Hate is still With Us

Carson McCullers the novelist once said, "It is a strange fact about the human race when everybody needs somebody to look down on."

I thought about her words as I hear: "Don't say Gay." Democrats hating Republicans...Republicans hating Democrats." The utter sadness in Ukraine. Hate crimes against the Jews here and so many places." The Palestinians. The divide between blacks and whites. The chasms between rich and poor. "

Reminds me of some words by the man watching TV; "I hate Jews, Catholics and Niggers." His friend said, "I hate everybody."

Reckon Jesus' words about responding the least of these is at the heart of the matter.

 

Mother Teresa said: "If I look at the mass I will never act. 

If I look on the one, I will."

Easter! Easter! Easter!

Every Easter the memory comes back. I had a chance to see the Passion Play in Oberammergau, Germany several years ago. The play opened with Jesus riding into Jerusalem for the last time. The play ended with the Resurrection. For almost six hours the audience followed the story of Jesus’ last days on earth.

 I was not prepared for the Resurrection scene. The crucifixion had been particularly graphic and disturbing. After Jesus’ body was carefully taken down from the cross the stage went dark.  Suddenly a dim light came on which illuminated a small cluster of weeping women. They stood before huge doors that represented the locked tomb. They knocked on the door. Nothing happened. Frantically they tried to pry the doors open. The doors did not budge. Suddenly an angel came on stage and without saying a word began to unroll a white aisle cloth from the closed door down the steps toward the audience. As the women looked on, the door creaked open and dazzling light slowly filled the stage and finally the whole room. Through that open door Jesus came. He walked down the steps. And from left and right laughing children came running forward, hugging Jesus’ legs. In the background a Choir sang.

I can’t improve on that Easter scene. It was as close to the wonder of the Resurrection as anything I know. Who can put this special day into words? Surely not the merchants hawking their Easter wares. Surely not the bunnies, the Easter lilies, the corsages, or those wonderful multi-colored eggs. Surely this day is more than the coming of spring and the end of winter.

Easter is light, hope, new beginnings, love and laughter. Somehow our old nine to five calendar pages are disturbed once again. The predictability of our days are thrown off kilter. And whether it is worry about money or retirement or health or children or just the troubled world-- most of us find ourselves pausing on Easter morning.

People who never darken the door of a church put on our finery and slip into some sanctuary. 

This is not the time for any preacher to chide those who only come on Easter morning. It hardly matters if they are dragged along by some wife or child. We all need something to shatter life’s flatness. A bad lab report. That funeral last week.Ukraine, endless Ukraine.   A disappointment so heavy that we wonder if we can make it. Like those women in the play we all know something about locked doors and sealed-up tombs.

And Easter comes. Saying that despite the darkness which is very real and the trouble we all carry, there is another word. There is light, so blinding it hurts our eyes. There is wonder so strong that we may find it hard to hold back the tears. There is joy and laughter at the heart of life despite its rawness and its difficulty. 

What changed those petty, cowardly disciples and turned them inside out? There is no explanation except that Easter brought with it light, hope and new life for them and for their world. They wrote the story over and over until we have four gospels. They founded a church, which has endured despite its all-too-human members and preachers. That little group of first believers passed the torch until the greatest story ever told could be our story, too. Wishful thinking? Some say so. I choose to remember large open doors and a blinding light and at the center Jesus come back from the dead. But what I remember most after all these years is the laughter of all those children.

(I have published this Easter piece in newspapers and articles. You will find it on my blog more tha once. This mystery is so great it is hard to put it into words.)

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

Do We dare stand and look at the Cross

 

On this day I remember an old story I heard years ago. Gruenwald, a 15th century artist lived In the midst of the terrible outbreak of the black plague. So he painted a crucifixion scene for the Hermitage of St. Anthony. The hermits there took it upon themselves the mission of nursing the sick and burying the dead from the plague.

Many of the victims suffered from the sympton called "St. Anthony's fire." The circulation would stop and the lower limbs became gangrenous and putrefried even as the person lived. In the days before scientific medicine there was little the hermits could do for the victims but cool their fevers and be with them in their agonizing deaths.

Over the altar inthat monastery Gruenwald painted the figure of Christ on the cross--dead, twisted and repulsive, gray and green with corruption. Christ's legs were swollen with St. Anthony's fire. The artist painted the backdrop of a black sky and a dead sea. 

The hermits did not know what to do for their victims. But one thing they did was to leave each arriving patient alone on his pallet before that painting. Many of the sufferers were to sick to even lift their heads.  But now and then one of the victims would look up above the altar at the painting of the dead Jesus. One whispered to a hermit, "In a few hours I must go to my death through foul and meaningless pain. But so did He and God turned that experience to the salvation of mankind. If that is so, what then can He not do for me?"

