Category: lent

7LW: Father

JMJ
✙

This is the final post in a series on the Seven Last Words of Our Lord from the cross. There is a menu and a posting schedule at the bottom of this post.

Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.

WITH GOD AS OUR Father brothers all are we.” That’s a line from the 1955 song Let There be Peace on Earth, composed by Jill Jackson and Sy Miller. It’s a bit treacly, but it was intended for a children’s choir so that’s ok. It’s the Father line I want to call out. Man is created by God. In that respect, God is our Father as Geppetto can be said to be the father of Pinocchio. God is the Father, in this respect, of all creation: all of existence is equally from the hand of the same God. It matters not if you believe in creationism or some form of theistic evolution where God tends us as we evolve. God is the source of all that is, and so a Father. This is certainly no scandal at all. Addressing the Creator as Father is a concept going way back. In some cultures it’s not only the creator that gets this title, it’s every “elder being” if you will, or anything higher up the spiritual food chain.

Jesus’ experience of God as Father was different though. The clergy and people who came to hear him talk called him out on this. John 5:18 says, “Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.” To use a modern phrase, they saw what he did there. This became a stumbling block for both Jews, who felt it blasphemous against monotheism and, later, for Gentiles who while allowing deities to have children, felt the child of a peasant stock who died a traitor to Ceasar and a common criminal was clearly not one of The Family. But, dear reader, this is not the real scandal, nor even that we Christians worship this dead criminal.

We claim that through this dead criminal we, too, have the same relationship to God. The theological term is “filiation” or “son-becoming”. When the spirit of Christ resides in us we call God by a personal name, Abba. Not a title, not a status, but by relationship which we enjoy by participation in the Body of Christ. That is a scandal. We actually claim a relationship that others – who place themselves outside of the Body of Christ – do not have. We claim kinship with God.

And so this prayer of Our Lord, Father, into thy hands..., must become our prayer at every moment. Over and over we must commend to the Father ourselves and one another and all our lives as the Byzantine Liturgy phrases it. This last word must be our first word and, indeed, our only word. The more we pray it the more we must make use of it to pray it all the more: Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.

Spirit here is the Greek word, πνεῦμά, pneuma and it gets used twice in this verse, although we miss it because we’re not reading the Greek. The last word in the verse is ἐξέπνευσεν exepnusen he “breathed his last” one might also render it “he spirited his last” and I think St Luke intends us to hear it both ways at the same time. Jesus is not handing over his “ghost” to the Father: the Son and the Father aspirate the Holy Spirit between them. Jesus is disconnecting here. And he will sink into hell itself to free us all.

We are called to render every breath to God the Father, through the Son (in whose body we participate) in the communion of the Holy Spirit. We are made sons in Christ not as mere creations but as Children of our Heavenly Father.

Sin is a damage to this relationship. I was listening to Gomer and Dave talk about this topic in their episode on Divine Filiation. Gomer pointed out that we’re so used to thinking of Sin as a breaking of a rule: venial sins are little rules, mortal sins are big rules. But sin is a shattering of this relationship of son-ness with Father. It destroys us, literally, as sons of God. We do this in other ways in our culture too: we “identify” as things that are not what God made us to be. In fact, we deny science to do this, and make stuff up. But our pretend “identities” are not who God can save: God can only save who we are, and can only raise us to what he intends us to be: the body of his Son. Our venial sins may never add up to one mortal sin, but they damage us too, our perceptions, our minds, our spiritual vision, can no longer see the road before us. And we all the more easily fall into mortal sin, then.

So every action: every breath you take, every move you make… every step you take must be rendered to God. Into thy hands I commend…

7LW: Telos

JMJ
✙

This is the sixth in a series of posts on the Seven Last Words of Our Lord from the cross. There is a menu and a posting schedule at the bottom of this post.

It is finished.

Perelandra Is CS Lewis’ brilliant and engaging meditation on the Fall. It takes place on Venus in the 1940s where God is making a new race of persons and they are again being tempted to fall away from him. The action plays out through human intervention: God sends an earthman there to act for good since an earthly scientist is already going there in a spaceship, unwittingly to act as the agent of evil. I say “unwittingly” because the scientist believes in nothing: neither good nor evil. The man that is sent, Dr Ransom, is a believer in Christianity but it’s not the Christian faith he’s sent to bring to Venus. Over the course of the novel, Ransom actually plays out more of the role of St Michael than of Christ, defending the Venusian Eve from the wickedness and snares of the devil (being channeled by the scientist). Provided with a tempter and a defender, Eve, must undergo the trial and make her choices. No real spoilers here, but there are deep thoughts in the book about what humanity would have been like without The Fall or the need for redemption.

