A Bucketful of Hope

This time of the year when the ground is crusty and the wind cuts through you even in South Carolina—I remember a poem that always lifts me up. Everybody I know needs a bucketful of hope. Carlyle Marney said one time that the problem is that too many of our buckets have holes in them. Nevermind. This poem I share with you may help plug up the hole in your bucket—and maybe nudge you down the road just a mite.

Temp Sparkman and his wife faced a terrible ordeal years ago. One afternoon in midsummer their little nine-year-old daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. Weeks later, with little preparation, she was gone. They faced the terrible task of trying to pick up the broken pieces of their lives and try to live again. Later that year this young minister wrote this poem about hope in a terribly hopeless time.

“Was the grass really ever green

Were the sounds of birds really clearly heard

And did we picnic in the park only six short

  months ago

Here in mid-winter they seem so far away

The naked trees, the leaden skies seem always

   to have been

And seem out ahead for all time

Were things really ever green

And will the spring come back again?

Yes the spring will return

The gray, dull days of cold will pass

The routine now imprisoning us will be broken up

A new excitement will be awakened by new possibilities

The despair which now engulfs us will subside

A word of hope will come to us

Our presumption that all is lost will be replaced

   by a renewed expectancy.

Future will become a possibility again

The crush of demand will not dominate us forever

Out of liberation w will learn to choose

And in our choices to be secure.

The sadness now weighing upon us will be lifted

Joy will speak her acknowledgment of grief and

   will sound her call to us

The cause of sadness will not have vanished

But joy will come in spite of it

We will laugh again

We will sing and dance

We will celebrate the life now given us.

The conflicts now engaging our energy will be

   worked through

No wind will sweep them from us

We will go through them

   and we will survive

Redemption will come of our transactions

Relationships will be rescued and restored

And where breaks are too deep to be one,

Healing will come in time, though apart

The tension tearing at our being will be resolved

We will not be destroyed.

Were things really ever green

And will the spring come back again

Yes, yes, as sure as e’re it were here
Yes, yes, as sure as winter’s here

Yes, yes, as sure as God is

The spring will return

And it will be green again.”

And if I had a benediction it would simply be: I hope this promise of spring will help us all.

(I first wrote these words for my Springtime blog two years ago. This is one of my favorite poems and I would like to share it with you again.) 

The Ninth Station--Jesus Falls a Third Time

A missionary working with the natives taught them a chorus which became their favorite. These were the words:
"Go on, Go on, Go on, Go on;
Go on, Go on, Go on, Go on;
Go on, Go on, Go on, Go on;
Go on, Go on, Go on, Go on."

As we move slowly from Station to Station we stop at the Ninth Station, look carefully. Jesus falls—for the third time! The artist Cecile Martin has captured this Station powerfully with her rendering of falling and falling and falling.

The Church—this treasure always in an earthen vessel—intentionally, I think has placed three different fallings in our meditations. They knew—as we all know—that falling always comes with the territory. Fred Craddock has reminded us that no church’s written history tells the whole story. We leave out so much that tells of the two-steps-forward-one-step-backward of our tortured story. The scandals, the deceit, the jockeying for power the hypocrisy, the abuse—not only sexual—the wrong-headedness not to speak of all those who have been turned away from the church house door because they were black or poor or gay or different or just difficult. We leave all these chapters and more out of the church histories we write.

And yet—we have only stopped at the Ninth Station. We have miles still go before we sleep. Our journey is far from over. There are five more stations to go. This thought has hit me powerfully as I have been reading the first volume of Manchester’s biography of Winston Churchill. Little fat boy, ignored by his parents, raised by his Nanny. He had a difficult time at school thanks to the cruelty of the other kids. He was plagued all his life with deep, dark depressions. He called them “his black dog.” They always came back with a vengeance.

Yet he would be the one to lead England during that tortured time when bombs fell on his beloved London for 76 consecutive days. One million homes were destroyed. 40,000 people were killed. Churchill by his incredible words would keep his people going. Toward the end someone asked him the secret of his power and England’s. He said: “Never give up...never...never give up.”

