I have been continually struck by the absence of a proper title for the Saturday of Holy Week. As the day before Easter Sunday, arguably the most important day of the Christian calendar, you'd think it would have a more venerable role in the week long services that are called Holy Week. There's Palm Sunday to start off the week, but the momentum of the week really gets going on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. [In fact, I have noticed that many churches, assuming that congregants won't make it back to church before the next Sunday (Easter Sunday), race through the story of Christ's entrance to Jerusalem to the trial to the death on the cross to the anticipation of the Resurrection on Palm Sunday. Thus, a weeklong process is condensed into two days.]
On Good Friday, Jesus was nailed to the cross and uttered the words "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" before he died and was buried.
Even now as I type, my urge is to burst in with the "he rose again from the dead" part of the Apostle's Creed and voila! We're at the joy of the Resurrection!
But- what about Saturday?
The story of Jesus is reminiscent of a movie we're watched about 2000 times- once you've seen how it ends, it is pretty hard to appreciate the tension felt when we didn't know what was going to happen. To use a completely trivial example- I was a wreck when reading the Harry Potter series. I mean, that last book! Wow, I didn't sleep all night because I was completely absorbed in the story and riddled with anxiety about whether my hero, my beloved hero who I had basically grown up with, was going to make it out ok.
Thus, in my humble opinion, it seems that if Easter Sunday is the high point of the Christian year, Holy Saturday might be one of the darkest days. Holy Saturday was the time of silence, the time of waiting... where the folks watching weren't at all sure what was going to happen next.
This wasn't just me being a nervous wreck because of some character in a book- this was a group of believers who thought enough of one man's work to drop everything and follow him. They had left their families, their loved ones, and their jobs... all to follow a man through small towns in an obscure corner of the Roman Empire. And now... He was dead?? Really? What was the point of it all, if he was really gone? How can the Savior cry out that he has been forsaken and then die?
No one was sure of anything during that time. Had I been one of those followers of Jesus, I think I would have felt the doubt and uncertainty creep in. After all, how can a God be killed? Especially for the people of the time, this was in many ways a total impossibility (isn't the point of being divine that you don't have to deal with that sort of thing?) However you look at it, these folks had taken a major risk. And on Holy Saturday, the results of their gamble were still very much in the air. No side could claim victory, only anxiety.
What do you do on Holy Saturday, when it seems that all hope has been lost? How can we fully appreciate the joy of Easter Sunday without the utter hopelessness of Saturday?
If I might continue with my thought train, it also seems indicative of something within the church that we have never really known what to do with Holy Saturday. While I am far from being a church historian or liturgist, in my own experience I can't recall a service for the day.
Just because there is blank space in the narrative does not mean there is no substance. The silence of Holy Saturday might be one of the most profound lessons for our community. What does the church do, when all the lights go out? "The night may be darkest before the dawn," but that only comforts us because it presumes the dawn will come. What does it mean to live in the darkness with no certainty of the coming dawn?
The haunting quiet of Holy Saturday is too easy to lose in our race to the glory of Christ as a risen and victorious Lord. I wonder what we can do to slow that down, not just during Holy Week, but during the rest of the weeks in the year.
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Another thought: I also imagine the reactions of the broader community when faced with the grief of the followers of Jesus. What about the people who had condemned Jesus to the cross? Jesus might have left, but all the humans were still stuck in the same little corner of the Roman Empire. I hope this isn't too flippant to say... but I also imagine Holy Saturday must have been really awkward and uncomfortable. The broader community still had to interact with one another during this time of deep grief for a segment of it. The people who said they wanted Jesus crucified didn't evaporate- they continued to exist alongside the devout friends of Jesus.
That thought transitions me into a broader concept I am struggling with now. Thanks to a free month of Netflix, I have been racing through a large number of pretty depressing and poignant documentaries. The two I watched today, "Forgiving Dr. Mengele" and "Deliver Us From Evil," both dealt with the deepest darkness of the human soul, the former in regards to the Holocaust and the latter in regards to pedophilia within the Catholic priesthood.
