2014.09.14 Holy Cross Consecration

Today, in the Christian church, it is Holy Cross Day, a day we remember the holiness of the cross of Christ. (I think it is good to have another day, so that we do not pile all our dolorous grief into one day, Good Friday.)  But a holy execution? Weird, huh? Yes, it is, but it is historic. Jesus Christ is our hero and he dedicated his life, and lost it, condemned for treason to crucifixion. Why holy?

Because:  (1) Jesus taught that God was Love unbounded and died in that faith. (2) Divine grace, he preached, meant forgiveness, erasure, different from pardon, of all sins—a clean slate for those who sincerely desired it. And (3) He had converts who believed his words, loved and followed him, and thought he was “king”—too rivalrous for the Emperor of the day to ignore. He didn't recant from his message and suffered torture for it. There is is holiness in such brave love. It deserves reverence—not to laud suffering, but to honor courage, conviction, and trust in God.

I try to remember that there is no one who has never suffered. There, of course, are degrees, but what you have suffered and do suffer is yours and to be honored equally in the economy of grace.

Comparisons about suffering are about as odious as any other comparisons, though they sometimes help us feel a little bit less narcissistic in our own plights—which is not a bad thing. When I look at the Crucifix with Jesus hanging there, I shudder, and I thank God for thinking ahead. Suffering is not the last word.

Today I am praying for and with my sister who is in pain. I pray courage and good medicine her way. She is feisty and will walk........if not on her legs, then on her butt in a motorized chair.

Yesterday, I, and thousands of other faithful Episcopalians, clergy and lay, attended the consecration of Alan M. Gates, as the 16th bishop of Massachusetts. When the Church gathered does a big new thing, we all come, and we all cheer, and we all sing our lungs out, and hope our hearts out. It is a new day.

We will mourn our former bishop, who is in the process of his dying, and we will cheer our new bishop who will provide new and different leadership. It’s hard to do both at once, yet tears belong in equal force to goodbye and hello. When I saw the former bishop hand over the crozier of guidance to his successor and then walk off the platform and leave, I cried. Later I cried again as I watched all the old, mostly male, bishops slowly come down from the platform to process out. I thought: “I am watching the old boys’ patriarchal church proudly march out—and I am an old girl."  They have served with grit and faith. So have I. It is a new day. I don’t know what the new church will look like, but I know the Spirit will stick around to set fire to it.

 

Photo: Former Bishop M. Thomas Shaw (left) says goodbye and newly consecrated bishop Alan M. Gates (right) says hello. The Rt. Rev. Mark Hollingsworth (seated) bishop of Ohio and preacher of the day looks on. This day we applauded everything!

The consecration Eucharist was joy on steroids—diverse and amazing soul-music, a panoply of festive red vestiture, and prayers of gratitude and blessing, and a hockey rink dressed up to be  Church-for-a-day!  It was a red-letter day. Red is the color of the Holy Spirit. She is all aflame, spreading her fiery grace on us all—no one consumed. All fired up, as they say.

Bishop Gates, in his own printed message, recalled a French proverb, attributed to Jean Massieu: “Gratitude is the memory of the heart.” He elaborated some of his own memories, looked forward to making new ones, and closed with these words:“If gratitude is the memory of the heart, then my heart is overflowing with thankfulness. I thank you. I thank God for you.”

Whereas, if the heart be moved,
Although the verse be somewhat scant,
God doth supply the want;
As when the heart says, sighing to be approved,
‘O could I love!’ and stops, God writeth, “Loved.”
        George Herbert (1593-1633) Anglican priest/poet A True Hymn

2013.09.14 Holy Cross Day

Holy Cross Day is a red letter day on the liturgical calendar, meaning it is a major feast day with its own Collect and set of biblical readings.  It’s a day set aside to remember, exaltation the calendar says, the Holy Cross.

When we were in Jerusalem at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher we saw what purports to be the site of the crucifixion, outside the city walls as was fitting for lowlife blasphemers like Jesus, not yet the Christ. The site, excavated from the ruins of ancient buildings (335 CE) was erected to venerate the cross of Christ. It was holy because it was the site of resurrection in the Emperor Constantine’s time. But it was also the site of crucifixion! The site was unimpressive—cave-like, claustrophobic, poignant, disillusioning—also appropriate. 