Maybe Karl Jung was right when he said where we stumble and fall there we find pure gold. Not always. Some fallings are fatal. Bu let us remember we are only at the Ninth Station. Our journey—like our Lord’s—is not over. And so like the disciples like Peter and all the others that finally came back--and Churchill and Helen Keller and Mandela and Martin King and Barack Obama and all the nameless heroes—falling is not the end of the story. Like that great cloud of witnesses that stand in all our balconies—we remember their names and cal still see their faces— we also remember the face of Him who first stumbled—and we know we can take heart. We must never give up. 

(The rendering of the Ninth Station was done like all the others in this series by African artist Bruce Onobrakpeya whose work can be found at museums the world over. The second picture is done by South Carolina artist, Cecile Martin whose work I used last year as I meditated on the Stations Her original stations can be found in her Church, St. Paul the Apostle in Seneca, South Carolina.)

The Eighth Station: The Daughters of Jerusalem Stand By

"A great number of the people followed him, and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him. But Jesus turned to them and said, 'Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For the days are surely coming when they will say, 'Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.' Then they will begin to say to the mountains, 'Fall on us'; and to the hills, 'Cover us.' For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?"
                                                           --Luke 23. 27-31

I love the Eighth Station of the Cross. For standing near –with all the disciples hiding and afraid—the women were there. Luke doesn’t give us their names.  But we know Jesus called them “the Daughters of Jerusalem.”

We know their names, don’t we? Could one of those standing in that company be somebody’s mother? Maybe mine. My parents were married for 13 years, but no children came. And then—surprise! My mother in her thirties was pregnant. I don’t know how long she worked in the mill as her belly swelled. Her feet must have hurt and she must have had to run to the dirty mill toilet because of the nausea. With little money except what she and my Daddy made—she worked almost to the end.

The Doctor delivered me at home. So she washed me off, held me tight and named me Roger. Will Rogers, whom she adored, had died in August before my October birthday. And so she gave me Will’s name.  Why, someone asked her? “He makes me laugh.” Hard as her life was she always made sure that the first-born and my brother who came four years later—had the best she could give. Sometimes more than she give.

She took us up the street and around the corner to what then looked like a huge church. Brick, tall white columns—so she gave me faith. She made sure we stayed in school and wore clothes that were nice. She, with her eighth grade education, surrounded us with books. She cooked, cleaned and kept things going after long hours in the mill. I’ve often wondered how she stood the tedium, the boredom, the utter sameness of her cotton-mill schedule week after week, year after year.

Nobody in our family had ever been to college—but she made sure I would get there. The morning I was to leave for school I carried my heavy-foot locker out to the curb where a friend waited in his car. She had left her job at the mill and came out to say goodbye. What eighteen year old ponder the grief and the sadness of her standing on that porch and waving goodbye? She came no further—she didn’t me want to see her cry.  She let me go knowing a new unknown chapter was beginning and never again would we be the way we were.

Every week without fail fifteen crumpled dollars came in an envelope from my mother. I have a picture somewhere of her dressed in her finest, hat and all—smiling at my graduation four years later.

Years after her death, at a party we were all asked to bring a picture of how we looked when we were young. I found a framed photo of me. I must have been around four years old. I took the picture from the frame and on the back in her penciled-handwriting were the proud words: “This is Roger—he is four year old.” I had never seen those words but it made me remember all that she had given me. Where would I have gone—what would I have done without that love and stubborn belief that I was somebody.

And so as I look up with all the other pilgrims who shuffle through this line gazing at the Stations there is a lump in my throat. The Daughters of Jerusalem stood close as he staggered by. It must have helped immensely when Jesus scarred and wounded saw those faithful women with tears streaming down their faces. What were their names? I cannot give you all their names—but one of them, I do believe was named Mother.    

The Seventh Station--Jesus Falls Again

"Is it possible that he who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for the sake of us all will
not grant us all things besides?"
          Romans 8.32

 Why fall after fall? Isn’t this just too much. Overkill. We pilgrims shuffling from station to station stop now at Station Seven. We look confused. Er, we mumble, we’ve been here already. Which Station was it—number three! Jesus has already fallen.

