn’t rushed. It unfolds before you. Those that do not understand the game many times are basing their opinion upon what they observe on television. This is understandable as a ballgame on tv does not show you 90% of what goes on between each pitch. You are missing the chess match. You are missing the moments.

 

The catcher is the true quarterback and field general. He does not get the glory that a Peyton Manning or a Tom Brady receives. There are no accolades. Only sore knees, back and fingers from taking foul tips off the end of a bat. The catcher touches his mask. Or his chest protector. The infield shifts to whatever position this signal means. The catcher has decided the pitch he will direct the pitcher to throw and now sets his defense. He sets the defense by observing the foot placement and hands placement of the hitter. The signal is relayed to the pitcher. You see glimpses of this on tv. But what you don’t see is the signal being picked up by the 2^nd baseman, who then holds his glove to his mouth to relay the signal to the shortstop, who relays the signal to the outfield by a preordained movement. You miss all of this. You miss the chess match. You miss the moments.

 

If the pitcher misses his mark, the plan will fail. It still needs to be executed. This occurs between every…single…pitch. It is missed by 75% of the fans in the park. It is missed by 100% of the fans watching tv.

 

If little league bores you, than you are missing even more. While it’s true it’s not as sophisticated a game to involve all the signals alluded to earlier, it’s something completely different that’s missed. You miss moments of grace. You miss them, as you do in life, during your day, because you rush. You don’t slow down. You scurry from one task to the next, racing the clock. But just as in baseball, life has no game clock. It unfolds. You must. Slow. Down.

 

I will close with one such moment from July of last summer. The team of 12-year olds that I coach was playing one of the final games of the summer. It was the bottom of the final inning and we had a lead of more than five runs. In our league the most runs you can score in an inning is five and then the inning is over. This prevents good teams from running completely roughshod over the less-talented teams. So the other team would get some batting under their belts and I was able to use players in positions they might not otherwise play.

 

One such player was Nick. While not blessed with the most athletic talent, Nick was the team cheerleader. Always smiling, encouraging, and eager. Nick was also always asking me to let him pitch. And I had earlier in the year: an inning here, an inning there. He did pretty well. My son Nolan had just thrown three innings against our opponent and given up no hits and struck out all nine boys he faced. So with game in hand I brought Nick in to pitch. His face lit up. He pulled his hat down. Breathed in and out three times. He was ready. This was his moment.

 

It wasn’t. Nick threw twelve straight balls to load the bases. I called time and went out to talk to him. He wasn’t down. He was determined. We regrouped, we refocused, and he went back to work.

 

Nick threw eight more balls, with a foul ball coming in the mix as the only strike he threw. His head was hanging now and I went out to rescue him. I waved for Simon to come in from leftfield to pitch and switch positions with Nick. He tried to encourage Simon, but slumped out to left field.

 

And then…

 

While standing in front of our first base-side dugout watching Simon warm up, my assistant coach Brian walked up next to me and asked me to look into left field. I’d been so focused on the pitcher and catcher combination I was missing the moment. My son had walked over from his position in centerfield to talk to Nick. Nick was looking down at the ground while Nolan was saying whatever he was saying to him. He didn’t say much, punched Nick’s left shoulder with his ball glove and jogged back over to centerfield. Nick smiled, looked over at Nolan, and once more began to cheer and to chatter.

 

What no one but Brian and I knew is that I had been coaching Nolan all summer in the art of being a leader. He’s quiet. He’s unassuming. And he’s blessed with more talent than I possessed at the game of baseball. But he hadn’t realized yet his potential for being a leader. In that moment he started his journey. I think my assistant coach’s grin was larger than my own. I was busy wiping dust out of my eyes.

 

For the remainder of the inning I was no longer a coach. I was a fan.

 

Because I saw the moment.

 

 

©2009 Jeff Walker. All Rights Reserved.

5th Sunday of Lent: “I thirst.”

The Fifth Word is only two words.

Much earlier in John’s Gospel we read that the Feast of Booths was at hand and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. The feast commemorated the Israelites’ wandering in the wilderness after they had been rescued from Egypt, and in their wanderings they knew what it was to be thirsty. On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and proclaimed, “If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink.” Jesus is the fountain, and now, on the cross, the fountain thirsts.

Reflections on this Fifth Word from the cross traditionally refer to the Church’s missionary impulse, an impulse driven by Jesus’ thirsting for souls. At the entrance of the chapel of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in the Bronx are the words, “I THIRST, I QUENCH.” These are the same words at the entrance of the community’s chapels all over the world. “We want,” said Mother Teresa, “to satiate the thirst of Jesus on the cross for the love of souls.” Our service to others whom we recognize, in the words of Mother Teresa, as “Jesus in distressed disguise” is a drink offered to him. In offering that drink, our thirst is quenched. I thirst, I quench.

