Lenten Journey- Good Friday- Loving the Real

God does not love some ideal person, but rather human beings just as we are, not some ideal world, but rather the real world.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Meditations on the Cross

On the cross, no matter how we explain it, God in Jesus knew the reality of being human. It was not a warm, fuzzy, feel-good moment. I have no idea how or why it happened. There are many different theological explanations. I have a hunch all of them are wrong- and all of them may have a kernel of truth. If I could understand it, it wouldn’t be the work of God.

What I do know is that in the eternal wisdom and will of the Creator of the universe, Good Friday was the first half of the revolution and restoration of humanity. Jesus knew very well how we humans act. God knew very well how we humans can be evil and do injustice to our fellow humans.

Yet there was that cross.

At that I am speechless.

Were the whole realm of nature mine, 

that were a present far too small. 

Love so amazing, so divine, 

demands my soul, my life, my all.

Toward Pentecost (35): Renewal

Cross Purposes

During our recent stay on the Gulf Coast, two interesting items pulled me out of my mind-relaxing default mode.

One was on the front page of the paper and had the following information:

Beach weddings have always been popular on Alabama's coast and now a reef-focused nonprofit is taking it to another level...

[A] shell-covered concrete cross is being deployed at the nearshore reef called "Poseidon's Playground." Once it's in place in about 38 feet of water, 3.5 miles off the coast of Orange Beach, it will begin serving as an altar for underwater wedding ceremonies, according to Vince Lucido, president of the Alabama Gulf Coast Reef and Restoration Foundation.

Underwater weddings have been popular in the Florida Keys for decades and are common in tropical locales around the world.

Having an underwater wedding altar would be unique to Gulf Coast, [a spokesperson] said.

"We would be the only one basically between California and south Florida, which would be pretty cool," she said. "This is going to be huge."
--Link

Reading more than the headline does give more depth (sorry, but unintentional pun) to the story. They are actually working hard at restoring reefs and providing places for divers. It is not some out in left field kind of scheme. But I know you won't find me officiating at any of those services.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The other item bothered me more than this one, though. We were going shopping one day and a booth was set up at the entrance looking for donations for the tallest cross in the western hemisphere. Here's an earlier story on it from WKRG in Mobile:

SUMMERDALE, Alabama -

Members of the Gulf Coast Cross Project want to build the tallest cross in the western hemisphere. At 23 stories tall it will easily be one of the tallest structures in central Baldwin County. The group already has land donated for the project in Summerdale. With a community welcome center they want the cross to be a spiritual tourist destination.

“Being illuminated at night the six million approximate annual visitors and be reminded about what Christ did for us on the cross,” says Gulf Coast Cross Project Founder Jon Butler. They hope to finish the project by 2015. Butler says the cost will be around $750,000.
--Link

It is hard for me to remain sane about this and not want to make snide remarks.

I don't know if they are trying to compete with the Christo Redemptor Statue in Rio de Janiero which is, for comparison, only 13 stories tall, though it is on the top of the 2,300 foot peak of a mountain. They talk about the evangelistic importance of the project. But it sure seems to me that $750,000 can do a lot more effective evangelism than a cross in the middle of the Bible-belt of Alabama.

When I was hungry, thirsty, naked or in prison, you reminded me of my lostness by ignoring me and spending all your money on a 23-story cross.

No, I didn't contribute.

Christ on the Cross, Federico Barocci, 1604
The Prado Museum, pmPilgrim picture, 2002

Good Friday, 2009

There can be no resurrection...

if there is no death.

Yet we want to turn our heads,
avert our eyes,
ignore the crowd and
the weeping women.

Even the one holding him as he is brought from the cross-

his mother

experiencing the greatest pain a mother
can bear.

But here we will see something beyond our ability to believe or
even to understand.

Here we will see the start of something new-

a new way of describing the world

a new way of describing God

and a new way of being human.

Silence of Grief - Shouts of Tears

The day in-between. The day when the overwhelming silence of loss and grief was equaled only by the pain and cries of the tears of death. A Sabbath to be forgotten. A Day of Rest that may even have seemed endless because of what had happened.

So I end this Holy Week with one last clip from Jesus Christ Superstar (1973). John 19:41-

19:41. Now there was in the place where he was crucified a garden: and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein no man yet had been laid.

Note: At 1:44 the shepherd appears in the lower left. It is unintentional, we are told. Perhaps, but there may well have been another "Director."

Good Friday

Cadiz.
April 5, 2002

Cross-posted with pmPilgrim photoBlog.

--Crucifixion from Jesus Christ Superstar (1973):

Holy Week 2007-
Good Friday- The System Wins- or Does It?
(Based on thoughts from Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan in the book, The Last Week.)

Darkness and death. It is Good Friday and all has come to an end. The "domination system of ancient Rome with religious cooperation wins. Jesus of Nazareth is gone.

It is injustice at its most visible. It is an injustice that is so horrifyingly common in history, so routine, that one would have to say that such actions and systems are the rule not the exception. Borg and Crossan (pp. 162-163) say it is part of the historic "normalcy of civilization."

Jesus has been crucified- killed- by the sin of the world.

He is far from alone.

Yet he accepted the road of the Cross. He accepted its inevitability for when you confront the sin of the world, it is never pretty, no matter where or how that sin is embodied. No wonder so few have felt the willingness to follow that call. No matter we (all, myself as much as anyone) transform it into a superficial emotional moment that happened to Jesus. We can be moved by Bach's St. Matthew Passion or emotionally overturned by Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ. It helps remove me from the possibility that if I would follow this Jesus I might have to face the domination systems of sin and the world and establishment and the dark and broken places of my own heart.

Author John Howard Yoder reminds us of the real power of the Cross as we all wander away with the disciples this Friday to wait for the Sabbath to be over and the Lord's Day to begin:

The cross of Christ was not an inexplicable or chance event, which happened to strike him, like illness or accident. To accept the cross as his destiny, to move toward it and even to provoke it, when he could well have done otherwise, was Jesus’ constantly reiterated free choice; and he warns his disciples lest their embarking on the same path be less conscious of its costs.
Source: The Politics of Jesus
--from Inward/Outward