Being and Becoming

As a result of Holy Covenant UMC's monthly meetups around the city, I got to spend some time with a few Kentridge's on Tuesday night at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. And it was quite marvelous. I'm not much of a contemporary art fan, but these were something special. What's a Kentridge, you say?

I'll bet that most of you are more cultured than I am, but I'm not afraid to admit I had no idea who William Kentridge was until Holy Covenant community member and artist Steven Jones brought one of the South African modern artist's images to our Advent retreat this past December.

In fact, it was this very still from an animated film that Kentridge had done with charcoals; the man with the water pouring out of his suit and filling the room.

It was a haunting image.

I saw it representing a person who felt so trapped by his white collar identity that he was drowning in it. As I studied it with Dale Jones (no relation to Steven as far as I know), we both decided, "If he would just take off that suit, everything would be better. If he takes off the suit he'll not risk drowning in himself."

Steven would tell us later that, in the film, this guy never actually does. In every scene, he's wearing this suit — even in a hospital bed. And it got me thinking about the stuff we can't shake ... the stuff of ourselves that we can't get rid of no matter how hard we try.

So we stop trying. And, instead, we let it consume us.

Those are the kinds of things — the unshakable bits that stick like they are inked into our flesh — from which I most often want God to resurrect me. I want the new life that I am promised to be one that leaves me, as the old hymns say, "clean and spotless." Yet that doesn't always happen. My spirit stinks like it has been riding the Red Line too long. And then my attitude does, too. The result? It feels as if life keeps pouring out of me, like the water from that man's suit. And that gets me believing that God's gone off and left me.

But then Steven explained Kentridge's animation process, and I was overcome with both wonder and peace.

Seth Curcio of Daily Serving tells it in the way I remember Steven explaining:

"Using the reductive medium of charcoal with only a small amount of blue or red chalk, Kentridge is effectively able to portray narratives while allowing the drawing process to be revealed by erasing and redrawing the object on the same sheet of paper."

The movement, the transformation, it all comes on the same page. And it comes by erasing small bits and redrawing others. What if that is how the power of resurrection is made real in our lives?

The Gospel writers left us with no information as to what happened to Jesus in the tomb after it was sealed on Good Friday. We are only left seeing the results.  It could be that God waited to act until the Sabbath was over and conquered death in an instant as the sun rose.

Or it could be that God began the transformative, life-giving recreation of the Human One from the moment it went dark. It could be that resurrection came from a constant series meticulous and deliberate movements by the hand of God over every inch of Jesus' mind, body and spirit. It could be that it took that long for him to be remade out of that same flesh-from-dust that he lived in when he breathed his last.

It could be that, much like Kentridge tells the story of his characters through the drawing process, God tells the story of our redemption through the resurrection process.

“I was drawing waiting to see what I would become.” — William Kentridge

We are paper in the hands of a genius artist with imagination unmatched. And sometimes, as subtle as it may be, we are changing by the intricate moves of Divine hands.

After watching the care and focus an artist like Kentridge gives to his medium, I am delighted to imagine that God would be so careful and deliberate with me. I can be happy. Because, while my being isn't yet finished, my becoming is a work of art. And so is yours. This is what makes us beautiful "just as we are," because we are never static. God in the Holy Spirit is working within, and through and around us all. And, by grace, we are being redrawn frame-by-frame toward greater love for God and neighbor. I have every confidence that someday, I'll shake the suit. But until that day comes, I'll keep watching for that eraser and pencil to remember that I'm not alone.

***

 For more on Kentridge's drawing process and style, check out this great video segment from PBS's Art 21:

It's Monday. Get up.

photo by M.Angel Herrero / flickr

That was a week. By the pure volume of news about things blowing up, the flooding, the people dying, and now the earthquake, this past week will be one that is not easily forgotten. Weeks like that make me happy that I am not a part of the constant, always-on news cycle anymore. They remind me why I got rid of cable.

Yet, even while getting all my news from two-minute YouTube clips and the Chicago Tribune’s tweets, I got enough exposure to know this was going to be a week when I was going to have to prepare something else for my Sunday sermon. And, for as much as I may have liked to, I couldn’t just stand there and sigh. I had to say something different.

It didn’t start that way, though. Last Monday night, I wasn’t planning on changing my direction at all. Because we are still in the Easter season ... the season of new life.