From the cross, “I thirst.” And those who kneel at his cross share his thirst, which is both a thirst for him and for all for whom he thirsts. Here is a thirst as dusty as death.

“For if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting,” St. Paul writes to the Corinthians. “For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” The life of the Church is a perpetual mission festival. The word “apostle” means one who is sent, and all who are called by Christ are also sent by Christ. “I have been told something that I must tell you. Make of it what you will.”

Why the urgency about telling others? So that you may have fellowship with us and our joy may be complete. If this gospel is true, it is not simply “true for me”—it is true for all or it is not true at all. Here Christians have to bite the bullet and dare to go against the cultural grain. In our culture, the one truth imposed upon almost everybody is that you must never impose your truth on others. Most particularly, you must not impose your religious or moral truth on others. This rule so powerfully imposed by our culture makes many Christians very nervous about the whole idea of mission. Who are we to say that our truth is superior to the truths by which others live? That is an excellent question, if it is a questions of “our” truth. But the claim is that the gospel is, quite simply, the truth. It is the true story about the world and everybody in the world. That is an insufferably arrogant assertion, unless it is true.

“Come, follow me,” says Jesus. “Take up your cross and follow me. In the world you will have trouble, but fear not. I have overcome the world.” In the book of Revelation, the white-robed saints around the throne of the Lamb are those who have come out of the great tribulation. “I thirst,” said Jesus, and so also those who follow him thirst to drink of the chalice of which he drank. The way of the Christian life is cruciform. Jesus did not suffer and die in order that we need not suffer and die, but in order that our suffering and death might be joined to his in redemptive victory. As Moses dipped the hyssop in blood and sprinkled the people of the first covenant, so those who have tasted of the wine that is now become blood are bound in covenantal solidarity with the One who is risen never to die again.

The Christian way is not one of avoidance but of participation in the suffering of Christ, which encompasses not only our own suffering, but the suffering of the whole world. Thus St. Paul can say, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church, of which I became a minister according to the divine office which as given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now made manifest to his saints.” Thus also Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his classic The Cost of Discipleship, wrote, “When Jesus calls a man, he calls him to come and die.”

To many this does not sound like good news. Some Christians also are embarrassed by the cross. A young woman speaks of why she left the Church for a New Age empowerment group: “I was sick and tired of all that talk about blood and suffering. I wanted a positive spirituality.” It is difficult to imagine an upbeat cross. It is easy to understand why people might want to avoid the cross altogether. Avoiding the cross makes very good sense, if we do not know the One whom we join, the One who joins us, on the cross that is the world’s redemption. The victory of Christ is not a way of avoidance but the way of solidarity in suffering. Suffering and death are not “senseless,” something to be avoided at all costs. Not if they are understood as “completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church.” It is not that Christ did not do enough, but that he invites us to participate with him in the salvation of the world. When Jesus calls us, he calls us to come and die. We will die anyway. The question is whether we will die senselessly or as companions and coworkers of the crucified and risen Lord.

Ambassadors do not represent themselves but the sovereign power that sends them. Christians are ambassadors of Christ, their sovereign. His is a disputed sovereignty, and it will be that way until he returns in glory. Then, as we learn in Philippians 2, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord. The Church is, quite simply, the community ahead of time, the community that acknowledges now what one day will be acknowledged by all. As ambassadors of a disputed sovereignty, we propose a claim that awaits a future and cosmic vindication. For those who accept that claim, it is already vindicated by faith. For them, the future is now.

“I thirst,” Jesus cried from the cross. He thirsts for us, and we for him. “As a hart longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for thee, O God. My soul thirsts for God for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?”

Excerpts from Death On A Friday Afternoon by Richard John Neuhaus.

He pens to his pal

I have been kicking around the idea for a story like this ever since reading Nick Bantock’s beautiful book Griffin & Sabine. I’ve actually got an outline in place and am several chapters ahead. What’s been fun is fleshing out the characters and there story more with each subsequent addition. Plus, you really don’t know for awhile whether these are both men, childhood friends, or lovers. All in good time. I’m not getting too hung up on the editing at this point as I find I am going back to change things as I go. I’ll wait until the end for that. I did go to the bookstore tonight for some additional research and updated it a bit. Will it go anywhere? Will I finish? Who knows at this point? I hope to. In the end we write for ourselves anyhow. Here’s a trifle…

 

 

Dear B –

 

I am writing to you tonight from a chair at my local bookstore. I’m sitting with my left leg crossed over my right, balancing my Starbucks on the armrest in my right hand while writing to you with my left. These words are going into the journal I just purchased for us, the one which I intend to fill with my thoughts and words that you told me you enjoy so much. I selected the brown leather cover instead of the black despite my mood being of the same color this evening. I’m sure it will improve. More on the journal later.