Man is created in God’s “image and likeness”. What does this mean? The Church Fathers have tossed the question back and forth since while acknowledging that we are fallen now so we cannot know for certain what it would have been like before. But there are some key signs: like our creator we have Free Will. Like our creator we, too, are creators. These hallmarks are damaged in the fall. There is a third, I think, and Lewis draws it out fully in Perelandra. As Children of one divine Father, we are meant to be in as intimate communication with him as God the Son is with his Father, offering back our love in the communion of the Holy Spirit and participating in the Divine life, even as we have our own, individual actions and lives here. In the Fall our ability to do so is lost. We hear other communications, other voices – our passions, from the world around us, our fallen affections and sex drives, our desires, and temptations. Our communication skills are so damaged that many of us hear those other voices and assume they are god. Some hear those other voices and don’t think of them as divine but follow them anyway. Even the devout are torn: we cannot hear the will of God as easily as we can talk to a friend in Slack or Zoom.

We are lost. We don’t hear God (or we think we do when only an “undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato”). Our creative skills turn inward to make golden idols, and our free will is damaged so that we usually pick the wrong things. Yet, God loves us. God dies for us.

It is finished.

This sometimes gets played up like it might mean the debt for our sins is paid by Jesus, or that our redemption is accomplished here – when it’s not: the resurrection and the ascension are both part of our salvation-in-process. Yes, the blood of Christ saves us, but not from some cosmic debt we cannot pay, so God paid himself by his own blood.

It is finished. What? Fr John Behr’s The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death offers an extended meditation on this question: What is finished? He follows the Patristic tradition as does CS Lewis’s work. The Greek word gives the clue: Τετέλεσται tetelestai, fulfilled – brought to its proper conclusion or use.

Adam and Eve were not yet “adult” in the Garden. All of human history was thrown off by, in essence, two teens letting their hormones get the best of them. Think Romeo & Juliet as not a romance but rather, “two teens disobey their parents, do what they shouldn’t do and a lot of people die”. The Garden is not about two adults making choices, it’s about two kids failing to grow up.

The Cross is God dragging us out of puberty into adulthood, bringing us to our Telos. We can decide to keep running around doing whatever we want, or, now we have the option to reconnect to God. To open our hearts to the same level of intimacy enjoyed by the Son with his Father, to have our creativity restored to its rightful use to glorify God, to have our passions put in right order, to have God as our Father, not just our creator.

It is finished: we’ve been reconnected, rewired. We now have our freedom to respond. Time to grow up, to reach our telos which is only possible through the cross.

7LW: Thirst

JMJ
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This is the fifth in a series of posts on the Seven Last Words of Our Lord from the cross. I used this same text last year: but I was limited to a five-minute talk. This is the director’s cut, slightly up-dated because it’s a year later. There is a menu and a posting schedule at the bottom of this post. I’m late on this one. I had a term paper for Church History. Sorry!

I thirst.

MANY OF US as children have woken up at night and asked for a glass of water. Maybe as a parent our child wakes up and asks: Mommy, can I have a glass of water?

These words of our Lord, “I thirst” sound like that same cry.

We wake at night, in the dark, alone, afraid: and we really want Mommy. But “I’m thirsty” is what we say: it makes sense, it’s the feeling we have: our mouth is dry, our throat constricted. As a child, in the night, we don’t have exact words for it so I must be thirsty. But as adults we know what causes it: in the middle of the night, fear is what wakes us up.

No adult says, at that point, “Mommy, can I have some water?” Adults lay in bed and have a panic attack or get out of bed and take more meds: we have to get up to work tomorrow. We deal with the fear in our ways, looking out in the darkness and letting the tapes play over and over in our head.

I thirst.

The eternal, Triune God, in the Second Person in Human Flesh, is crying out because of a dry mouth, part of the whole Flight or Fight thing that the same God built into us for our protection.