But the church in their wisdom knew what they were doing. In having Jesus stumble and fall on his face—for God’s sake—he is one with all those who have found the burden too great. Remember what he said back there months before this terrible journey: “Come all ye who are weary and heavy laden...” He is one with all of us who at one time or another will have to bump into the limits of our lives. Leonard Boff, a fine Catholic theologian has said that Jesus is in solidarity with all those who suffer frustration and defeat. He chose to take has place beside the fallen and downtrodden.

You remember the list. It was seemingly endless as is the pain and crushedness of life itself. The Samaritan...the Publican, who collaborated with the enemy...the centurion on the wrong side...the adulteress the law said should be stoned...the Syro-Phoenician woman who was a pagan...the blind man, a paralytic...the old woman suffering from an issue of blood...not to speak of all those, the book says, “forsook him and fled” as he stumbled and fell.

Ours is a strange age. We reward Lance and the Olympic runner from Africa running on his steel legs...and Whitney Houston and Penn State—number one...number one...and that Bishop and those Cardinals and that oh-so-popular priest. And then—BAM!! They all fall down. This is not to excuse sin or wrongdoing. It is a terrible reminder that it one time or another we all fall. Carson McCullers said, “It is a sad commentary on the human race that we all have to find someone to look down on.” What would we do for news otherwise.

But before we move to pick up our stones let us remember this second fall. Leonard Boff says we meet Jesus on the ground. So the painful truth of this Seventh Station tells us, Yes, we have been here before. And the book tells us:”let he that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall...” I think a better translation might be: “Let he or she that think they stand take heed when they fall...”

Years ago at the beach one evening, tipsy on wine, one of us pulled out a guitar and began to strum: “He’s got the whole world in his hands.” And suddenly we put in our names and the names of someone who had just died...and a preacher who had fell so far down...and our troubled children...and the broke, fractured marriage of one who sang...and the President we did not like and trouble-makers in our churches and on and on we sang until, toward the end we began to wipe away the tears from our eyes at the wonder of what we prayed-wished-sang: “He got the whole world in his hands...” No wonder the church left us with this Seventh Station.


(The powerful representations of the Stations of the Cross were done  by African artist, Bruce Onobrakpeya. These 14 wood-cut prints hang in St. Paul's Church in Nigeria.)

Immigrants Just Won't Go Away

"'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you drink? And when was it that we saw yo a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?' And the king will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.'"
           --Matthew 25. 37-40

All this immigration talk reminds me of an encounter my wife and I had at a Fast Food restaurant in Atlanta. The night Manager was Hispanic. He came by our table to make sure everything was all right. We started talking. I told him how troubled I was over our immigration debate. That casual remark opened his door wide. He told me how scared many of his friends were. Some had already left the State. He told me they only wanted to work and send money back home where things were so tight. One very sick friend, he said would not go to the Doctor or hospital because she was afraid of being deported. He told me he kept reading that these immigration laws had nothing to do with racial profiling. He shook his head. “I have been stopped 6 times in the last few months mostly because I was Hispanic.”

Immigration struggles are not a new problem for our country. About three years ago my wife and I were in New York and decided to visit Ellis Island. We took the subway down to the ferry, stood in the long line, got our tickets and headed for the boat. We passed Miss Liberty with her torch held high and those words of Emma Lazarus’ inscribed below: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free...” When our boat landed we toured the place where immigrants first landed in this country. Some fled terrible conditions in oppressive systems. Most of them came hoping for a better life.

One room in the Museum displayed pictures of some of those who came from great distances and how they were treated in this country. Most of our ancestors must have been somewhere in that early crowd. I looked at their faces wondering. There were Irish that fled the poverty and hunger back home. There were Poles, Italians and Jews and Orientals. Thousands came from many ages and many cultures.

One photograph stopped me cold. It read: “Japanese sentiment on the West Coast peaked between 1911 and 1924. A ‘Swat the Jap’ campaign swept Los Angeles in 1922. In Hollywood there were signs and leaflets that read:

JAPS

You came to care for lawns,

And we stood for it.