From my experience in Nashville (as described in my last post), I have had the subject of forgiveness heavily on my mind. In the first documentary, a woman who was subjected to horrible experiments by Nazi doctors in Auschwitz speaks out of her conviction to forgive all the Nazis for their crimes. She is lauded by some, but interestingly not supported and even criticized by many of her fellow survivors. Lastly, she is convinced by a person she meets to put her ideal of forgiveness to the test again by meeting with a group of Palestinians in the West Bank (she lived in Israel for 10 years). While I don't want to ruin it, I will say that I was left with a sense of unease and a lack of resolution in the end. [Very important: I am making no comment on what victims/perpetrators in either case should do as I am merely a passing observer of these two films].
The moral ambiguity present in these cases, the deep and long lasting pain and lament described by the people in each case.... seems somehow fitting for Holy Saturday. There was not resolution or easy answers in either case and viewers of the two films are largely left to figure things out for themselves. After watching "Deliver Us From Evil," I wept at seeing the pain of the victims and their families. After speaking with a Catholic priest in Nashville convicted of molesting young boys, I was disturbed and compelled by his humanity. For me, this means that I can't watch that documentary with the same easy lines drawn in the sand. I am left unsettled, in the most visceral sense of the word.
Thus, while I long for Easter Sunday... I wonder if I didn't move too quickly through my own Holy Saturday.
From here to there.
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Monday, April 2, 2012
Forgiveness
I have been meaning to write this blog for 2 weeks now... but better late than never, I suppose.
Two weeks ago I had the privilege of traveling to Nashville, TN with several of my Wesley Urban Fellows classmates to participate in a lecture series on mass incarceration and also to visit the Riverbend High Security Penitentiary with pastor and educator Rev. Janet Wolf.
We heard a beautiful and compelling speech by Michelle Alexander, author of "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" (see here for the book: http://www.newjimcrow.com/). This event, sponsored by this amazingly radical little college called American Baptist College (http://www.abcnash.edu/), was thought-provoking and disturbing at the same time. For more info, I encourage you to check out Alexander's novel.
However, the part of our trip that had the most impact on me was our visit to Riverbend (http://www.tn.gov/correction/institutions/rmsi.html).
Rev. Wolf, along with other educators from the Nashville area, have been working at this prison for nearly 15 years alongside "insiders" (as the inmates are called) in order to build a group within the prison. This group, consisting of approximately 15 insiders, has been meeting regularly for years and is self-directed and self-determining. In these meetings, they discuss books, theology, education, and their lives. They are a community.
I was so excited to meet with these men- after hearing my friend Doug talk about it, they sounded like the closest thing to our community/student exchanges in Thailand, which I missed deeply. Thus, after being searched and allowed into the prison (I even had to shake my bra out ha), we were led through a maze of buildings, barbed wire, high fences, men with huge guns, and open green spaces to a room with a group of men sitting around outside. Due to my faster than normal walking pace, I was one of the first to arrive in the room.
In some ways, this was my greatest fear. I have always felt uncomfortable around large groups of men, especially those I know has been convicted of violent crimes. But, due to my training both abroad and in SC, I knew that I needed to take a deep breath and jump in without thinking through all that.
Any fear I had was soon alleviated- I was greeted with big smiles and handshakes. We walked around introducing ourselves and reveling in the welcome of the place. Each person I met greeted me with such openness and care- it was like truly meeting someone, without all the pretensions and masks we often wear in public. In this room, I felt as if I had entered one of the most "real" spaces of my life.
We sat down, each of the Wesley students between two of the insiders to mix up the groups. I laughed with the men at my sides, and felt such joy at being welcomed into that room with them. What a privilege to really feel like we were sitting at God's table, communing with one another and loving one another.
Any curiosities about their crimes, or why they were at Riverbend, evaporated as we sat in the room. As we went around and shared (insiders first, then Wesley folks), I shared that I knew the criminal system was racist because I thought/think that way. I criminalized black males for much of my life, and had a fear of them as the "other." As I shared this, a light went on in one of the inmates eyes. He eagerly wished to speak with me more, but the exchange was ending. Quickly, he said "I really want to address your comment." We sat down as everyone hurried around us and he asked "Have you ever seen the movie A Time to Kill??" I said I hadn't, and he briefly explained the plot in which a black man is accused of a crime and hires a white lawyer to defend him. This insider, JBaby, ended by saying "He said that he chose this lawyer because he knows how they think. This person was chosen because they used to think like that, and now they can help because they know how they think." I was struck by this, and it stuck with me as I left the prison. (Here is the trailer to the movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O90-DO9P6q0)
In fact, this small interaction has stuck with me in the weeks after the trip. As I struggle to discern God's plan for my life, I keep coming back to the words of JBaby in Riverbend, paraphrased as they are: "I called you because you know how they think."