This is God’s human weakness. Flight or fight, impossible with both feat and hands nailed down. Unable to even care for one’s needs like a child.

The God who made water. Who made mouths. Who made the nervous system. This God is afraid. This God is thirsty. This God… is about to die.

Was one of the first words ever taught to the Baby, the Word learning words, “yisemeh” – the Aramaic for “Thirsty”? His mother, standing there at the foot of the cross, hears her own baby again crying out “yisemeh”.

There is an icon, much beloved, called “Our Lady of Perpetual Help.” In the East it is called the Theotokos of the Passion. In it the child, Jesus, is held in Mary’s arms. About his head, two angels holding the instruments of the passion fly. One sandal is flopping loose because he didn’t tie it on. The story is that Jesus, the child, had a dream of his passion and cross and, waking up in fear. He ran to his mother for protection.

Eemma…Mommy… Yisemeh!

There is another, not so well known icon, the Akhtyr Icon of the Theotokos. Mary has much the same posture as in the Perpetual help icon, but Jesus is not in her arms.

Yisemeh!

Brothers and Sisters. This is love.

In this time of danger.
In this time of death.
In this time of fear.

God knows… we are all thirsty. We cannot have the chalice. Some of us still cannot even come to mass. We cannot touch to hug, to hold, or shake hands. This is a crucifixion for us. Some do this for safety, but we do not do this out of fear: rather it is out of love for our neighbor, for those who are weakest among us, for those who are most vulnerable.

Our hands are held back, our heart breaks, our love restrains us. Touch – when touch is most needed…

We thirst! We cry out to our mother, the Church who stands by watching and weeping for us.

Our God knows and understands: this is love.

In this time of danger.
In this time of death.
In this time of fear.

Christ our God has been here before us. Become of love, he has faced in mortal flesh, fear and death.

And Jesus has the victory.

We thirst with him today…
He will make us victorious with him.

7LW: Eloi

JMJ
✙

This is the fourth in a series of posts on the Seven Last Words of Our Lord from the cross. There is a menu and a posting schedule at the bottom of this post. I’m late on this one. I had a termpaper for Church History. Sorry!

My God, My God why hast Thou forsaken me.

ONE Hears That when you die, your “life passes before your eyes”. I have wondered about Jesus’ memory on the Cross. What was he thinking there, at that time. Put aside the spiritual issue of salvation and the theological issues of the God-Man and passion. In the excruciating pain of steal in your hands and feet and side, of raw wood ripping at the open wounds on your back, of the gashes on your head; in the derision of the masses, the blood and sweat burning in your eyes that you cannot touch, the nakedness of your body before gentile soldiers laughing at your circumcision, and your mother horrified before you and weeping, what the actual can you be thinking? Did Jesus life pass before his eyes?

As a human baby with no words and a gelatinous brain, Jesus would have no memory of that first night in the cave, of the angels singing, of the shepherds, of the Magi. My earliest memory is at about 14 months, so I’ll project that on the God-Man as a child: so maybe, by the time Herod dies? Jesus might remember leaving Egypt for Nazareth. Then there are sketchy memories from 1.5 years to 1st Grade. I don’t remember 2nd and 3rd grade at all, although I remember things at home in that time. By 4th Grade, though, I have a more concrete collection of memories and this continues up through college, pretty much, although a friend or two will point out (as I blog) that my memories are not always the same ones they have.

Jesus has a human memory. What passes through his mind now? Does Jesus think back and wonder, Where did I go wrong? Were things much simpler in Egypt? Things were easier in Nazareth. I was making good things happen in Capernaum.

I have a tendency to flash back to earlier times and think, “What if I could go back there and fix this?” The other day I had sort of a mental flashback to the mid 90s when the tv show Absolutely Fabulous was very popular. It was also controversial because it was too dark and a bit risque for television. I was not a fan because it highlighted all of our darker sides and created anti-heroes out of the two main characters and, eventually, out of literally all the show. But that’s nowhere near as dark as the evening news, now. Remember when times were that simple? Everything has been downhill since AbFab. Actually, for me, the proper time of TV is in the 70s, with MASH, Mary Tyler Moore,and All in the Family. Maude was pretty brilliant, too. And all of those were pretty risque for their time. But in today’s world of fantasy fetish porn Game of Thrones and sex-murder cult American Horror Story, and death soap-operas, Walking Dead and True Blood (you can tell when I stopped watching current TV now) even the cop dramas of the 70s feel like Sunday School material.

