Saturday Living, Part III

At the Easter Vigil, people will gather after sunset and stand with candles in the dark. They will sing the Litany of the Saints. They will call the names of the dead and ask them, "Pray for us." It's a call for help: we aren't enough on our own. It's a profession of love: we don't want to be without you. It's a statement of faith: we know that you are not lost.

There at the tipping point between Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday, between darkness and light, decay and rebirth, abandonment and adoption, people will gather together in faith that it's about to get better. People will gather in faith that God changes everything. They will read each other the story of how God threw God's own self down from Heaven, took on a messy, breakable human life, and set to work rescuing us. 

The story of how Christ chose the rough and loudmouthed and greedy to spread his way of gentleness and meekness and contentment.

The story of how Christ saw that our Scripture and Laws needed to be cleaned like an old rug, and he brought them out into the light and beat the grit and the bugs out of them, and gave them back to us bright and beautiful and useful. 

The story of how Christ looked at things they way they are, and it made him cry.

The story of how Christ loved us so much that he became one of us. And how it didn't work out.

Just like it doesn't work out for us. 

And it had a sad ending.

Just like our stories do.


But after the ending, the story kept going. How strange is that? The God who left us showed up and promised that he would never leave. It's not a story with a happy ending-- it's a story that doesn't end.

So every year we loop back around, following the cycle of promise, of birth, of ministry, of betrayal, of death, and of resurrection. Somewhere in there, we believe, the world is getting fixed. Somehow, we believe, our loop of birth and death gets broken and straightened out, and the lost are found, and the hungry are full, and the people who were gone so long before we were born are right next to us.

Someday, Saturday tips over into Sunday and we never go back.

Saturday Living, Part II

In the National Gallery of Art, there is a series of five panels by Benvenuto di Giovanni, showing the events of Holy Week. The fourth depicts Christ in Limbo, that extra place where early Christian philosophers felt it necessary to stick the dead who couldn't reach Heaven but didn't deserve Hell. According to Peter, on Holy Saturday Christ was liberating the dead from the underworld. All the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, all the holy pagans and those faithful who died without seeing the fulfillment of God's Kingdom, lay waiting for Christ to come to their rescue, smash down the gates of Hades, and lead them out into the light of Heaven. So here, di Giovanni shows Christ at the opening of a cavern, the waiting dead crowded up at the entrance, eagerly reaching out to touch their savior. The gates of Limbo have been torn down, and, in a nice touch, Christ is standing atop the gate while a squashed demon lies spread-eagle below it, Looney Tunes-style. Christ is carrying a flag, bringing the dominion of God into the unreachable, hopeless places.

From the National Gallery website

So that's Saturday. Back above ground, the disciples huddle together, abandoned and afraid. Salvation is happening somewhere on Saturday, but it's not yet apparent in the world. On the other side there is rejoicing, the upending of death, the victory of the cross, but for people living in the everyday, death and fear and oppression are still the winners. On Saturday, Caeser still reigns.

I saw this painting on Holy Saturday last year, midway through my pregnancy, confused and lonely. Four blocks from home after leaving the Gallery, I was approached by a women with a preteen daughter. I'm homeless, she said. We need some money for food. Great, I thought, I can buy them lunch, chit-chat, ask them if they've tried to get help through ASPAN, see if there's anyone I can get them in touch with.

Sure, I said; I can take you to one of these restaurants for lunch.

We need money for food, she repeated. We're hungry.

Saturday Living, Part I

This past April, Patrick was out of town during Holy Week for his cousins' Confirmation, and I was in town working on a deadline. Most years, Triduum (the stretch from Maundy Thursday to Easter Sunday) is a rush of different services as we try to make observances with both of our churches.

But this year was quiet, slow, deliberate. On Holy Saturday, I had nowhere to be. So I went to the National Mall, to the National Gallery of Art, to look at Crucifixion images.

I had moved into the second trimester of my pregnancy. Now was the settling-in, trying to get used to the sudden and dramatic changes to my body, looking ahead to the changes to my life. Asking, "Is that all-- is my life somebody else's story now? Did I never get around to telling my own story?"

Living in Sin

When I was in high school, I remember a Sunday School teacher telling us about life as a Christian.

“It’s simple,” he said, “but it’s not easy.”

Turns out that Christianity is not simple. Turns out that right thinking and right living in a complex world is not simple. Turns out that, coming after two millennia of Christian history, a simple doctrine that fits onto a 3-inch tract can only exist by ignoring the majority of Christian thought and experience.

Mortal Sin

I stood on the sidewalk outside of the youth group meeting spot, talking to Carrie. Inside, rowdy teens piled on sofas or chased each other around for the last few minutes before their parents arrived to pick them up. Out here it was a warm, quiet evening on Market Street in downtown Dayton, a place where all the shops closed at 5.

The door opened, releasing the sounds of laughter and one small child. She stalked up to us and stood toe-to-toe with me, staring up at my face.

"Are you a skater?" she asked suspiciously. 

"No," I said, "I fall off of things with wheels."

She leaned closer, wrinkling her nose.

"Are you goth?!" she asked. I looked down at my black clothing.

"I don't know. I guess so," I said. She turned and looked at Carrie.

"Is she going to go to Heaven?" she asked. Carrie and I burst into laughter. She turned beet red and stalked off.

If there was anything to be learned from that experience, none of us figured it out.

Baptist Bingo: What the Sam Hill do you guys believe, anyway?

There's about a 100% chance that at some point this month, I'll go to church and hear a sermon about how we are completely depraved and how God wants to save us, and sent His son Jesus to die on the cross and bear God's wrath for our sins, offering himself as a substitutionary atonement to erase our bad standing with God. Then there will be an appeal for us to ask Jesus to come into our hearts, because only when we freely choose to accept the crucifixion for our sins will we experience God's saving grace. From that point we can rest assured that we are guaranteed to enter into Heaven when we die.

That is the personal doctrine of my church's interim pastor. He is a huge fan of penal substitutionary atonement theory. He's also an Arminian.

The End Of The World, Part II: When you come back again. . . would you bring me something from the fridge?

I don't really believe that Jesus is ever coming back. If I did, I'd being living with a sense of urgency, and I'd be getting stuff done.

I'd be a free-spirited, crunchy granola social justice and environmentalism fanatic. I would be involved in AFAC and ASPAN beyond sending a check or some canned food once a year. I would produce a bag lunch and a gift card for every homeless person who stopped me on the street. I would definitely not be wearing business-casual slacks and blazers; I would be in some kind of homespun fair-trade organic Quaker plain dress. I would be so humble that everyone would notice.

The End of the World, Part I

My supervisor and I have different approaches to correcting flawed work. When I’ve been assigned to rework a project, I begin by evaluating how the project was assembled, and then I assess which parts of the project can be salvaged.

My supervisor deletes everything and starts from scratch.