What a powerful statement, what a beautiful insight for my life... from a man that society teaches us is a criminal who deserves to rot away in prison. The Bible calls us to prison ministry, but not because we need to tell folks in prison anything. The Bible calls us to this for our own souls, so that we may love deeply and build community with all of God's creation. I was moved and changed through my experience, especially after leaving the prison and discovering more about the crimes committed.
This is why I titled this post "forgiveness." After meeting and learning alongside a former Catholic priest convicted of molesting young boys, I am compelled to reimagine God's love. I am convicted by the humanity of this person and the other folks we met during the above meeting and also on death row. Our exchange with the death row inmates was filled with the Spirit and tears came to my eyes as I heard the men speak of God's redeeming love in their lives, of the importance of this group time for them (many are in solitary confinement the rest of the time), and the joy with which they interacted with the prison chaplain there.
When we look into another person's eyes, when we shake their hand, we are compelled to recognize our vast similarities rather than differences. I am suddenly aware that you are not only "murderer," but a human just like me. In Genesis, God created humans and declared it good. What a powerful statement for our lives- that we have all been declared good, regardless of our actions!
To leave this at mere theological reflection would be selfish on my part, however. Our love for one another must then become an action, done hand in hand with those who society (but not God) teaches us can be thrown away.
Which part of God's creation can be forgotten, or locked away in the darkness? Who is unworthy of love?
Despite my deep discomfort with the vastness of God's love, I am moved by it and can find no loopholes in it. Thankfully God's love is greater than my own very conditional and sensitive human feelings.
In closing, I owe such a debt of gratitude to the brave men of Riverbend High Security Penitentiary and Rev. Janet Wolf, Jeannie Alexander, and all the others who make this kind of experience possible. To all my new and old friends at Vanderbilt Divinity School, I strongly encourage you to get into the class! (Taught at the prison with VDS students and insiders in the class).
I am so humbled by the power of love in my life and so grateful to be at Wesley, where I can take life-changing trips with my classmates.
Some photos of our time in Nash-vegas. :)
Two weeks ago I had the privilege of traveling to Nashville, TN with several of my Wesley Urban Fellows classmates to participate in a lecture series on mass incarceration and also to visit the Riverbend High Security Penitentiary with pastor and educator Rev. Janet Wolf.
We heard a beautiful and compelling speech by Michelle Alexander, author of "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" (see here for the book: http://www.newjimcrow.com/). This event, sponsored by this amazingly radical little college called American Baptist College (http://www.abcnash.edu/), was thought-provoking and disturbing at the same time. For more info, I encourage you to check out Alexander's novel.
However, the part of our trip that had the most impact on me was our visit to Riverbend (http://www.tn.gov/correction/institutions/rmsi.html).
Rev. Wolf, along with other educators from the Nashville area, have been working at this prison for nearly 15 years alongside "insiders" (as the inmates are called) in order to build a group within the prison. This group, consisting of approximately 15 insiders, has been meeting regularly for years and is self-directed and self-determining. In these meetings, they discuss books, theology, education, and their lives. They are a community.
I was so excited to meet with these men- after hearing my friend Doug talk about it, they sounded like the closest thing to our community/student exchanges in Thailand, which I missed deeply. Thus, after being searched and allowed into the prison (I even had to shake my bra out ha), we were led through a maze of buildings, barbed wire, high fences, men with huge guns, and open green spaces to a room with a group of men sitting around outside. Due to my faster than normal walking pace, I was one of the first to arrive in the room.
In some ways, this was my greatest fear. I have always felt uncomfortable around large groups of men, especially those I know has been convicted of violent crimes. But, due to my training both abroad and in SC, I knew that I needed to take a deep breath and jump in without thinking through all that.