Times were simpler then – and for me. The worst I had to worry about was, Had I done my homework and will Mom notice I only rinsed the dishes and wiped them before I put them away? Time to watch Mork and Mindy!

Why did I ever leave Nazareth? Right now, pierced hands and feet, blood, sweat and tears, what is going trough Jesus mind?

Before college, the summer after graduation, I had a breakdown. Mom found me sitting in a dark office crying. The last thing I wanted to do was leave home. I think it’s the last time I remember being “Mom-ed” as she came over and held me, and just let me cry. 39 years later, I know things were simpler before that time. Mom’s computer on which I typed all my college term papers, was orange text on a black screen. Although it was only set up to be a word processor, I could make it do other things by writing programming in basic. To the amazement of my mom’s boss, the list of all 6 digit numbers that could be pulled in the lottery filled pages and pages of text proving, “the lottery is a tax on the mathematically challenged.” We still pull only 6 numbers (some things never change) but no one bats an eye at a $4,000,000 pot anymore.

I could have stayed in Bethany. Lazarus is a good friend, no one would care if I took up fishing with Peter… but I don’t like fishing. I could have stayed wood working with Dad.

But I have this thing to do.

College was a huge mistake – expensive, unneeded, and undirected. My 30 years in customer service have taught me much more than all the classes I took except for my classes in Western Civ and Religion. I learned how to research and argue my points in those classes – skills that I have needed all along. And, in a class on Judaism, I learned that Jesus would have been able to eat cheeseburgers – because the whole meat and dairy thing wasn’t a thing yet. Even ancient religions evolve.

Lazarus makes good cheeseburgers.

We all have this mission though. St Thomas refers to the processions of the Word and of Love in God. The Word proceeds from the Father, and the Love proceeds from the Father and the Son. The Word incarnate in the world, the Love flowing out through all of us who are now the Body of the Son. We, too, process. Mission is the action of Love in the world through the Body of the Word.

Nothing is simple. At all. We try to discern through consolations, though peace, through “knowing this is the right thing to do…” but that’s not the answer. I should go until God tells me to stop… would have had Jesus not on the cross. Goodness gracious, I would still be in the 70s watching Brady Bunch and eating Pilsbury Food Sticks. (I used to twist together the orange and chocolate ones.)

If we rip out our desire for peace, for comfort, for consolations that make us feel good, though, where does that leave us? We bravely walk forward on Mission and God never tells us to stop.

And then we die.

And still we die.

Did Jesus remember everything or was some of it a bit fuzzy now, and more so with the lack of oxygen. Did he realize the only way forward is to just keep walking?

And die.

I don’t hear Jesus’ cry as one of despair or even loss. It’s a teaching moment.

This is where all of us humans end up – sometimes daily. We have to reach a point beyond which all we have is faith.

Then we have to keep walking as we realize the only choice is turning back (not possible, really, and still likely to lead to death) or go forward (and die).

Let’s roll.

7LW: Behold

JMJ
✙

This is the third in a series of posts on the Seven Last Words of Our Lord from the cross. There is a menu and a posting schedule at the bottom of this post.

Behold Your Mother.

IWONDER ALWAYS Why Jesus took this moment to address his Mother as “woman”. In the gasping asphyxiation of the Cross, was woman easier to say and be heard than mother? Was Attha (woman) a mishearing of Amma (mother) pronounced when one gasps? What is clear though is that in the next line he calls this woman Mother giving her to John the Beloved and through him to us.

Over the Altar of Byzantine Churches there is often an icon called Our Lady of the Sign: Mary with her arms raised in intercession while Our Lord, from within her womb as a child, raises his hands in benediction over the Altar and the unbloodied sacrifice of the Eucharist. Mary is a sign of the Whole Church, raising our hands in prayer at the altar while Christ, our God, blesses the world.

What does it mean to have Mary as our Mother, to have the Church as our Mother?

For 2,000 years each of us have wrestled with the meaning of this question. The Church Fathers are very clear: “He who does not have the Church as his mother cannot have God as his father.” (St Augustine.) Behold your mother.