I’d expected grandeur, Godde knows why. I’d wanted to faint in wonder. Instead I felt stifled, longing even for tears.

Our teacher, the Rev. Dr. Kamal Farah, said the holy cross represented a new beginning: “The resurrection of Jesus is the promise of God’s mercy.”  I believed that with all my heart, and all I wanted to do was run away.

Do most Episcopal parishes keep this feast on a Sunday when people will actually be at worship? Or is it shuttled off to a weekday when no one is in church, or simply ignored? I suspect that very HIGH Anglo-Catholic liturgical parishes keep the day. It wasn’t even mentioned in our local parish.   

The day, if it doesn’t fall on a Sunday, can be moved to the nearest Sunday so that the Sunday parish Eucharist will be celebrated to honor the Cross of Christ, the same as if the cross were a named saint or other.

What’s with the cross? Darned if I know. I grew up Protestant and the only crosses I saw were empty, nice shiny gold usually, but pretty meaningless—bland. The first time I saw a cross/crucifix was in a Catholic church. It grabbed my attention so strongly that I felt ashamed. After all it was pretty graphic-ugly. Was I the type who would gawk at executions or casually knit while heads rolled like Dickens’s Madame Defarge?

But one ought always to pay attention to something that fascinates even if one’s feelings are ambivalent. So I did. Eventually, to my anti-Catholic mother’s horror, I bought a small crucifix and stared at it. I prayed for some wise insight. All I got was my own tears and one thought: God cares.

I wouldn’t get what I’d call deep soul wisdom from this horrific alluring Christian symbol till I hit the skids of my own helpless suffering, nothing like crucifixion but enough to wipe me out—a pile-up of losses (deaths, divorce, rejections). I suppose it was then that I knew for sure that God did not prevent or eliminate suffering or evil. Not much consolation really, but honestly if God would intervene in such a way would Godde not have done so for Jesus of all people?  Or Moses or Buddha, Mohammed, or me. Oh damn!

I prayed to my cheap little crucifix as if God were a spiritual EMT, even when I knew better. Mysteriously I felt better, so maybe Godde was about as powerless as any dearly beloved who hangs in way beyond hope. This was very bad theology, but I didn’t really care. 

Give me a cross that is both empty and full at the same time, I prayed. And here’s what I got, in time.

My first patient at the alcohol/drug rehab center where I was a chaplain I’ll call Noelle, although almost thirty years later I still remember her name. I went to see her in the detoxification unit and greeted her with a bright smile. She greeted me with a blast: “Get the fuck out of here, you fucking religious freak.” Horrified, I obeyed. My staff community reminded me that Noelle would be calmer “dried out.” 

Nevertheless, I felt nervous to see her again. She entered my office and confronted me right away and truthfully:  “It was that tiny cross around your neck. It looked huge to me,” she said. “My mother used to throw God and church at me all day, then beat me up at night.”
   
I took off my cross and gave it to her to inspect.
   
“Kinda pretty,” she said.  “Small too. But it’s different. It has a hole in it. That’s where the dead body’s supposed to hang isn’t it?”
   
“Yes, usually. What do you think?”
   
She fingered the cross and held it up.
   
“Want to try it on?”
   
“Nope. It’s yours.” She handed it back. “What does the body-shaped hole mean?”
   
“That God can take us off our crosses and help us heal.”
   
“Just like that?”
   
“With your help. But you gotta follow God off the cross, which for you now is the pain of your alcoholism. Living without alcohol will feel like another cross for a while.”
   
“I can’t imagine life without alcohol to stop the pain,” she said.
   
“You won’t be alone. You’ll have AA meetings, lots of buddies who know what it’s all about, and listen to you forever, like the best family you can imagine.”
   
After Noelle left I fingered my little cross. Sure enough it was full and empty at once. I decided to keep wearing it , fucking religious freak or not.

20111.09.14 Holy Cross Day

For Christians today is a day we remember the painful and ugly cross of Christ crucified. We call it holy because it is an image of tragic and innocent suffering, the kind we all endure in our life time here on earth. Such an image evokes our tears and our resolve not to crucify, not to do what we hate to our neighbor or to ourselves, in any way.