And I could still talk about the power of resurrection that was seen in those people ripping away at the mess of scaffolding left by the two bombs that went off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. I could talk about the goodness that was seen in all the first responders and ordinary people that ran toward the broken windows and bodies.

On Monday night, I wasn’t planning on changing direction out of principle. Because, in too many places in the world, Monday’s events alone wouldn’t have been enough to require a change.

By Monday night, more people had been murdered by guns in Chicago than had died in Boston in the same 24 hour period.

By Monday night, more had been murdered in bombings in Iraq and Syria in 24 hours than were killed by guns in Chicago all of last year. And, if I’m honest, I wouldn’t have changed direction because of either of those Mondays.

Wednesday came, and I got caught up in the industrial explosion in Texas, but wasn’t going to change direction for that. I didn’t figure people would want to hear me talk for 20 minutes about the need for us to hold the owners of that fertilizer plant accountable in the same way we would those who set off the bombs in Boston.

And then there was the storm that began that night and kept on going until well into Thursday. And then there were the floods that followed.

And I pondered changing the text we read in worship to the story of great flood in Genesis, to point to the faithfulness of Noah and family as they endured the rain and the months of wondering. I figured that would be how long we’d have to wait before anyone was identified in the Boston bombings. And I would have tasked us with remembering the good news that a rainbow is coming. Because my church loves rainbows.

But as Friday unfolded, I knew that rainbow sermon was going to have to go on the shelf.  It wasn’t months. It was days. And the suspects were not hardened criminals, but children. One of them was dead along with a police officer. And with that, the genetic code in us that has craved everything from gladiatorial combat in the arena to God of War on the Playstation kicked in.

And though we were weeks out from Easter morning, I felt like I was journeying to the cross all over again. Calls for crucifixion poured down in digital waves. Rage. Vengeance. The desire for more death.

It made me ask: How fragile is our life that death can come so quickly? How fragile is our humanity that we find killing one another so desirable?

So, on Friday I knew that the illustrations and stories I had prepared on Monday would have to wait three years until the reading from the book of Acts came up again in the lectionary cycle.

But I kept the scripture. I kept it because I still believe there is a good word in this story for us. There is hope for us in this story of Tabitha and Peter. And that is because there is a lot of Jesus in this story. And Jesus is the kind of good news we need after a week like that.

That may end up making the story of Tabitha and Peter the best thing we can we can hear, because I’d say it is a story that is all about Jesus. Now you may be scratching your heads as you read this, because Jesus is never explicitly mentioned.

If you didn’t notice that, you may know, by this point in the book of Acts, Jesus has ascended into heaven and is far from anyone’s sight. This is book that is supposed to be about the Apostles. But this story is all about Jesus.

A disciple named Tabitha (whose Greek name is the rather unfortunate “Dorcas”) has died, and they send for Peter since he was nearby. They probably wanted him to come and offer a little sympathy, some care, a few comforting words. Maybe something from the 23rd Psalm. And Peter arrives in the room and all the widows are crying ... both for her and for the deaths that have left them alone. And they showed Peter some of the things she liked to sew, and they probably told stories about what was their favorite ... maybe remembering the parties to which she wore them. But then, quite rudely, Peter interrupts their grief and emotional healing and tells them all to get out of the room. And then it gets stranger.

And he says to this dead woman, like an idiot, “Tabitha, Get up!” In the Aramaic that Peter spoke, it was “Tabitha, Koum!”

This is absolute lunacy, isn’t it? If I did this at a funeral where I was officiating, I’d likely get assaulted by the family and funeral director. But this is the moment where the presence of Jesus is as thick as can be. This is the part that is all about Jesus.

“Tabitha, Koum!” The writer of Acts is intentional in letting us know that the apostles are picking up right where Jesus left off. “Get up!”

You see, in none of the gospel accounts does Jesus ever go to a funeral without disturbing the grief with new life. Never does Jesus encounter a death that he doesn’t end.

In John’s gospel, Jesus raises Lazarus. In Luke’s gospel, he raises a widow’s only son. And in Mark’s gospel (which is repeated by Matthew and Luke), he raises the daughter of a man named Jairus.