How each of us hears this command to “Behold” will be predicated on our journey to her. For some our mother will look like calm statues of Our Lady of Grace that can be ignored or sat in a corner while life goes on. For some she will look like Our Lady of Guadalupe, gazing out at us with the eyes of our own people, even though our people are ignored or even oppressed by the Church. For some our Mother will stand with open arms like the Miraculous Medal, while for others she will be so angry as to cry in silence like Our Lady of La Salette. She may be a beautiful woman radiating peace like Our Lady of Lourdes, or she may reveal hell to us, like Our Lady of Fatima. Going further back – especially if we’re not from these parts – Our Mother may seem like a stern Queen or a giggling maiden.

What each of us sees in our Mother the Church, our Mother Mary, we will also see in our own hearts.

Behold your Mother, Jesus says to us. We may see a mother like one of the ancient Goddesses, or we may see a mother like a mid-century Sitcom. We may see Boadicea or we may see Olivia Hussey. We may see a strident ruler like Victoria or an outdated stereotype like Bea Arthur. What we see when we behold our mother, though, will tell us more about ourselves than about either Mary or the Church – for they are the same.

The Church is the Body of Christ, born of Mary and conceived by the Holy Spirit. This is no more a metaphor, no more a symbol, than the Eucharist. Our Mother stands across time and eternity, across space and heaven and yet is here, in the in the present, in the person sitting next to you in pew and in your own heart. CS Lewis’ Uncle Screwtape lets us into the secret:

One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans. All your patient sees is the half-finished, sham Gothic erection on the new building estate. When he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with rather an oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print. When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbours. Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like ‘the body of Christ’ and the actual faces in the next pew…. 

….Work hard, then, on the disappointment or anticlimax which is certainly coming to the patient during his first few weeks as a churchman. The Enemy allows this disappointment to occur on the threshold of every human endeavour. It occurs when the boy who has been enchanted in the nursery by Stories from the Odyssey buckles down to really learning Greek. It occurs when lovers have got married and begin the real task of learning to live together. In every department of life it marks the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing. The Enemy takes this risk because He has a curious fantasy of making all these disgusting little human vermin into what He calls His ‘free’ lovers and servants—’sons’ is the word He uses, with His inveterate love of degrading the whole spiritual world by unnatural liaisons with the two-legged animals. Desiring their freedom, He therefore refuses to carry them, by their mere affections and habits, to any of the goals which He sets before them: He leaves them to ‘do it on their own’. And there lies our opportunity. But also, remember there lies our danger. If once they get through this initial dryness successfully, they become much less dependent on emotion and therefore much harder to tempt….

Behold your Mother. That is, Homer. Or the Church.

See, the issue is that “Our Mother” really is that blundering idiot sitting in the pew next to you, socially distant and holding to the Amen far too long at the end of every prayer or corralling six kids who will not sit still, or wearing all the wrong clothes for Mass. Did they bother to shower before coming from their overnight gig?

Behold your mother.

This is God saving the world and you have but one duty: give your life away for them as Jesus did.

Even if Mom is a bit tarted up with felt banners.

7LW: Today

JMJ
✙

This is the second in a series of posts on the Seven Last Words of Our Lord from the cross. There is a menu and a posting schedule at the bottom of this post.

Today you will be with me in Paradise.

PUT YOURSELF ON THE CROSS next to Jesus there. We want to imagine our self as, perhaps, “The Wise Thief” and we impart all virtue to him and pray we can be like him. The Byzantine Liturgy has a hymn called an Exapostalarian sung on Good Friday, “The Wise Thief, thou didst make worthy of paradise in a single moment,” but put yourself in the theif’s place. I mean really.

When you’re honest with yourself, do you recognize your sinfulness? I mean really honest with yourself. I don’t mean, right now, while you’re reading these words but rather, over all the course of your life, are you honestly aware of all the missteps? And, perhaps, if you are like me, you not only have “missteps” but outright rejections or even betrayals that weigh on your mind, your heart. Do you lay awake at night and say, “What was I thinking?” Are there times when you point at your misspent youth and chuckle and say “Wow, I was a fool.” But then other times you wonder, “Did I break everything then? Was I such a fool that that can’t be fixed”

We might look at ourselves in the mirror of our lives and see, in the past, was I so in the employ of darkness that even now I cannot enter the light.