To say that Jesus had it worse only cheapens your own suffering, whatever it is, so give yourself a gift today and know that whatever your troubles are they matter to God and to those who love you as God does.

There’s no way to prevent suffering I’m sure but a good way to be with it is to pray and form communities of care and love, communities that stand at the foot of the cross, helpless save for compassionate empathy, tears and prayers.

Sometimes there is something you can do though to prevent injustice and inequity and create nets of support. Money helps. Sharing riches helps even more.

I read a letter to the editor in the Globe this morning suggesting that Gov. Rick Perry of Texas is right by definition to call Social Security a ponzi scheme: a monetary investment vehicle in which gains are made to initial investors with money collected from new investors. The letter writer concludes with...............

“That sure sounds like 20-year-olds paying for the Social Security benefits of 60 year-olds.”

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THAT?

Thank you, all you young people. I am as grateful for the benefits as my parents were for theirs and never resented paying into a system in which the able help the less able.

At the Foot of the Cross—or the Bed

Reflecting on Holy Cross Day, September 14th, on the old holy cross, I wonder why we could call such a topsy-turvy symbol holy.

Most people think it’s nuts. Even many Christians. A great and innocent man of God is killed for preaching divine mercy and justice and roiling up the rabble and we call it divine love? divine will? How do you make common sense or sacred sense of such a hideous instrument of execution, signaling cruelty, injustice and other sins against humanity too fierce to mention And Christians say it’s God’s self-giving love? Or worse, it’s for your own good, or God needs this lamb’s blood to ransom us from sin. Not very loving, eh?

One of my favorite movies is Thelma and Louise. It’s a gruesome story of two women who commit murder in the wake of rape, become fugitives from the law, and decide to die together rather than submit to further abuses in a patriarchal system. Their decision to drive over the edge of the Grand Canyon felt noble to me, heroic, holy. My tears flowed sorrow and joy. I learned a lot about myself, women, injustice, cruelty and spiritual freedom. I think of Jesus’ choosing death. I think of God’s choosing resurrection.

I bet those women ended up somewhere near the right hand of Godde.

Our good friend of years and brother priest Richard Schuster died the end of August. He had devoted his whole adult life to works of justice and love, developing a non-profit organization, St. Lukes LifeWorks, to help the underserved populations of the city of Stamford, Connecticut get jobs, training, counseling and housing. He saw his work as ministry. He did it for people and for God.

Richard was only sixty-four. His disease, pulmonary fibrosis, took hold and went faster than anyone imagined it could.

On Friday August 28 we had a dinner date with him and his wife Angela. We two couples had been good friends for years. Our dinner date morphed suddenly into hospital and hospice and huge oxygen tanks that pumped oxygen into his failing lungs, almost like a home respirator without the nasty nasal gastric tube.
We debated about it all and, undeterred, decided we’d come anyway and bring in some take out food from one of our favorite haunts Mitchells Fish Market. When Richard heard we were coming and getting food from Mitchells he perked up and ordered—broiled trout, garlic mashed potatoes, two pieces of key lime pie and wine.

We gathered, sat on his bed while Angela fed him a little trout, two bites of potato and almost all of one key lime pie slice. He was alert. We laughed, sharing old and odd memories of our escapades, including our plans to reform the church calling ourselves Parish Management Services, which we dropped when we figured the acronym was PMS. We all cried; we touched; we said prayers each one according to our own styles and words; we touched some more, hands, arms, head, his flesh cold to the touch; we said good bye and good bye and good bye with love. It was a holy communion at the foot of his bed, his "cross". Then he left and started his journey home. We ate the rest of the meal and the pie, drank the wine and hugged. A holy communion.

Although sad these last moments were transformative for us all. We and Angela have a living memory that will stay with us for ever or at least every time we dine on key lime pie and loving conversation.

Isn’t that what Jesus’ followers did with his tragic death: gathered, shared, prayed, loved, sipped wine and broke bread together? Is that enough meaning?

Isn’t this what we Christians do every Sunday when as community we gather at the foot of a cross for the Holy Eucharist?

It’s enough meaning for me, holy enough too.