You came to work in truck gardens,

And we stood for it.

You sent your children to our public schools,

And we stood for it.

You moved a few families in our

 Midst

And we stood for it.

You proposed to build a church in our neighborhood

BUT

WE DIDN’T AND WE WON’T STAND FOR IT.

You impose more on us each day

   until you have gone your limit

WE DON’T WANT YOU WITH US

SO GET BUSY, JAPS, AND    

GET OUT OF HOLLYWOOD.”

Republicans and Democrats are reading the writing on the wall. Most of the Hispanics in the last Presidential election voted for Mr. Obama so both groups are courting Hispanics for their votes next time. There is something much larger here than votes. Hispanics and other ethnic groups know the difference between genuine caring and manipulation for votes. They are not stupid. They came here hoping for a better life, to feel safe and put down roots and call America home.

Most of those who have come here have worked hard and made our country better. We see different folk in the Grocery store wearing saris to cover their heads.  I see Chinese having their own separate service in our church. I see Hispanics mowing our lawns and gathering our crops. Many have started their businesses. Signs in Spanish and English are cropping up everywhere.

When the history of this turbulent age is written I wonder what they will say about our leaders and us. Will they say that we tried to turn back the clock, to bar the door, to make suspect anyone who was not like us? Or will they say a new day dawned during those days. They took in those that came, they learned to appreciate the richness of other people very different than us. They enriched our country with their food, music, art and family values and strong work ethic.

No wonder Elie Wiesel once said the ugliest word in the English language is illegal. No one is illegal. I remember, he said, that illegal was the first step in Germany to the gas chambers. There is more at stake here than trying to manipulate people to win their votes.  We talk a lot these days about our Constitution. The question is will we learn to say: “liberty and justice for all...” The answer to that question may just determine what kind of a people we really are.    

  

The Sixth Station - Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus

"Inasmuch as you did it unto the least of these...you did it to me."

      --Matthew 25.40

We move on, we pilgrims. We’ve met Simon who bore his cross and the Mother who stood by brokenhearted. But here in the Sixth Station we encounter not a gospel story but a legend.

From the Fourth Century dear Veronica has come on stage and taken her place in the Stations. This woman, whose name meant true icon or image is at the very heart of the Way of Sorrows—the Via Dolorosa. As that ugly crowd jeered and spat and sneered at the wounded Jesus, Veronica of whom we know so little squeezed her way through that swarm of hatred. Her heart went out to this one who stumbled and bled and suffered. From around her head she took the covering all women were supposed to wear in public. Who knows what rules or customs she may have broken that day in this simple act. Pushing her way through the angry mob she took her veil and tenderly wiped the face of Jesus. It was only a momentary gesture of love and compassion and yet in that moment she patted that face as clean as she could. No man would do such a thing. This was woman’s work.

She turned away from the ugliness and the pathos of that moment and left the crowd behind. As she started to put the veil back on her head she noticed the strangest thing. Embedded in that cloth was the face of the suffering Jesus.

Artists the world over have been intrigued with this story. Many have painted the scene with Jesus image beautiful and strong. But others, understanding the story much better have carved or painted or etched an imprint of Jesus suffering, wounded and scarred—a man like us.

What does all this mean? This Sixth Station. Many things I am sure. Could this stopping off place be a mirror, too for us and not just her? Hmm.

Is it too much of a stretch to say that when we dare to reach out and touch another’s wounds we might just come away with the scarred face of Jesus. He had told them, “Inasmuch as you do it unto the least of these you do it unto me...” He had already told them that the blessed ones were the poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, the hungerers, the persecuted and the reviled...”

All the way through the winding bumpy gospels his work was always specific. Never general. A woman at a well. A dying child. A man crippled all his life. A near-naked woman caught in adultery. And if not these there was a Zaccheus and a Peter and a James and a John and a Martha and her sister, Mary and even a Lazarus.