And Jesus whispers to us, “Today you shall be with me.”

Imagine hearing these words – entirely unexpectedly – after having said, “I deserve this.” That’s exactly what the Thief said, “I totally messed up and I deserve this crucifixion. I deserve this public humiliation. I deserve this pain. I deserve this blood. This suffocation.” So, the thief knows exactly the kind of man he is. “Today…”

Is there doubt now? For knowing who you are, what you are, what you were in the past, what you may even now crave to still be… of course there is doubt.

CS Lewis puts this doubt even into Narnian Paradise where a dead Calormene soldier (the “bad guys”) finds himself in the Heavenly garden at the end of The Last Battle. I don’t want to unpack the theology because there is a controversy that is not the point of this essay, but – even standing in Paradise – the Wise Calormene doubts he should be there.

Is that you? It’s me.

How can this God who knows not only everything I ever did – or even ever will do, who knows how I rejected him, blasphemed him, denied him in public (and in private); how can this God whose very pains, wounds, suffocation, and bleeding were, in ways I cannot understand, caused by my actions say to me, “Today.”

This is the cost of love: not Jesus’ pains, but you letting go of your doubt. That is the cost of Love. If you love Jesus, it’s ok to be honest about yesterday but also to let go of your doubts about today.

Trust is such a hard thing to gain, but even harder to extend. We sort of want a vengeful God. We want him to be judgy and spiteful. Of course we usually want that directed at others, at our enemies, but in our more self-reflective moments that same vengeful and spiteful God should be directed at us, right? For, in the first person, if anyone deserves that treatment it’s me.

When the Wise Thief heard the word today what did he think? Did he leaned back and relax on the wood of his cross? I doubt that. The nails were still as painful the air still as hard to grasp in lungs constricted by crucifixion. Did he suddenly wonder if he was crucified next to a crazy man? Paradise in the middle of all of this? Scripture doesn’t say. We should not interpolate.

But for me, for you, we have both heard the word today, just now. And like the thief we have the rest of our lives before us to contemplate what that means.

Denial of the reality can sound like we’re being spiritually mature. We can make a “humble brag” and say something pious like Domine, non sum dignus as we thumb our chests. But God wants to move us one step further along. It’s not enough to be aware of your sins, to know that you deserve what’s coming to you. When Jesus prayed, a moment ago, “Father, forgive them.” He included you.

And now he offers you Paradise.

Not pie in the sky by and by when you die. But Today. We see heaven each time we see Mass. We touch eternity each time the host enters our body. Will you deny it or open up to it?

Trust is hard to earn – but even harder to extend. Really. Paradise. You need only trust and it’s yours. Today.

7LW: Forgive

JMJ
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This is the first in a series of posts on the Seven Last Words of Our Lord from the cross. This series will continue through Lent. There is a menu and a posting schedule at the bottom of this post.

Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.

Forgiveness IS NOT ONLY Something nice to do it is a hallmark of Christianity. Ancient religions are filled with curses, imprecations, taboos, and days of impropriety. Many of the traditions allowed for paybacks of some kind: debt which had to be paid, curses which had to be undone, ditches that had to be filled. If you read the earlier books to indicate that the “Jewish God” was like this, you’d be wrong, though. It’s not correct to say the God of the Old Testament demanded repayment: as if the blood of bulls or of goats could repay for sins. Sin took life – the very life force – from one. Sacrifice restore that balance but it did not forgive. God taught us in the sacrificial rites that something was off. Something was amiss in humanity. Something needed fixing.

Sin is a symptom of this sickness.

In the case of God, responding to Christ’s intercession forgiveness is instant and forever and for all involved. When Christ begs forgiveness here, it’s not just for the soldiers at his feet, it’s literally for you and me as well. We suffer from this thing amiss which has, as a presenting symptom, sin in general and each of our discrete acts of sin in particular. Christ begs forgiveness for us all and the Father offers it to us all.

