The Lenten Journey Day 32

Dorothy Soelle’s essay pulls from a passage in Elie Weisel’s seminal work Night. Weisel writes from his personal experience in Auschwitz and Soelle draws upon his reflections. The central passage from Weisel that guides Soelle’s thoughts is his memory of a hanging in the concentrations camp at the hands of the SS. Weisel describes in gut wrenching detail the death of a young boy and a man standing behind Weisel posing the question, “where is God.” Weisel’s internal dialogue responds with, “Here he is… he is hanging here on this gallows.”

Soelle points to an inner relationship between the reality of Christ and the reality of those suffering. We find, Soelle says strongly, that God suffers with the suffering and his seen in the one suffering as well. In all of the talk about finding God it is sobering to think where we might find Him. If we find Him on the cross, shouldn’t we also find him in the shelter, the refugee camp, and the cancer wing of the hospital. This is not a glorification of suffering, at least from my point of view, but a call to look for Christ where He is most likely found.

The Lenten Journey Day 31

Today’s essay is actually an excerpt from the book “Jayber Crow” by author, farmer and poet Wendell Berry. In the passage Crow, the title character, speaks of his association with the crowd at the foot of the cross. Crow is tempted to be just like the throng and call for Christ to come down off the cross and reveal his true power. But Crow laments what he knows to be true, “I knew the answer. I knew it a long time before I could admit it, for all the suffering of the world is in it. He didn’t , he hasn’t, because from the moment he did, he would be the absolute tyrant of the world and we would be His slaves.”

Giving into their and admittedly our worldly demands would have made Christ our overlord instead of our beloved Lord and Savior. We claim to want God to step in and just stop all the bad stuff, but we really want is what that crowd wanted. We want Jesus to be the hero of our opinions of OUR bad situation. Christ appears weak because that is His strength. It is in the ordinary that we should look and will truly find Jesus.

The Lenten Journey Day 30

Edith Stein delivers a short essay centered around Christ’s words in Gethsemane, “Thy will be done.” She asserts this is the regulatory measure of following Christ. Her writing is magnified by a short description of her own Spiritual journey. She was born into Judaism, turned to atheism in her teens, later converted to Catholicism as a Discalced Caremilite nun, and died at the age of 51 in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

The essay reads as a charge to her fellow nuns and friars. The surrendered will of Christ, Stein writes, is evident in His obedience, poverty, and purity. From the cross Christ calls for the allegiance of His followers and the answer Stein urges is, “Lord, where else should we go. You have the words of eternal life.”

God’s will is for some a grandiose mystery that must be discovered and followed with pinpoint accuracy, and rigid attention to detail. For others it is a pious thought that few, if any, every attain and so it sounds good but is not practical. For Christ, God’s will, was a daily call to surrender, intimacy, and listening. It is a pursuit to follow the two great commandments, love of God and of others. It is not God’s will that we all die on a Roman cross, or serve others in a nunnery. It is His will that today we might lean in to a supreme love for Him and a humbled, servant minded, love of others.

The Lenten Journey Day 29

G.K. Chesterson writes today of the isolation that Christ took on in the garden and while on the cross. He writes with an almost eerie reverence of the forsaken Christ who passes not only through death but his own earthly doubts.

Chesterson makes an interesting connection, in joining an atheistic perspective with the experience of Christ. He says that Christ is the only divinity that “uttered their isolation.” Referencing those who have not found or refuse to believe in the existence of God. As much as we talk about Christ’s death reaching to the very depths of human loss we rarely talk about how the earthly life of Christ reaches all human experiences. For just a moment Jesus wondered where God was. For all those who have or do wonder the same thing, Christ reaches out, empathizes, and offers the hope of God’s existence and activity.

The Lenten Journey Day 28

It’s amazing what a little information can do. As I read Dag Hammarskjold’s short essay today I have a sense of familiarity and of freshness. The story is of Jesus and His preparation for and realization of his crucifixion. But it is written about “the adamant young man” preparing for His seemingly cruel destiny of sacrifice. The “young man” remains focused in spite of the ignorance and unwillingness of his closest friends. The essay ends with a challenge for followers of Jesus to embrace sacrifice with the same faith that is exemplified and strengthened by the work of Christ.

The informing part for me was a quick google search of Hammarskjold. It revealed that he was the youngest person to ever serve at the UN Secretary Journal. An economist who was committed to public service. Not necessarily profound but it made me think how our life experiences are both informed by and informational in our reading of Scripture. The essay and the google search hint at the possibility that Dag found in Christ a purpose to serve and a drive to keep going even when outer skepticism and inner doubt may creep in. May we be driven like Christ for Christ.