Do we not find him, too in the messy specific situations of our lives? Sometimes gay or a wounded warrior in Afghanistan or a PTSD victim and his frightened family. It might just be your Mother with cursed Alzheimer’s or that man across the street with cancer or your friend that carries around what seems to be an endless depression.

And so when we reach out in caring and love we come away seeing the face of God clearer than any other times in our lives. Isn’t this what really was back of those Beatitudes after all. Blessed are__________and you and I must always fill in the blanks.

Something happens to the Veronicas.  In his face we see our faces and all the hurtfulness so many have had to endure. It’s more than the blood and gore of Jesus. Ask Veronica. Here all of us might just find some hope and promise for ourselves in a seemingly hurtful world.

Arthur Miller, I think writing out of his time with dear Marilyn Monroe wrote in his play, After the Fall, “There comes a time when we all have to take ourselves in our own arms.” And maybe when we are wiping some face or bottom of some child's spills we really do see who we truly are. Children of God. Human. Scarred. Often wounded. Us—us—children of God. Who would have ever believed it?

This Station is more than a legend. It is a story that could become your story and mine. And in the doing we will come away time and time again carrying in our hearts the face of Jesus. Irenaeus understood this when he said that he became like us that we might become like him. And this I think is one reason the Church did not leave Veronica out of the journey that led to Calvary.

The Fifth Station--Simon Carries Jesus' Cross

"After mocking him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his clothes on him. The  they led him out to crucify him They compelled a passer-by, who was coming in from the country, to carry his cross; it was Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus. Then they brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means the place of a skull)."
           --Mark 15. 20-22

I think the Church has kept the Stations of the Cross through the years because so many Christians have identified with Christ and his cross. The suffering Jesus reminds us of all who suffer. The falling Jesus we know well because falling is part of our nature. Jesus’ encounter with his mother reminds us of the primary relationships in our lives. But this fifth station like some of the others is a mirror, too. Simon, probably a passerby—coming to Jerusalem probably for his first time to celebrate Passover—found himself standing, like so many others in that crowd, wondering what the uproar was all about.

Straining over the heads of others he saw this man they said was named Jesus. He was blood-streaked and weak and kept falling down while trying to carry his heavy beam to his death. Someone had to pick up the cross but no Roman soldier would contaminate himself for any criminal, especially a Jew. So they pulled Simon out of the crowd. Three gospels mention that he was compelled to carry the cross of this condemned man.

So pilgrims through the years have looked up at this rendering of Simon carrying someone else’s cross and seen their faces. For Simon is a symbol of all those forced to carry a cross not their own.

In this long and ragged parade of life most of us are spectators—lookers-on.  George Buttrick said that we all begin life as a passerby. And the tragedy is that many never graduate from this role. But not in this story. We recognize Simon. He’s the one who is drawn quite unintentionally into the hard role of carrying another’s burden. Reckon that Principal at Sandy Hook who stood in front of the shooter and took a bullet trying to protect her students could be called Simon? But usually most of the Simons are really unheralded heroes. The husband who has taken care of his crippled wife for 40 years.  They were married 52 years and most of those years he spent helping, rearranging, doing what he had to do. Messy work. Hard work. Tedious work. Standing by her through 6o surgeries. It’s the parent who tries year after year hoping to help their daughter break through the addiction which is killing them all. To be a Simon is exhausting and unglamorous business.

So Simon really is all those who, forced into circumstances not of their own doing or choosing, just do what has to be done. The strange thing that happened to Simon was that in carrying Jesus’ cross it changed him forever. His sons Alexander and Rufus became leaders in the church later. Surely their father’s influence had something to do with that.

Most of the Simons bear no famous names. They just do the job forced on them. And this is why so many pilgrims have pondered the mystery of the fifth Station. If Simon had to bear Jesus’ cross—cannot we, in some hard place find faithfulness, too.

Albert Schweitzer was right when he said,  “He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as old, by the lake-side, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: ‘Follow thou me!’ and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfil for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience who He is.” 

(These 14 renderings of the Stations are the work of the African artist, Bruce Onobrakpeya. The artist has fused his training in western techniques and materials with his own heritage, cultural experience and inventiveness that is undeniably African.)