But the thing amiss won’t even let us accept God’s Gift of forgiveness. To accept the forgiveness offered is to say we are wrong. This one thing amiss is so ingrained in us that we feel like it’s our true human nature. It’s almost like our identity: it’s who we are – or who we feel we are – and to accept forgiveness is to admit that who we thought we were is not who we were intended to be. We are addicted to shoring up this fake identity. We build arches and buttresses, fortifications and ramparts designed to prop up this imaginary thing. This thing is thinking that we are God, we are self-made, we can do whatever we want. To accept forgiveness is to admit that that is a lie, that our entire identity and sense of self is smoke and mirrors.

We learn to think this from our parents and from generation after generation of our predecessors. We come to imagine that to accept this forgiveness is somehow to betray them as well. So ingrained is this sickness, this fake identity that to accept this forgiveness is to die in a real way. To accept this forgiveness to be crucified. Jesus prays from the cross for our forgiveness he’s inviting us to join him.

Saint Paul says, “I am crucified with Christ and yet I live. Yet not I but Christ who lives in me.”

When we die, Christ lives, and we are forgiven.

The curious gift of this forgiveness is that once we accept it, once we accept that we are not God, we are given the Divine ability to forgive others in exactly the same way.

And so, from the Cross of our lives, we can hang suspended in pain and bleeding and still say, “Forgive.”

We can take every gift God has given us in the death of Jesus only by admitting that we are not God and that we need these gifts. But in doing so we become empowered to dispense those gifts to all around us.

And, like Jesus on the Cross, we have the divine gift to offer forgiveness even to those who do not seek it, who may even reject it if they knew we offered it.

7LW: Introduction

JMJ
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FOR LENT THIS YEAR, as I have done for Advent for most of the last 20 years, I will post a series of meditations on a regular schedule. The theme for this series is the Seven Last Words of Our Lord, spoken from the Cross on Good Friday. There is a menu at the bottom, along with a posting schedule: it starts on Sunday 28th February and runs until 30th March.

Everyone has their own Calvary: “Toiling up new Calv’ries ever / With the cross that turns not back” as the old hymn says. Jesus’ last words become our words as well. Let us see where this meditation takes us.

By the light of burning martyrs,
Jesus’ bleeding feet we track,
Toiling up new Calv’ries ever
With the cross that turns not back;
New occasions teach new duties,
Time makes ancient good uncouth;
They must upward still and onward,
Who would keep abreast of truth.

(I mean, it is Lent…)

Lent’s Here. Let’s talk food.

+JMJ+

BBC Radio 4’s The Kitchen Cabinet is one of my most favourite things, right after whiskers on kittens and Atmospheric River Events on roses. They travel the UK looking for regional specialties and sharing cooking advice. Most of the members of the panel are from some part of the UK (I think), but they even have a token American who is called on to explain things like corn dogs. I love them not just because they read one of my recipes on the air (and raved…) but also because I keep learning stuff from them. Some cooking shows only make me hungry, this one makes me laugh and also put on that “thinking emoji” face that spins.

The recipe they shared from me involved split peas, or, as they seem to prefer it spelled, pease. You’ve heard the nursery rhyme, “peas porridge hot”. Or, to use the correct spelling,

Pease porridge hot. 
Pease porridge cold.
Pease porridge in the pot
Nine days old.

The Wiki notes that “pease” was the original mass noun like “sheep”. Pea is a neologism and “peas” is even newer.

To make pease porridge, one uses yellow split pease. The nutrition information for this is really quite surprising. In 100 grams (uncooked) we find:

Dietary fiber 50g
Sugar 16g
Protein 48g

Fiber and protein far out-weigh the sugars. That same cup of uncooked veggies has a tiny bit of fat and a whopping 341 calories. (100 grams of brussel sprouts has 46 calories. 100g of russet potatoes has 79 calories.) Pease are high energy, high protein treats! No wonder they were a huge part of the diet not only in the Mediaeval period but also in the many parts of the world right up until the modern era. They don’t have a lot of different vitamins, but they are very high in magnesium and iron (nearly 50% RDA of each). This is a good food value for folks.

It’s simple to make: soak 200g yellow split pease in water overnight. (It’s the 21st century, folks. Buy a scale. If you prefer traditional imperial weight measurements: .03 stone.) Drain but don’t rinse. My rice cooker is perfect for this: just add water to cover and then run in through a cycle, stir, add water to cover again, and one more cycle. Done. Texture is an issue for some folks: if you like it bit on the chewy side and you can add about a quarter cup of raw pease before the second cycle. Other’s like it very smooth and will run an immersion blender through it. Simple, right? As it cools it turns into a think goop rather like very stiff mashed potatoes. Add butter if you want. The trick is how you decide to flavor it.