In that story, Jesus was called to Jairus’ house to heal the daughter, but upon arrival, they discovered that she had died. So there they are, the family embracing the lifeless body of their dead child, crying tears of sorrow for their little girl who was now no more. And in the middle of all this, like somebody who clearly has no sense of decorum, Jesus shouts, “Talitha, koum! ... Little child, get up!”

In his ministry, Jesus refused to let death be the answer for anyone he encountered. No matter how out of place it made him look. And the love that motivated this refusal ... this value of life ... became contagious. Death listened to him.

At the cross, God refused to let death be the answer for Jesus. And death listened. And Peter saw this. He was witness to God’s denial of the power of death. It pulled him aside. It set him to work.

So, after being a part of that, after seeing Jesus give new life to all those people, and after seeing God give new life to Jesus, there was no way that Peter is going to let death go unchallenged.

“Tabitha, Koum!” One letter is different, but the result is the same. And the power of Jesus transforms another life. Through Peter, we see the way resurrection comes among us. It disturbs our apathy. It disrupts our ways acceptance of death. Resurrection, believed and practiced does not create a space for death to be celebrated, accepted, or tolerated. It tells us to get up.

Whose bloodlust was it that infected those boys in Boston? Because somewhere along the way, they picked it up; they learned it. It was not treated. It was encouraged. So how did they contract this bloodlust? Was it from the nation they fled? Or was it from the nation in which they found asylum? Friends, it is time to get up.

Whose bloodlust continues to infect the kids on our streets that keep shooting at each other? Did they inherit that from a city that believes in resurrection? Or was it from a city that tolerates death? Sisters and brothers, Jesus says it is time to get up.

I remember my Monday disregard, and wonder if Friday would have been different had I not become so accustomed to death. I remember my Monday acceptance, and wonder if Friday would have been different had I not been silent.

And I wonder if Monday would have been different:

• if we all refused to be silent
• if we refused to be contained in the tombs of apathy
• if we let resurrection change us the way it did Peter
• if we let the love of life live in us the way it did in Jesus.

Another Monday is here. What it will hold depends on how much we, and all our sisters and brother, let the spirit of resurrection take hold of us.

This Monday depends on how our beginning-of-the-week beliefs change our end-of-the-week practices. It depends on us defying the laws of tradition and apathy. It depends on us valuing every life as if it were our own.

It is time to get up.

Children of God, the good news is that we can still get up. Jesus himself is calling us to rise above the darkness. To say to those enamored by the power of death that there is another way. Jesus was defiant of it. Peter was defiant of it. And we can be, too. That this is not who we are. We are alive, and we are to celebrate life.

It is time to get up and live, believing that peace is possible.

It is time to get up and sing with even greater conviction that new life can come.

It is time to get up and greet the spirit of violence in our homes and classrooms with a defiant love.

It is time for us all to get up and speak things that people will likely perceive as inane. Things like hope. Things like love. Hope in everyone. Love for everyone. Because wishing the death of one is inviting the death of us all; because it is defying the direction of God.

Today is Monday. May it be met by the resurrection in you.

Easter and the Space in Between

photo by drivebysh00ter / Flickr

In the suburbs, nobody ever wanted to crash on our couch. We had a spare bedroom back at our parsonage in the Fox Valley, but I can count on one hand how many times it was used. The only person to ever sleep on the couch was myself while engrossed in (i.e. binging upon) a Star Trek marathon or 24 hours with Kiefer Sutherland. It got to the point where we rid ourselves of the extra blankets and pillows. The spare bed was never made. It was like plastic fruit: without purpose and collecting dust.

Then we, along with that bed and couch, moved to Chicago. In the city, everybody wants to crash on your couch. We could have different people here every night of the week. I can’t even recollect the number of people who have slept in that bed or on that couch. Some have been just for an hour’s nap. Others have been for a few months. The latest trio just left on Wednesday afternoon.

I’ve been wondering what this says about the differences between urban and suburban life. Certainly, Chicago has more going on than the suburbs. I doubt my house guests this week, The Pinkerton Raid, would have traveled all the way from Durham, NC, to play a show in Elgin. But the longer I’m in the city, the less I believe this is the sole reason the pleather on our couch is starting to crack.

The core of this phenomenon, I believe, is actually about space. Space is virtually meaningless in the suburbs and the countryside. Nearly everybody has it. Its abundance makes it an afterthought. Yet in the city, space is a luxury. Like squirrels burying nuts, we spread our belongings throughout our neighborhoods because there isn’t enough room for it in our homes. Building towards the heavens to claim the dimensions that are left, we end up living on top of one another. We trade our claims on intimacy and privacy for a few square feet in the center of this accumulation of human life.