 

Anyhow, I am here because I am not there. Nor am I at home. Home? Is it home anymore? It’s a house, that’s true. Tonight there’s member of the family missing at the supper table because I had to get out. After yet another argument I thought it best. And so I am here. Seeking solace amongst my friends. Amongst these silent pages and my coffee beans.

 

Have you noticed that books are more and more of a slim variety of genres? There’s the ever-present memoir. Some poor soul spilling their angst all over the pages. I swear that the book is sopping wet with tears and blood when you pick one up. There’s the historical conspiracy thriller. You know…of the DaVinci Code / National Treasure variety. Everyone’s a conspiracy theorist these days. I swear I read one intro that promised a view into the “cutthroat world of high-stakes publishing.” This made me chuckle. I saw a new entry into that genre tonight called Jesus, Interrupted. Yeah, some overeducated tenured professor sitting in his office “decoded” the New Testament and is going to disprove over 2,000 years of theology and philosophy? No thanks. I’ll stick with Matthew, Mark, Luke & John, as well as Ignatius, Irenaeus, Augustine and Aquinas. Two books of this genre did catch my eye though. It seems our Charles is making a comeback. I saw two new hardbacks, both having to do with his death and the famous unfinished final novel he was working on. Both Drood and The Last Dickens looked wonderful, but at $26 a pop I figured I’d wait for the softcovers.

 

Then there’s all that Harry wrought. Potter, that is. Dragons, witches, warlocks, vampires. As you know I’m a huge fan of Tolkien and Rowling, but it sure has spread. Not an original idea in the lot. Well…maybe the Twilight series. I’ve heard good things about them but I’ll never read ‘em. There’s more, of course, but I’ll just digress. Suffice to say everything I stumbled across tonight seemed so damned sad. So I bought this journal and scored an open chair to write.

 

I did try to find our mutual friend but was unable to locate it on the shelves. This got me to thinking. Do you know that the only time I ever found our book on these shelves was the copy I bought for you all those years ago? I’ve never seen it since. I wish it had been there tonight.

 

As you can see from the photo I did find some of our favorites though. What was that line from The Pickwick Papers?

 

“Drink with me, my dear,” said Mr. Weller. “Put your lips to this here tumbler, and then I can kiss you by deputy.”

 

Yes…that was it. In every one of Charles’s books that I’ve read there have been lines like that. He was nothing if not a romantic to be sure. I think that’s where you and I find our common bond with him. The subtle ache of romance within. As I just began reading A Tale of Two Cities this week I doubt I’ll purchase anything tonight. I’m just sipping my coffee, watching the always interesting store patrons, and writing to you.

 

This brings me to the purpose of the journal. As you and I are unable to talk on the phone due to our busy schedules or email with any regularity at all, I decided to take up the pen again and write to you there. Letters, quotes, song lyrics, snippets…a photo or funny postcard or two. Things of that nature. I will fill its 192 lined pages, place it in a large yellow envelope, and mail it off to you. This will be yours. Ours. You’ve always “got” my writing more than anyone and I thought this would be fun. We get to share so little, so I thought “Why not revisit the ancient and forgotten art of being a pen pal?” Wow…remember them? Remember when you would join a club to get on a list (or something like that) and scan the list of names of other students in states or countries around the world to write to? Do they even do that anymore? I doubt it, as email and the internet has rendered that all but obsolete. Now we have hundreds of pen pals around the world simultaneously. But we lose something in this. We lose the intimacy. The closeness. That special bond of friendship that comes more than with a casual status update on a Facebook page or a few quickly typed lines in an email or discussion thread.

 

Hell, if it’s pretty good maybe we’ll turn it into a memoir! See? My mood’s improved.

 

I’ll write again soon my friend. Tousle the children’s hair for me as you’re tucking them in. Tell them it’s from their long-lost hillbilly uncle from the other side of the country. Giggle with them at this joke. If I do no good tonight at least let it be to provide a giggle (f)or three. 

 

 

©2009 Jeff Walker. All rights reserved.

