Today’s essay is aptly entitled, “The Distance” and is written by Simone Weil. Simply, yet with enriching beauty Weil casts the picture of the great distance between the Holiness of God and evil of the Cross. The only thing that can bridge that distance is God’s defining characteristic, love. The distance showed our need, for God to come to us. The crucifixion openly displays the love of God that has indeed come to us. In reading I was reminded of the lyric from the song “Living Hope” that was in our worship last week. The line says “how great the chasm that lay between us, How high the mountain we could not climb.” It is the realization of the great distance between humanity and God that we begin to realize the “height and depth” of His love. As we are literally distanced from one another may we know this for Weil, “God created through love and for love. God did not create anything except love itself, and the means to love….. He created beings capable of love from all possible distances.”
Lenten Reading
The point of these readings is not to necessarily champion the entire views of each writer but to take their essays and glean helpful, insightful, and challenging truths from them. It is, however, interesting for me to be exposed to new viewpoints and new names that I hadn’t come across before. That name in today’s reading is Morton T. Kelsey. Kelsey was an Episcopalian priest and therapist who is also credited with bringing meditation into Western Christianity. He draws on both backgrounds in the reading for today entitled, “The Cross and the Cellar.” The identity of the cross is obvious enough but the cellar demands some explanation. Frankly, for Kelsey the cellar is that deep part of ourselves that is not pretty that we try to keep hidden. It is below that cellar, the deepest pit where evil and hatred resides. If we allow it to that pitted evil can make its way out and what we might normally consider inhumane takes over. Kelsey walks this thought through history of how people who lived common, good lives became caught up in some of the gravest atrocities. He then makes a line to the characters surrounding the crucifixion. His brief, pointed biographies of Pilate, Caiphus, Judays, and the nameless carpenter show how their participation in this great evil may not have started from a vile place even though that’s where it ultimately lead. His summary paragraph about the crucifixion hits at my heart:
These were the things that crucified Jesus on Friday in Passover week A.D. 29. They were not wild viciousness or sadistic brutality or naked hate, but the civilized vices of cowardice, bigotry, impatience, timidity, falsehood, indifference- vices all of us share, the very vices which crucify human beings today.
Lenten Reading
Today’s Lenten Reading is from Catholic theologian Thomas Howard. In his essay simply entitle “The Crucifix” Howard calls on believers to avoid bypassing the cross. The anticipation of Easter is rooted in the reality and truth of the Resurrection. However, Howard appropriately warns us to not bypass the cross or reduce the suffering to a passing aspect just before the Resurrection. We must see the suffering of savior. We must know the reality of our sins, the sins of the whole world, and the pain of Christ on the cross. In that pain is also the pain of people in the past and in the present and even the future pain and travails of people all around the world. Let us see Christ on the cross, let us hear Him cry, and let us hear Him proclaim forgiveness. Let us see the pain all around us and know that Christ not only relates but comforts and encourages.
Grace and peace
Lenten Reading
So, I am jumping around a little today, but I know you don’t mind and wouldn’t even be aware if I hadn’t told you. Yet , I did and I am. In Bread and Wine there is a short essay by Kathleen Norris that really piqued my interest today. She tells of an experience as artist in residence at a parochial school. She would read Psalms as the children listened. Then, she asked them in their adolescent honest to write Psalms of their own. One young boy who confessed to being upset when his dad was angry with him and taking it out on his siblings wrote the following, “ Then I sit in my messy house and say to myself, I shouldn’t have done all that.” This captures the Psalms, penitential, reflective, and honest. Maybe over these last few weeks you have set down in you house (messy or not) and thought, “ I shouldn’t have done (said) all that.” Good news for the amateur Psalmist and us, God hears and God forgives. It reminds me of a line from an Amy Grant song, “the honest cries of breaking hearts are better than a Hallelujah sometime.”
This brings me to a challenge. If you’re reading this, I challenge you to write a Psalm. It can be any category, praise, imprecation (mad), confession, wherever you are at in this journey. This can be just for you, or you can share it in the comment section below or via email at jdunnok@gmail.com
Lenten Reading
I took the last two days off to kind of catch up with the Lenten readings. But I really enjoy reflecting on these readings so I’m back today. The reading from Bread and Wine is the “Great Mediator” by Augustine of Hippo. Often lost in our consideration of the incarnation is the purpose of Christ to be the go-between for humanity to God. He is not the perfect mediator because he understands humanity and Divinity but because he became one and has always been the other. Augustine says it beautifully, “What we needed was a mediator to stand between God and men who should be in one respect like God, in another kin to human beings, for if he were manlike in both regards he would be far from God, but if Godlike in both, far from us: then he would be no mediator.” God in Christ is not far from us, but he is also not us. He is God who became human, so that in part we humans may connect with God. Christ is close, lean in.
Grace and Peace