Traditionally, you would dice a carrot and a small onion, add salt and paper and a bay leaf or two. There is a California Bay in the back yard and I can vouch for the goodness of this recipe. You upscale with bacon or ham. Serve it on bread, toast, biscuits, etc. Some Bisto gravy makes this completely amazing. It seems it’s also traditional to use this as a sandwich spread of some sort, but I can’t figure that out.

But flavoring, or flavouring…

The first time there was no ham so broth was made with red miso paste. It was amazing.
The second time there was no miso, so only bacon went in. That was astounding.
The third time I used a packet of onion soup mix in the water. Sooo good! Add garlic!

And this time, going a little crazy, a packet of mild chili mix was whisked into the second addition of water.
Also: evidently the Greek food “Fava” is sometimes made with split peas… but I don’t know if that’s really the case. I can see this being used  for hummus, too.
When it gets cold it’s quite like mashed taters. I’ve fried it up in pancakes at that point. It’s really good on toast and my best way of eating it has involved a garlic naan (from TJ’s) with a mound of pease. Put a deep divet in the pease and break an egg into it. Put it in the toaster oven until you’re ready to eat the egg: sunny side, over easy, over medium, etc… it just takes getting used to your oven.
Some like it hot.
Some like it cold.
I like it in the pot
Nine days old.
Benedicto benedicatur!

Who’s Coming to Dinner?

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JMJ

The Readings for the Saturday after Ash Wednesday (B2)
Station at San Augustino

Et fecit ei convivium magnum Levi in domo sua : et erat turba multa publicanorum, et aliorum qui cum illis erant discumbentes.
And Levi made him a great feast in his own house; and there was a great company of publicans, and of others, that were at table with them. 

My grandfather died in 2002. On the first anniversary of his death, I went to my new priest, Fr V, and asked if we could have a Panikhida said for him. This is a memorial service prayed after death and on the anniversary every year. It’s not a mass or full-on requiem. It takes about 15-20 mins to sing. But it’s a nice memorial. Many ultra-Orthodox do not allow such things to be prayed for Protestants, so I asked Fr V if one would be possible. Of course! Why not? Because he was not Orthodox, Father. His reply, which I can still hear, “Raphael, if we didn’t pray for the non-Orthodox, who would we have to pray for?”

Jesus sits and eats with anyone. This table fellowship (which is not the same as communion fellowship – which he shares only with his apostles) is an important hallmark of Jesus’ ministry. This eating-with the unclean was a serious thing. It proceeds through the New Testament, marking not that “there is no chosen people” any more, but the realization that we are all sinners.  Jesus is God, communing with us. We find in that not only our salvation, but the will, the desire to eat with others.

But Jesus’ actions are not isolated one-offs. We must eat with sinners too, not just nightly at the supper table, but in all parts of our lives. We don’t just eat with sinners because we are sinners, we are evangelizing. In fact, since communion fellowship is becoming at-one with Christ in the Holy Mysteries, we can say that Table Fellowship is Christ continuing his work of evangelism. By inviting strangers to eat with me, Christ continues to eat with us sinners. This invitation to fellowship is a covert invitation to come see a Christian up close. Isaiah wants someone who will feed the hungry and keep the Sabbath. We are to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God – ie be generous and easy to all except in the first person. Eating with sinners does not override the universal call to holiness, but it does focus it in the first person. We must each be able to say, “We’re all called to sainthood, you’re closer than I will ever be.”

My friend, T, used to get on the Subway in NYC with a bag of Sandwiches. He would give a sandwich to anyone who needed (or just wanted) food. And he would take money from anyone who would donate to help. There’s a model for you. My friend, J, would make piles of pancakes on Saturday Mornings and give them away in a park in San Francisco until he was out. Who’s coming to dinner? Or Lunch? Or coffee with you? Don’t just give ’em $5, bring them to Taco Bell and ask what’s up with their lives. Awkward for everyone, I know. But so good for everyone too.

Of course, it’s Lent, so I talked about food.