 

She said yes

A poor, ordinary betrothed Jewish girl. A child herself.

 

Unordinary in every way.

 

Gabriel approaches.

 

“Do not be afraid.”

 

(Yeah right.)

 

She was alone. Unprepared.

 

Another woman, alone in the Garden, had been approached by an angel of this world. Her interview had gone badly. Would this one?

 

No.

 

She was not afraid. She trusted. She said yes.

 

“Let it be done to me according to your word.”

 

The Word.

 

She had a choice. We all have a choice because she made a choice.

 

There would be trouble ahead for her betrothed, for her unborn Son, and for her soul that was to be pierced “by a sword.”

 

But she said yes. Yes to a plan for her life much different than what she had daydreamed about.

 

Would a modern Mary say yes today? 

 

Fortunately, a hypothetical.

 

But do I?

 

She said yes. Magníficat ánima mea Dóminum.

 

My soul magnifies the Lord.

 

Does mine?

 

©2009 Jeff Walker. All rights reserved.

 

Painting: Annunciation by John Collier.

 

4th Sunday of Lent: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Here is the cry of dereliction, the cry of abandonment, from the derelict, the abandoned one. The cry is reported in both Mark and Matthew. The Greek word used suggests that he screamed with a loud cry, “My God, my God, for what reason have you forsaken me?” Why? Why this? It is though something had gone horribly wrong. It was not supposed to be this way.

In Luke’s account, the starkness of the horror is tempered. “And having cried out with a loud cry, Jesus said, ‘Father, into your hands I place my spirit.’ Having said this, he expired.” Luke does not tell us what he cried with a loud cry, but we may assume it was the cry of dereliction reported by Matthew and Mark. In John’s account, the ending strikes a different note. It is almost tranquil, a going to sleep after accomplishing the great work he had been sent to do. “Jesus said, ‘It is finished’; and having bowed his head, he gave over the spirit.” As we have already seen, in John’s Gospel the glory of resurrection victory is already present on the cross. We must hold all four Gospels together, however, to capture the many dimensions of the death by which the world is born again. John’s Gospel does not deny the horror; it anticipates the glory that is on the far side of dereliction.

“Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” This is the opening line of Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” The Hebrew differs slightly between Matthew and Mark. Perhaps Jesus cried out in Aramaic, the language of his everyday world. But, whether in Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek, the English word “dereliction” catches the desperateness of the scene. Like a derelict boat cast upon the shore, like a dog carcass lying by the roadside, here is something no longer of any account; it is forsaken, abandoned, thrown aside. Roadkill.

All the while they mocked him. “You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself by coming down from the cross!” “He saved others, but he cannot save himself.” “Let God deliver him if he cares for him for he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” With slight variations, all four Gospels report a threefold mockery. In this story, things happen in threes. In Gethsemane Jesus prays three times and three times comes back to find the disciples sleeping. Peter denies him three times. The three mockeries at the end of Jesus’ life match the three temptations by Satan at the beginning of his ministry. Satan prefaced his temptations with, “If you are the Son of God…” And so the echo at the cross: “if you are the Son of God.” Satan is there at the cross.

The past is returning with a vengeance. Mary had whispered to the baby, “You will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and of our kingdom there will be no end.” Now in his death struggle the words of Mary and the angel, almost word for word, are thrown back at him, spittle-sprayed with derision. In Matthew’s account, the connection between the three temptations and the three mockeries are especially clear. Back then in the wilderness he could have met Satan’s challenges. He could have changed the stones into bread; he could have jumped safely from the pinnacle of the temple; he could have held political sway over the world. And so now he could have met the challenge of those who mocked; he could come down from the cross and silence those who are ridiculing his claim to be the Son of God. But had he done so in the wilderness, and if he does so now on Golgotha, he would not be who he claims to be; he would not be the Son living out in perfect obedience the Father’s will. Only as he remains on the cross to the death does Jesus prove that he is indeed the Son of God.

God is present in his apparent absence. God’s absence is embodied in the body of Israel and in the extension of that body, the New Israel, which is the Church. God is present in the forsaken so that nobody—nobody ever, nobody anywhere at any time under any circumstance—is forsaken.

If, as St. Paul says, Christ who knew no sin was made sin for us, can there be any sin he did not bear there on the cross? If the answer is no, then even the utterly forsaken are not bereft of the company of the utterly forsaken one, the Son of God, and therefore not bereft of hope. Thus even the will to damnation is damned and thereby defeated by the One for whom and in whom damnation is not allowed the last word.

Excerpts from Death On A Friday Afternoon by Richard John Neuhaus.