… I wonder about this sometimes …

Introducing his sermon on Sunday, the pastor made a comment, reviewing Easter week, and pointing into the 50 days of Easter coming up.  Did I know Easter has 50 days? Not sure, but yes, and then he said … the Glory of God is the way God chose to give himself away. Hmmm. What? God gives himself away?  But yes, the whole Easter story was about that. It was all upside down. Sacrificial. Our God was betrayed by his friends and killed by his enemies. He gave himself up!  And it turns out that in sacrifice and giving ourselves away life works best! That is what God was showing us. That clinging to whatever it is  … self image, ego, career, or property … is not the way to life; … in fact, usually it leads to unhappiness and tension and often too, on massive scales to endless turmoil and violence with long shadows.  

I wonder about this: does God giving himself away relate to how we own or give away the message of The Christ. Was it ever ours to give away? Someone else’s? Everyone’s? And then I wonder what would have happened if, early on, say, 200 years ago, long after the Reformation, the now quite mission-minded church would have decided to give the church away, especially when missionizing other cultures, all of whom had their own experience of God? Meaning that interpretation might always have come from within the local experience? What if we had gone that way?

Over Easter week I attended several church services. They were all good, but also different. At an Inter-mennonite Good Friday service, we had a unique time together.  A sombre event, we kept singing ‘were you there’, stopping between verses and scripture readings for 3-minute silences, meant for us to focus on the events of this day. Nine stops … but we german and swiss people are good at following a script and so … we did.  At the end, as we were being dismissed, we were reminded to not visit too much on our way out, lest we too quickly moved past the seriousness of the crucifixion to our happier visiting. As we left, I wondered about the amount of planning that went into the service. A bold, creative event but the same service, I’m guessing, might not have worked the same way in some other cultures, nor should it.

At Thursday mass next door, just before Good Friday, there were small variations from the normal mass, but not many. To be sure, there were four priests (normally there is one plus the deacon) on stage, each with a small part, but otherwise, it was just mass. Communion with a brief homily.  I never do have the sense that they worry very much about creativity. There are a lot of symbolic actions and rituals and a liturgy, pretty much always the same. We are there to to be reminded of a mystery. Of blank spaces. Of God among us and somewhere nearby. Same God as among the Mennonites but the Catholics go through an hour of motions they all seem to know by heart, lots of praying they also seem to know by heart, some singing … all to remind us that we don’t know very much about the big mystery, but that the God who is there loves us. They don’t spend much time trying to convince us, or themselves, of anything other than to be collectively reminded. What is also unique about this large gathering of people is that they come from all different cultures, races, and life experiences. When Kathy and I are there, we are part of a minority.  Somehow, they have turned mass into a common-enough service that all these people keep coming to pay their respects in a worship service that probably hasn’t changed much in a thousand years. 

I know that historically, around the world, the Catholic church has been guilty of a lot. Imposition. Tremendous trauma. Death. Indigenous people made to be expendable. Collusion with corrupt and cruel government.  And all this in the name of Christ, who represents none of this. His ministry was not an imposition. There was sacrifice, service, humility, and invitation. And here, in 2023, in this weekly neighborhood mass, there is also humility and an invitation. I don’t sense that they would impose very much on anyone. Even the interpretation is brief. Still, I’m quite sure the ownership is very much at the Center. Up there in Rome and in their archives.

We Protestants spread the ownership around a lot more. Almost to the point of chaos. But we have doctrines we cling to. Many of them. That’s our stability. So I wonder what our world would be like if, for example, American evangelicals didn’t think that they own the Gospel to the extent that for them it’s apparently mostly white and theirs to turn into a militant, nationalist message. Race and nation based? Hardly Christlike. But when we own the message so completely, we should not be surprized that eventually we fit it into our own biases. It becomes ours to share. Ours to interpret. Even ours to impose. 

Willi Horst, my most favorite and interesting missionary would say a lot about all this. Or, maybe he wouldn’t say anything at all. I only met Willi and Berti a couple of times in the mid 90s in Northern Argentina where they worked with the indigenous Toba. It was my introduction to what happens when we don’t make the Gospel message so much ours. Willi and Berti, having spent years among the Toba, had decided to do very little. Interventions, he once told me, can mess everything up. He and Berti did visit the villages and hosted Bible Studies. But they didn’t interpret for the Toba.  Willi said he rarely preached. The Toba interpreted, Willi and Berti recorded what was said, and would then take the written interpretations back to the Toba. Kathy and I attended a late evening, under-the-stars service once with Willi and Berti. On the grass. Around a fire. People danced and music that went on and on. Very little there reminded me of ‘church’, but it was theirs and Willi and Berti, at least that evening, had no roles.   

Once, I suggested at an MCC meeting, not long after we had returned from Bolivia … that maybe we should give the organization away.  Let the people with whom we have worked around the world for a very long time, let them take it over.  Kind of on their terms. It’s possible the whole organization would have dissolved itself into some kind of chaos. Or maybe, on the other hand, something amazingly inter-national, inter-cultural would have been born. 