Any fear I had was soon alleviated- I was greeted with big smiles and handshakes. We walked around introducing ourselves and reveling in the welcome of the place. Each person I met greeted me with such openness and care- it was like truly meeting someone, without all the pretensions and masks we often wear in public. In this room, I felt as if I had entered one of the most "real" spaces of my life.
We sat down, each of the Wesley students between two of the insiders to mix up the groups. I laughed with the men at my sides, and felt such joy at being welcomed into that room with them. What a privilege to really feel like we were sitting at God's table, communing with one another and loving one another.
Any curiosities about their crimes, or why they were at Riverbend, evaporated as we sat in the room. As we went around and shared (insiders first, then Wesley folks), I shared that I knew the criminal system was racist because I thought/think that way. I criminalized black males for much of my life, and had a fear of them as the "other." As I shared this, a light went on in one of the inmates eyes. He eagerly wished to speak with me more, but the exchange was ending. Quickly, he said "I really want to address your comment." We sat down as everyone hurried around us and he asked "Have you ever seen the movie A Time to Kill??" I said I hadn't, and he briefly explained the plot in which a black man is accused of a crime and hires a white lawyer to defend him. This insider, JBaby, ended by saying "He said that he chose this lawyer because he knows how they think. This person was chosen because they used to think like that, and now they can help because they know how they think." I was struck by this, and it stuck with me as I left the prison. (Here is the trailer to the movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O90-DO9P6q0)
In fact, this small interaction has stuck with me in the weeks after the trip. As I struggle to discern God's plan for my life, I keep coming back to the words of JBaby in Riverbend, paraphrased as they are: "I called you because you know how they think."
What a powerful statement, what a beautiful insight for my life... from a man that society teaches us is a criminal who deserves to rot away in prison. The Bible calls us to prison ministry, but not because we need to tell folks in prison anything. The Bible calls us to this for our own souls, so that we may love deeply and build community with all of God's creation. I was moved and changed through my experience, especially after leaving the prison and discovering more about the crimes committed.
This is why I titled this post "forgiveness." After meeting and learning alongside a former Catholic priest convicted of molesting young boys, I am compelled to reimagine God's love. I am convicted by the humanity of this person and the other folks we met during the above meeting and also on death row. Our exchange with the death row inmates was filled with the Spirit and tears came to my eyes as I heard the men speak of God's redeeming love in their lives, of the importance of this group time for them (many are in solitary confinement the rest of the time), and the joy with which they interacted with the prison chaplain there.
When we look into another person's eyes, when we shake their hand, we are compelled to recognize our vast similarities rather than differences. I am suddenly aware that you are not only "murderer," but a human just like me. In Genesis, God created humans and declared it good. What a powerful statement for our lives- that we have all been declared good, regardless of our actions!
To leave this at mere theological reflection would be selfish on my part, however. Our love for one another must then become an action, done hand in hand with those who society (but not God) teaches us can be thrown away.
Which part of God's creation can be forgotten, or locked away in the darkness? Who is unworthy of love?
Despite my deep discomfort with the vastness of God's love, I am moved by it and can find no loopholes in it. Thankfully God's love is greater than my own very conditional and sensitive human feelings.
In closing, I owe such a debt of gratitude to the brave men of Riverbend High Security Penitentiary and Rev. Janet Wolf, Jeannie Alexander, and all the others who make this kind of experience possible. To all my new and old friends at Vanderbilt Divinity School, I strongly encourage you to get into the class! (Taught at the prison with VDS students and insiders in the class).
I am so humbled by the power of love in my life and so grateful to be at Wesley, where I can take life-changing trips with my classmates.
Some photos of our time in Nash-vegas. :)
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| Beautiful flight, we are so small comparatively |
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| First time at Hobson UMC and I had to speak, ha! |
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| Eleanor, Anissa, Kayeen, Doug, me, and Sylvia at Hobson UMC |
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| Making sandwiches for Hobson's homeless ministry |
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| Southern food FEAST at Monell's- had to nap after this meal |
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| Investigating the scenery during Eleanor's photo shoot :) |
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| Getting ready to hear Michelle Alexander speak! |
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| Making trouble with DJ, our lovely friend from VDS |
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| With the President of ABC- thanks for your time! |
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