With space at such a premium, what does it mean to have an extra bed go unused in Chicago? What does it mean, then, to have a church building empty for much of the day and night? Or a table that goes unset? Or a stove that is typically cold?  

When the resurrected Christ left the tomb, he entered the space of others. Sometimes he was invited. Sometimes he invited himself. I have learned from all those who sleep on my couch, or walk into the church uninvited, or pull up a chair at table where I’m occupied with something else, or squeeze their way into a circle of conversation without welcome, that space goes from being valuable to sacred when you stop claiming it as your own. That is when the Resurrection and the Life looks you in the eye and you know the blessing of love and grace. That is where Easter continues ... in the space where you thought nothing else could fit.

May Jesus squeeze his way into your space this week.

A Meditation for Good Friday

photo by ifmuth / Flickr

Last Friday night, I stood with many from Holy Covenant on the near West Side of our city in the shadow of the old Cook County Hospital. It was the last stop on our Crosswalk journey which had begun in River North. Along with hundreds of others, we had arrived there via a solemn march for awareness and change …  aware of all the young people who have been killed by the plague of violence which has infected Chicago, and faithful to the idea change can come.

The darkened windows and boarded-up doors of CCH hung there in the night sky with an eerie dominance. Although it is just a facade now, it is still large enough to obscure its replacement. Standing there, all you can see of Stroger Hospital (behind it) is the ominous glow of sodium vapor lights that gives a halo to the dead and decaying relic.

It was a fitting backdrop for the testimony that we heard. Nurses and chaplains from the emergency rooms in that well-known medical district shared stories about how the cross-streets were a stage where the tragic ends of so many young people were played out. For those young people, and for so many others, the shadow thrown by death is so large that it encompases whole neighborhoods. Unlike probably any of us in this room, that shadow of death is so strong for them that they expect to be killed by a gun before they are 21.

This is unfathomable for us. We take out 30-year loans … and then we pay them off because we expect to live. We negotiate for retirement benefits and advocate for the protection of government programs like Social Security because we expect to get old. We expect to have a life beyond today.

What kind of messed up world lets such disproportionate expectations exist no more than six miles from one another?

Every year, on a Friday, with spring making itself as obvious as bare arms on a 47-degree day, our faith makes us stand in the tension of this question. Every year, on a Friday that would make even Robert Smith of the Cure change his tune, we are challenged by the shadows that loom darker than an old hospital. We are challenged with darkness itself. We are challenged to throw away everything we thought we knew and to cling to the fractured remains. On a Friday, hope, in the person of Jesus, dies on a cross so that the gap of those six miles will be brought to an arm’s length.

No more figments of our imagination. No more wild fantasies of everything being the way we want it … the way we dream about it. Those hopes are swallowed whole by the shadows. Because, for a moment God is dead. And for a moment, we are left facing who we are in a creation where there is nothing more than this.

I’m glad it only comes once a year. The scripture we read … the passion narrative that we share … it tortures me in the way only the greatest of tragedies can. I am left feeling helpless. When Jesus screams in his loneliness and agony, a little of me dies. I know what is coming in three days, and still a little of me dies.

And that is because I’ve seen this part all-too-often. I have first-hand knowledge of it. I have been in the room with a mother while her young son convulses on stainless steel table and breathes his last. She has knocked me down, running to his side … screaming in tones I cannot imitate. Skilled physicians and nurses stand silent. Their posture: one of defeat. From the floor, I want to say  “Mercy, Lord. Mercy.” But I have no breath to push out those words.

This passion of Jesus it kills me, because I know it. And because I have yet to see a person be resurrected.

The best we get, it seems, are little redemptive moments like the one that Jesus has with his mother and closest friend. Jesus asks John and Mary to be family to each other in his absence. This moment, and his prayers in the garden beforehand, often make me wonder if Jesus didn’t see Friday in the same, final way as did his family and friends … that when his eyes closed that was the end … that when the stone is rolled in front of the tomb he’s all-but forgotten. I am … no more.