A young man wanted to become a pastor. My advice to him was, get all the training you want, but before you find a church to lead, go into northern Alberta and work in a saw mill or on an oil rig for 10 years. Then, by all means, find a church to lead. If I was asked today, I might add a caution about ownership. Don’t own the message too much. Let it be owned by the Holy Spirit and by the people you are with.  And see what happens.  

… easter week … a few notes …

Easter week.  Palm Sunday, almost a week ago now. Sierra was with us for the morning service. She’s 5. As we walked in, they handed her a palm leaf and a bit later all the kids got to walk up one aisle and down another, waving their leaves. It was chaos, mostly. Much like the chaos, I’m guessing, on the streets of Jerusalem, way back when Jesus rode into town. Except, back then, there was a lot at play. I suppose, there is today as well. Maybe more.

I’ve sat through many Easter week sermons, and I’m sure I wasn’t always paying full attention, but this past Palm Sunday morning was the first time I recall hearing that the palm branches, back in those days, were a symbol of war, not peace. Those crowds were cheering a warrior into battle. It wasn’t just that they loved Jesus and were adoring and praising him as we tend to think of that event these days. No! They had ascendent expectations.  Finally, to rise up and overthrow their Roman oppressors … and Jesus, the General, would lead them. It’s why they were there, cheering him on. Their King! Their hope! 

In fact, riding in on the donkey might have been an early indication of the betrayal they would soon feel; a General riding off to battle would ride on a horse. A stallion, a symbol of war.  Coming back, proclaiming victory, the same General would ride into town on a donkey, a symbol of peace. So here, their Messiah, their hope, conquers no one and proclaims a battle won, and a peace already present. It’s no wonder they killed him a week later. Their hopes had been different, and higher. They felt betrayed.

The Palm Sunday sermon talked about what else had been happening. A lot, actually, and seemingly, almost always to either the dismay or confusion of the people around him. Jesus decided to wash his disciples’ feet. He kind of insisted. These were the men who would deny that they knew him and would betray him to the soldiers. He had supper with them! Same bunch. What kind of God comes among us and lets all this happen to him without making any effort at self defence! A sentence that caught my attention in the sermon was this one… : this is how God chose to show himself to us. Richard Rohr refers to this as the pattern that Easter is about.  More a pattern; less a transaction. 

Over Palm Sunday lunch we talked a bit about all this …  whether the transaction we have so routinely been taught as the center of our Christian faith was really necessary; was there even a transaction? A deal … at the center of our faith? It’s kind of a Jobian thing. But was the death and resurrection of Jesus just a transaction? I used to think that. God needed a death to appease his sense of holiness and righteousness? Seems oddly small for the kind of God who made millions of universes, and us … we super complex beings.  As someone wrote, ‘the hands who flung the stars into being wash our feet’.

Walter Brueggemann, a well-known bible teacher, says ‘the bible does not speak with a single voice on any topic. Inspired by God … every reading of the Bible is an act of interpretation. There are no exceptions.’ So … I suspect God is fine if we aren’t all of one mind on what it all means. God will bring salvation to each of us, probably without the blueprints we like to draw up for each other.  

In the end, it was that phrase the Palm Sunday speaker used that stands out for me about this week.  Whether he meant it that way or not, for me it became the point of the sermon.  ‘And this is how God chose to show himself’. The teachings and the many times Jesus ran into the religious and political powers and then walked away from them. The footwashing. The eating with a bunch of confused betrayers. The earlier riding into town on a donkey when he knew their expectations of him.  The betrayal he knew was coming. The rebuke to his friends when they tried to protect him.  The dying on the cross.  This is how God chose to show himself to us. The mystery of the power of service and sacrifice. The seed must die in the ground before new life can happen. 

This God submits to the evil around him until it kills him. He allows this.  This God sits with the unloved and washes the feet of the unwashed. He heals the sick. He looks for the people on the margins and the children. He welcomes all of them. Unlike our so fretful Christian obsession with boundary setting, Jesus did not set boundaries. This was the pattern of his life, and of his last week. How God chose to show himself to us. 

I asked my cousin over coffee, what Easter is about. Kind of an obvious question but he’s a retired pastor, so … ?.  Was there a death and resurrection? I think so. Was that what God required for the redemption of us humans? I think he did die, but there is something about submitting to the nastiness of this world without resorting to violence and conquest, that seems to be at the heart of the redemption part of this story.  Richard Rohr calls it the pattern. He also calls it the Jonah effect. Without the sign of Jonah—the pattern of new life only through death (“in the belly of the whale”)—Christianity remains a largely impotent ideology, just another way to “win”.  It was winning they had in mind back there with the Palm branches. 

Bishop Oscar Romero was assassinated in El Salvador March 24, 1980. Once considered a priest of the nation’s elite, he was shot for standing with the poor.  He is quoted in the March 24 Canadian Mennonite. I don’t believe in death without resurrection, he said, a short while before he was killed. If they kill me, I will rise again in the Salvadoran people. Somehow, Good Friday and Easter is about that. A willingness to not win, to die, to be overcome, out of which comes new life. It’s also Spring, here in the frozen north.