We call this dark Friday because it is a good time to remember that the One on that center cross died for you and me. So let us stop and remember. Those arms were stretched out for all of us. So He takes us all in. And like those plague victims he does for us what we need. Heartbreak after heartbrerak in the Ukraine. And all over where is pain and suffering physical or emotional those arms are still outstretched. There is no pain too heavy and no condition so hopeless that those nail-scarred hands cannot touch. So bring whatever you carry and whatever all the others may carry to the foot of the cross. No wonder we call this day Good Friday.

Langston Hughes a black poet in a dark time in our history wrote this prayer:

"At the feet o' Jesus,

Sorrow like a sea.

Lordy, let  yo'mercy

 come driftin' down on me.

At the feet o' Jesus

At yo' feet I stand.

O, ma little Jesus, 

 Please reach out yo' hand.

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

 

We Remember Jesus and his Cross

We are at mid-point in Holy Week. And I always remember this time of the year a poem

that moves me to this day. Here it is...

"I wonder if Christ had a little old dog,

All shiny and silky like mine?

And a nose round and wet

With two cute little ears

And two eyes brown and tender that shine.

I'm afraid that He hadn't, because I have read,

How he prayed in the garden alone. 

For all of his friends and disciples had fled, 

Even Peter, the one called Stone. 

I am sure that that little dog,

with a heart so tender and warm

Would never have left Him to suffer alone

but creeping right undere his arm,

Would have licked the dear fingers,

In agony clasped, and counting all favors but loss.

When they took Him away would have trotted behind,

and followed Him right to the cross."

Prayer

Almighty God, who knowest us to be set in the midst

 of so many and great dangers,

grant us such strength as may support us, 

and ask of us such strength as 

You yourself will supply.

Through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Amen.

--adapted from Paul Scherer, Love is a Spendthrift

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

What's So Holy about Holy Week?

Holy Week begins. Holy? How can we call this holy. But pilgrims early on began to follow what would become in time Holy Week. Burchner has written that the word holy meant that the meark of God was there. Throughout it all carrying his cross up those cobbled streets Jesus fell not once but three times. Still he once again stood and shouldered that splintered cross and stumbled on . We know the rest of the story.

Holy I think means that God was in the whole thing. Isaiah had prophesied:’Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.” And if this is true it means that Jesus is one with us too. Through it all: the hell, the madness, the depravity and evil so unbearable we have to turn away. Think Ukraine. I don’t know how they keep going. But even now desperate in every way—grief on top of grief—many of them hungry, ragged and frightened will enter some church or what is left of that church. They will kneel and look up at what is left of the wounded crucified.  And somehow they will shuffle out to the bombs and dead neighbors and raped women. Is this holy? How can this possibly bear the mark of God. 

And yet we call it holy still. But what if this holy week talk  is not about just one week. Could it be that this mark of God is on all of it. Which includes us too. I hope. I hope.

God did not take Jesus’ pain and agony away. Even when he cried:”My God, my God why?” he was one with us. So every hospital room and every prison cell and all those living under some bridge in a paper box is not left out. God, I think is there.

Amid the Palm and celebration in church today I looked up at my favorite stained glass window. The burning bush. Flames all over the tree. And I remembered Moses, murderer and reprobate tending sheep one day when God spoke. “Moses take off your shoes you stand on holy ground.” Moses must have thought he was losing his mind. Holy ground—there. There? With rocks and scorpions and stubborn sheep and back home a wife who gave him hell. Holy ground? A bad joke.

I leave a home or hospital room and wonder how they can make it—whatever terrible thing it is. But I see many of them a year later and they have more than survived. Isn’t this holy too? Maybe the gospel song is true after all: “We are (all) are standing on holy ground.” No wonder churches everywhere have picked the song up. For people know whatever thing that they bear and don’t think they can stand it another day just might be standing on ground that is holy too.

We want to box in this holy to church or synagogue or mosque. But that doesn’t’t seem to fit Ukraine or all those in every town that suffer…suffer….suffer. 

I leave you with a wonderful story. A.E. Hotchner wrote a biography of Ernest Hemingway.  He called it Papa Hemingway. Gary Cooper and Hemingway were good, good friends. And Cooper developed cancer and it got worse and worse. But Hemingway was having electric shocks treatments in Idaho and could not possibly see his friend. So he asked  Hochner to take Cooper a message.

So Hotchner went to Cooper’s room. And death was not far off.  Cooper was racked with pain. And when the pain had passed Cooper reached over and picked up a crucifix and put it on a pillow beside his head. “Please give Papa a message. It’s important and you mustn’t forget because I won’t be talking to him again. Tell him…that time I wondered about my baptism and doubted that I had made the right decision”—he moved the crucifix little closer until it touched his cheek—“tell Papa it was the best thing I ever did.”

Strange gospel really. Palms and alleluias and choirs singing their hearts out—ushering in this week we call holy. But let us remember if this is true no ground is not holy. And God is always there.

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com