So what makes this night “good”? That depends on what you consider “good” to be. If goodness to you is some sort of satisfaction or enjoyment … like eating a bucket of ice cream … then there is nothing good about this day. But if goodness is something that brings wholeness or health … like brussel sprouts or leafy greens … then this Friday can be good. If it is about wholeness, then God dying is a good thing.

Because until you go to that place … to the foot of the cross, where the water of life pours out and disappears into the earth … you won’t understand Easter. Until you watch your dreams be pulled down limp and lifeless, you won’t understand what is truly important. Until you watch your hope be encased in rock and hidden, you won’t understand why you had ever hoped. Without experiencing nothing, we cannot appreciate anything.

Once you’ve seen the ugliness of a dark night, beauty is no longer just an ethereal aesthetic. Once you’ve seen a dark night, beauty becomes the antithesis of that darkness, and it makes you weep, because in it you encounter both God and the recollection of that absence of God.  It takes darkness for faith to emerge. It takes losing faith in the darkness for a new faith to come.

This is the real gift of Friday. This is why we call it “good.” Because without it, good for the Christian would be a vapor. It would just be an idea. A moral position. Instead, good is a real cost. Good is that facade coming down. Good is real change. A real transformation. A real trust.

Good is God.

If you still believe that on Friday, Sunday becomes the most beautiful thing you’ve ever experienced.

All Is (Not) Well

Lent is a trying time for me. On multiple occasions this season, I have said that Lent is a Sisyphean endeavor … like pushing a boulder up a mountain, or dragging a tree up a hill. I suppose that means I’m doing it right. Or at least I’m in the right spirit of it all.

I know there are those who disagree with the Lenten season, saying we Christians shouldn’t practice it because we are a people who believe the ultimate trials and suffering have already been endured by Jesus. We shouldn’t revel in trials because the verdict has already been read. Jesus has been found worthy of life. And we get to have the happily ever after.

But do we, really? Have we reached the fairytale ending for humanity? While this may be the story that is perpetuated -- that it is always Easter for Christians -- it is also just a fairy tale. You don’t have to go far to find that Easter is still the (albeit beautiful) exception to the rule. The joy of resurrection is more like one shoot of a flower pushing through the darkness of winter than it is a teeming equatorial rainforest. Because, for every celebration we can imagine, there are exponentially more sufferings and injustices that roll by in our dreams unnoticed. Scan the headlines, listen to your conversations about politics, consider the latest gossip: it is like a wasteland of trials and tribulations.

We live in a Lent kind of world. And that is likely what makes this season so abrasive … it tears away the bandages and exposes the wounds we keep hiding. Lent doesn’t allow us to keep answering “I’m fine” when we are asked how we are doing individually and collectively. No, Chip Diller. All is not well.

It may not look like it on the outside, but we are all running around and screaming in some way. Be it from simple anxiety or fear for our life itself, we’re all enduring some kind of trial. And, while it may seem a bit macabre, I take some comfort in that. I am comforted in knowing that I am not alone in my suffering; that my trials are not a unique experience. It is there that I can find empathy.

One of the greatest blessings of this Lent has come in hearing all the different voices of the Holy Covenant community be vulnerable through daily Devotionals. Not only have I been discovering things about those who post, but I have also been learning about myself. I’ve been learning about the bandages that I put on the stories of scripture to make them more Easterish. I’m learning the hue of my lens by looking at the world through the lenses of others. And there is something life-giving about this. Journeying together, the trials seem more bearable. The impossible seems a little more hopeful. A lesson of the cross may be that Jesus walked and died alone to remind us how ludicrous it is for us to do the same.

As we head into Holy Week, I am choosing to enter into the world more than recess from it. In addition to all the Holy Week worship services, I’m going to add myself to the many who will join in CROSSwalk II this Friday to remember the victims of violence in Chicago. And Monday, I will add my body to the many who will gather at Federal Plaza to rally for Marriage Equality. Because there are some rocks I don’t have to push alone. And there are some rocks that I can’t push alone.

If you aren’t in Chicago, I would encourage you to find the places where you can stand in the gaps in your own neighborhood as the penultimate days of Lent arrive. Find the places that make you uncomfortable … the places forgotten by so many who claim to be “Easter” people. It is there that you may see that shoot emerge and catch a glimpse of the resurrection to come.

(photo by Jen Unger Kroc, who sends me one of these every Lent. Thanks, Z)